Fwd: Hey Fam!

haha that letter from noah is so funny.

well i´ll tell you something that happened yesterday i am just too lazy to write it but i will for you and it´s a super long story with lots of details but i´ll get the jist of it to you. 

we had missed a bus to our appointment with our girl who will be baptized this next saturday and with only a little over an hour left in our day we decided to go visit a less active and his active wife who had just tried calling us. we got there and she said her son, Paulo, had called her that day asking for the missionary´s phone number. We call him at her house (she had given him the wrong number) and we ask if we can just run over there right now. We get there and turns out he is an inactive member that was baptized about 6 years ago. He told us how his cousin who is one of his best friends had talked to him about how the mormon missionaries had been talking to him and how he went to church with us for the first time that day (yesterday, and this is Carlos who he and his family are amazing but are way convinced that reencarnation is real so they´re having a hard time with that) so then Paulo (who had been a sunday school teacher and had the melquisedeque priesthood etc) for the first time yesterday didn´t have to work on a sunday morning and felt really depressed and that something was missing and he knew he was supposed to go back to church. he didn´t know how to go back so he called his mom for our number. He and his non member girlfriend who he lives with want to go back to church (they had met at the church, she was an investigator for a while, and another weird thing, she is literally old enough to be his mother. she´s seriously like 65 and he´s 35. really kinda weird but he says she has a great spirit so i believe him haha). I was feeling nervous as to what to say but a tender mercy happened, literally my mouth was filled and i told him things that i was kind of scared to say not knowing how he would react. I told him how it doesn´t matter how far off the path we get but Christ´s atonement made it so that anyone can come back through repentance, and with a few other details  but at the end and scared for his reply he said: it´s funny that you would say that because that´s just the situation i am in right now and that´s just what i needed to hear.... and all this stuff. 

ive been having a hard time lately thinking maybe i should just come back with the big group of missionaries i got out here with who are going home in two weeks but they all had the full MTC experience and feeling kind of useless  i feel like Heavenly Father gave me this experience to let me know He can still use me for an extra 6 weeks. My amazing comp, sis Brundage usually is the one that comes up with all the awesome stuff but this little tender mercy experience from yesterday has helped reassure me that i can still serve for another 6 weeks. plus, if i go home now i will always wonder what could have happened those last 6 weeks being out here and obviously i went in early to get all this experience and i want the lord to continue teaching me and humbling me and making me a better servant of His. 

yes i am still with sister Brundage, probably for only another two weeks but we´ll see. I am what is called a Sister training leader for the first time in my mission and i go on splits with the other sisters in a few zones to help them or try to help them with whatever or just give them a fun different day. 

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 2:12 PM, kristen.shumway <kristen.shumway@gmail.com> wrote:

hi sweetheart, KK is going to send you a copy of a letter that Noah wrote to him. It's really funny.

 so you think your other friends aren't writing you much, is that what you mean? who are you kind of thinking of not writing?

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Express™, an AT&T LTE smartphone

-------- Original message --------
From: Eliza Shumway <eliza.shumway@myldsmail.net> Date: 09/15/2014 7:06 AM (GMT-07:00)
To: "kristen.shumway" <kristen.shumway@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Hey Fam!

haha wow is it you?

hey i got your letter! thank you i think i said last week i got it. 

i need to do better but i do write a few things down in my journal. 

i am feeling really weird right now ya know 

i made my last little agenda today for the six week transfer.. i did it kinda early but i only have 8 weeks left and no one writes me and i feel just a little forgotten... i am thankful for yours and dad´s letters though. you´re the only ones i look forward to each p day

On Mon, Sep 15, 2014 at 2:03 PM, kristen.shumway <kristen.shumway@gmail.com> wrote:

Seriously, I think you will wish you had written more down of your weekly experiences when you are old and your kids want to know about your mission but you can't remember anything.

Xox

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Express™, an AT&T LTE smartphone