Walk With Jesus, Dude: Tiga, dua, satu....

I've learned many things this week, I shall count the ways:

1- There may not be toilet paper in Malaysia - or toilets.

2- Many missionaries kill more rats than baptize people in these missions.

3- You can kill rats with basketballs, or so I've heard.

4- Hand sanitizer is great to dispose of the rats - very flammable. .... or so I hear.

5- You've learned adequate stress management when you can walk into your apartment and find a rat the size of a cat rolling in your clean garments and laugh about it.

....So I think there might be rats in Malaysia! Hahaha, I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh or cry when I was hearing these stories; it was a tough decision.

Really though, here are some things I've learned:

Last p-day was great, super great! Unitl I realized that I hadn't noticed if I'd felt the Spirit all day, and there was something wrong with that. So while thinking and praying about how I can make my p-days better, I was prompted that p-days aren't just there so I can wear big girl pants and do laundry, no. -Ummmm, backstory: So I've always tried to figure out what the difference is between those elders who come back from their mission a different and better person and go on to become even better people, and those who come home and become, well, less. But I realized that through using p-day right, I can practice being off my mission and still striving every day to always have the Spirit with me, and serve others, and to always be a missionary, no matter what kind of clothes I'm wearing.

Sister Crandall and my lessons have been going great with our investigator. It's so cool! But there have been days where I really didn't try my hardest to learn all the vocab for the lessons, or really put my whole soul into it, and on those days the Spirit isn't in the lesson. When the Spirit isn't there to teach the lesson, to teach me what to say, and to help me know what my investigator is saying, it's pointless to teach; it's just words! It really is true that if I do all I can do, the Lord will make up the rest. After one day of preparing more but not feeling the Spirit, I was studying after the lesson when I went to grab my scriptures and found them open to 2 Nephi 32. It felt like a slap in the face. Heavenly Father has told me very simply how to do what I need to do, he has given me the tools I need, but I haven't had the faith to use them. Then I opened up to D&C 100: 4-8 and, I swear, it was like God was speaking directly to me. It was so neat, and so sweet, yet, still so bitter because I should have been doing better. The scriptures really are meant for us and will speak to us!