Must . . . Get . . . Sleep . . . !

Sorry this one won't be super long mostly because I'm almost out of time.

So this week has been full of ups and downs. Kind of felt like a roller coaster, to be honest. Things were going really well. Monday we had dinner with the Anderson family (they are amazing)! Well, I haven't been sleeping at night because the house we live in has mice. (I know they are small but so are spiders and those things are scary!) Anyway, when the mice move at night (which is all the time) I wake up and its hard getting back to sleep, so Sister Anderson let us borrow her soft noise thingy. Well, I can still here the mice but I'm getting more sleep than before. So for me this last week felt like a roller coaster but if you ask Sister Clark she'd say otherwise. No sleep is no good for many different reasons. And I'm in week 6 this week (crazy right) and I've only had 4 nights I slept all through the night without waking up. So Melatonin is my best friend. (It's natural..)


So the dog in the picture is Taffy, she is 12 years old (I think) and she is a mini poodle. So cute and full of energy! Gotta love it. Taffy likes to come down and visit us and will sometimes bark at the mice . . . how thoughtful! At least the dog looks out for me.

The next picture is the house we live in. This was the morning after the first snow . . . its only snowed 4 times since then . . .

We taught Mary again and let me just say she is golden. I hate that she is in pain from all her health problems I wish we could take it away, Mary is 49 almost 50 and she is such an example to me of endurance. She was so set on coming to church yesterday but wasn't able to for many health reasons. She ended up going to the ER.

Tuesday night Brother Tingey gave me a blessing. My companion brought it up and after a little thought I agreed because of how tired I have been. Not getting sleep drains you. I love sleep and this has been my biggest struggle so far. The Tingey family is my favorite! They are all amazing. At the pumpkin patch a couple weeks ago we played football (yes in skirts) with their son (he's 10) and a couple other kids and one of the investigator's kids, talk about super fun. Make friends with the kids, that's the key. Sister Tingey is a great member missionary.

Elder Baxter from the 70 came Saturday for mission tour. How crazy that I got to shake his hand. He taught us many different things but the one that struck me was When Elder Baxter was talking with a member who was dying of ALS, he said to him "this doesn't seem very fair does it" the man responded "who asked for fair?". Remember this, life isn't about being fair, it's about learning to overcome the challenges and being happy, even when we aren't happy. And Satan strives to bring down the saints through: despair, despondency, discouragement, and depression. Resist these things by thinking that you are better than you think you are. We tend to be our own worst enemies and are always tearing ourselves down. Stop it."

I simply saw the angel in the marble, and I carved until I set it free" -Michaelangelo.

Heavenly Father is the sculpture and we are the blocks of marble. He sees our true potential and knows the amount of chipping away that needs to be done to unlock our divine selves.