Serving in Texas: A Mouse in the House!

Dear Family!

HAPPY 2014!! what a wonderful time to start new and fresh for the year :) Can you believe Kylee is graduating in four months? that blows my mind away! I'm happy that y'all enjoyed your break! I'm kind of glad the break is over because everyone was out of town!! So it was slower these last couple of weeks.

Sounds like Kylee is doing awesome is basketball. So proud of her wish I could see her play!! Can't wait to watch my kids play sports :) SO a couple of weeks ago we found out that we had a mouse in our apartment........NASTY!!! :/ We were planning one night for the next day when Sister Melson looks at me with a frantic face. "DONT MOVE" she whispers to me. I jump up onto my seat and a little mouse runs around the whole room into the fire place! oh my goodness it was so gross. So that next Monday we bought some sticky traps. Those didn't work very well though. So the next Monday we got a couple of real traps...we had to have the Elders set them so we didn't get our fingers cut off haha......We still haven't caught it. I think we are going to tell the management today so they will do something about it. We keep seeing evidence of it though. Sister Nelson had little chocolates on her desk and the next morning during studies she noticed little nibble marks on them!! Have any advice on how we can catch the little rascal? Its a mystery to me!

We were at the Johnsons for dinner last night. I LOVE that family! They have three girls Sage is ten Addie is eight and Clair is four. Last night after we shared a message with them Addie came up to me and asked me if I would speak at her baptism :) AWW! so tender :) That just touched my heart :) We are teaching a girl named Aylinn. Shes 14 and is just the cutest thing, Shes in the anime club at the high school and is in the band. Her mom and dad are less actives and are stationed in Virginia right now so she is living with her grandmother (who speaks Spanish so its hard to talk to her). But her mom wanted Aylinn to start going to seminary and take the missionary discussions. But only from sisters. She's not in our ward but we got special permission from our president to be teaching her because we are the only sisters in the area. So it was very much a blessing to have the opportunity to teach her because she is just so wonderful! She goes to church every week and when we gave her a Book of Mormon she was so happy! "For me? I feel so honored!" We are inviting her to be baptized tomorrow :) makes me so happy to share that with people.

I don't remember if I told you about Verna. Verna is an old lady that lives across the street from the Woodsworths in the ward. We took the elders with us one day to go help them start packing for their move. We went outside to rake the yard when we saw Verna outside raking her leafs. The Elders rushed over to help her! Once the whole yard was finished she told them that we could come and visit her any time :) After our first visit we discovered that Verna was a Baptist BUT that she was open to our message. After we left her home that day a thought came across my mind. If we had just randomly knocked on Vernas door she would have rejected us and told us to go away. But because we were able to serve her and show her that we cared about her it opened that door! This is TURE missionary work :) We don't have to go up to a stranger and hand them a Book of Mormon or tell someone to come to church with us right away, that is scary! But we must serve one another! THAT is TRUE missionary work! :)