Who knew saving cats would be part of serving The Lord?

WARNING: THIS BLOG POST INCLUDES A SEMI DISTRUBING PICTURE OF AN ANIMAL. JUST LETTIN’ YALL KNOW AHEAD OF TIME!

I am amazed at how much better my past two weeks here have been since I’ve realized that I just get so wrapped up in things that I literally cannot change and when I just trust in the Lord and lean on Him to help pull me through all the chaos I am happy. I am thankful for the humbling, growing and spiritually rewarding experiences I continue to have on my mission.

Monday: It was hot as fire out and we had a missionary cookout at the park. I was sweatin’ bullets!!! It was a really nice day though and just when we thought it couldn’t get any better the STL (Sister Training Leaders) Sister Cook & Price called asking if they could come crash at our apartment for the night because theirs smelt like fumes hahah. So OBVIOUSLY you know we haaaaad to pull our mattresses out into the living room and have a huge sleep over :P it was a blast. I really love those girls.

Sleep OVVVVAAAA!

Tuesday: We are sitting there studying our scriptures and such when all of the sudden Sister Treadwell FREAKS OUTS. She runs outside and low and behold there was a cat who’s foot was stuck in the wood post of our fence dangling there, trying to save his life. It was so sad. He kept trying to get up on the fence but then would fall back down and twist his leg around even more. It took animal control 45 mins to get there…they live like right behind us -_- but anyways, good news: they freed him, he didn’t even have a broken leg and the church is still true. It was a traumatic morning watching all of that go down. Whew.

Pool Fireball (We named him)!

Then we went to Zone Meeting and had to present our “training” on prayer. It was totally inspired for the Zone Leaders to ask us to do this. I, in specific, needed it. I thought about how if I was told I was going to get to call home today I wouldn’t just be like “yeah, this happened and it was nice, but yeah you know what I mean” I would go into detailed about it ALL. We have the opportunity to communicate with our Heavenly Father at any given moment and yet we take it so lightly and don’t actually tell Him whats on our mind. He gets the most condensed version of our convos when he should be getting the most detailed.

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go."- Hamalet.

I also knew from preparing this training that I had been getting lazy with my prayers. Especially at night. Instead on kneeling in prayer like I knew I should be I would lay in my bed and usually I’d fall asleep mid prayer (go figure). Mostly because I’m so tired by the time I go to say my prayers that I’d rather be laying down preparing my body for sleep since it takes forever for me to fall asleep…well guess what? Since then I’ve made it a goal to say my bedtime prayer on my knees and I’ve literally slept better this week than I ever have. I see the Lord blessing me for doing what I know is right. I love how He works.

Also with prayers: there is something really powerful about saying your prayers out loud. There’s a reason that Joseph Smiths prayer was never answered until he went and actually vocalized it to the Lord. I know that there has NEVER been a time I’ve regretted kneeling down, pouring my heart out to the Lord, crying and crying. I am so thankful for prayer.

Wednesday: I got my very first sunburn on the mission <3 YAY! #truemissionary Funny thing though: I like to go to bed by like 9:59 every night and all the elders in the zone found out about this and ever since have been trying to get on my last nerve about it hahah. So almost every night this week, without fail, the elders would call about something that I would need to know but they would wait til like 10 to do it (Treadwell would be showering, unavailable to talk) and would keep me up, not telling me what I needed to know til like 10:29 JUST to keep me up because they thought it was funny. It’s funny because I would be so mad but at the same time so tired and silly that I couldn’t quit laughing the whole time. One night Elder White goes “Sister Toolan, I can’t understand Hyena!” hahahha elders love giving me a hard time. Whatevz.

Thursday- We had dinner with the Woodys and the elders. Well, Elder Jopson is Asian and is actually from Northern Cali but Sister Woody walks in and goes “So elder, how are you adjusting to American food????” HAHAHAHHAHA it was comedy GOLD. I love old people:) Also, there were two cats in our back yard about to get at it!! So we had to break up a cat fight…literally. Darn cats and our backyard this week….can’t escape it!!

Friday: I had a really cool thing happen. As Treadwell and I started our companion study I could tell something was wrong so I asked her what was going on. She was just having a hrad time (like we all do somedays) well as I have expressed before I have a hard time being “compassionate” with my companions. I am THE most huggy person in the world but when you spend 24/7 with a person, NO JOKE, you really don’t want to touch them/be around them any more than you have too….so I’m sitting there as she is crying and the Holy Ghost prompted me to go hug her…which I did NOT want to do…but I knew it was what Heavenly Father was trying to tell me she needed. So I swallowed my pride and did it. Later she told me how much she needed it and I was really glad I was able to not only recognize but follow the prompting I had.

We also extended the commitment to our 84 year old investigator to be baptized and he said YES! :D

Sweet Sister Jansen

Saturday: Got to do service at Sister Jansens house and it was a blast. She even let me drive her little scooter around…I am such a little kid at heart :)

Sister Treadwell was trying to kill me:)

Sunday: We had a deaf investigator come to church! It’s so great to see someone walk into church that you were hoping would come!!!

Sister Treadwell and I had SUCH a sweet tooth after dinner (we didn’t get desert) but it was Sunday so we couldn’t break the Sabbath and go get something from our usual “sweettooth spot”…so we called up this one family in the ward that we knew always had sweets and asked if we could come over and partake of their goodness lol, we walked the walk of shame up to their door and enjoyed a wonderful evening of chocolate with them :D look, we justified needing this sweet because we had walked 4.3 miles to dinner that night haha. Got a nice shoe tan on my feet -_-

Needless to say, it was a great week. I love this work. I love that I have this 18 months to be 100% focused on our Savior. I am thankful for my hard times that I’ve had so far, they have strengthened me and my testimony. Talk to yall next week!!!

-hugs-

Sister Toolan

Johnny and I doing service!