We were kept pretty busy this week with lots of service opportunities, which was awesome. Every week we go and sing at the Senior Care and Rehabilitation Center here in McCall. It's so cute to have some of them come gather around and sing with us, and they all always give us hugs and tell us how grateful they are to see us there always smiling. They have some of the sweetest people at the care center. We also go there whenever they have different activities or events, and since it's christmas, they have a lot of stuff going on right now. So this week we went and helped them make/decorate christmas cookies and we have some other stuff planned for this month as well. We also signed up to start helping at the local Food Bank, so we will be starting that this upcoming week, every Wednesday. This week though we also went and helped out an older, inactive lady in the ward who just had surgery clean her house and put up some christmas decorations. It was really nice to just talk with her after, she is so sweet. We got talking about different places in town and she told us about this cake shop that makes the BEST cookies and she was so excited for us to try it she gave us money so we could go out and get some for all of us right then! So that was fun, and the cookies were reaaaaally good haha!
Teaching this week was good. We just finished the new member lessons with Don, who was baptized just right before I got here. He is 86 years old and just received the Priesthood this past Sunday! He was so excited, and it was such a cool experience to be there with him for that. He is the best person to teach. With everything we explain, he always just says "well yeah that makes sense." haha! He's the best. We were pretty excited because we were supposed to start teaching a brand new person this week. Her name is actually Morgan and she came to us wanting to start lessons because her boyfriend is a member of the church and they want to get married. We had a lesson planned for sunday night but then she totally went MIA on us and we didn't end up teaching her :( Hopefully she'll be in contact with us again soon!
Some fun little things this week: we had a Ward Christmas Brunch on saturday. There was SO much good food oh my goodness and it was so fun to just get to talk with and get to know the ward members more. They are all so nice to us, we got a lot of appointments for Christmas Eve & Christmas, which is so awesome. We have another brunch with the other ward this coming saturday, so we are looking forward to that! Also, saturday night there was a little city Orchestra/Choir concert that some of the members were participating in so we got to go to that! It was so cool to just kind of take a break and listen to the Christmas music. Everyone was so talented! Soooo many people from just all over the community were there, so that was really cool. McCall is such a cute, friendly town. Another little thing was that one night we didn't have a dinner appointment so we just went to a little diner in town and someone paid for our meal!! That seriously made our day it was so nice. The people take such good care of us here.
After my first week here feeling homesick and having a hard time adjusting, I prayed a lot to have a change of attitude and to find happiness in being here, and oh my goodness, I found answers everywhere. It seemed like every church lesson and sacrament talk, every visit with a member, every scripture I studied this week, was about joy, and having/finding joy in our lives. I want to share this quote from a talk by President Russel M. Nelson called, "Joy and Spiritual Survival" (if you haven't read it or heard it, I really recommend it!) He says, "We can feel joy regardless of what is happening-or not happening-in our lives. Joy comes from and because of Him. He is the source of all joy. We feel it at Christmastime when we sing 'Joy to the world, the Lord is come,' And we can feel it all year round. For Latter-day Saints, Jesus Christ is joy!" The gospel comes with an eternal and everlasting promise of joy and happiness. There is nothing in this life that can, permanently and completely, take that happiness away from us. I have every reason to have joy in this journey, in this work, in my call to serve, because I have Jesus Christ, and that is all that matters.
Thank you guys again for all of your prayers, thoughts, and emails! It makes all the difference. Sending soooo much love from Idaho
Hermana Rawlins
My address again for those that have asked for it:
808 South Samson Trail
P.O. Box 192
McCall, ID 83638
Okay this week we failed at taking pictures so here's a few random ones. I will be better at remembering to take pictures this next week!
1. Mirror selfie at the care center
2. So many deer in our backyard earlier this week!! (we have since then received about a million more feet of snow)
3. My comp refuses to take pictures with me so there's the best one you get of us in the car HAHA
