HEY EVERYBODY!!! MAN! WHAT A WEEK!!!

This past week has also been very trying in some ways, but EXTREMELY sweet and wonderful and rewarding in a lot as well! To start things off, on Monday, Sister Akin and I visited good ole Rob (our less-active friend) and had a good visit with him... while he may or may not have probably definitely had a beer or two right before we came over... Haha... Oh Rob... We're working on the Word of Wisdom with him, but clearly we haven't gotten very far... Haha... It's ok. I'm confident that he'll come around eventually! And I still love him anyways! :) Right after we were done visiting Rob, we felt like we should go over and check on Stephanie (the woman who Sister Woodbury and I met street contacting who was belting out the song "Oklahoma" as her and her friend drove by us with the windows down shortly before), who I hadn't seen in literally MONTHS. I was practically holding my breath as I knocked on her door and I heard someone walking towards the door... and... STEPHANIE ANSWERED THE DOOR!!! I cannot even describe to you the immense amounts of happiness and pure joy that I felt when I saw her! She was SO excited to see me, too (cause I KNOW that she was one of the people who I was supposed to meet out here, and we have that connection), and she quickly invited us inside! We went in and sat down, and quickly realized that she, like Rob, was a little tipsy herself. I mean, I knew she always loved me, but she just kept on hugging me, and being very spiritual - which is GREAT, I LOVE it. But I just want her to be the same way when she HASN'T had something to drink before... Oh man... yep. So that was our Monday night... Two tipsy people. It was still SO good to see Steph, though. I'm going to at least take some of the things that she said to me to heart! She started getting emotional and told me, "I can feel the love of God in you!" That was definitely REALLY sweet and special, and I'll just hope and pray that she'll tell me the same thing again at a later time when she's sober! :) Haha. But it's ok! I still love her anyways! :) That night shortly before we got home, poor, sweet Sister Akin started feeling sick. So we hurried home, and shortly after we got home, she threw up... and then again later that night... She had the 24 hour stomach flu. It was TERRIBLE. The poor thing still felt sick and achey the next day, so Tuesday we took a sick day and stayed inside all day and watched church movies in our apartment. It was actually a pretty good day - aside from her not feeling well. But it actually ended up working out because I wasn't feeling that great that day, either. In fact, that day was probably one of the worst days that I had had in a couple of weeks. But it's ok cause both Sister Akin and I have learned a LOT as far as serving each other over the past several weeks since I've been sick mostly, and then when she had the flu, and I did as much as I could for her. So we've been helping each other out, so it's been good! :) Wednesday was a really interesting, but overall good day! We started the afternoon off with another visit to the doctor's office - with the hope and prayer that this time they'd have the answer that I was looking for as far as a cure for the sickness that I'd been feeling. After that, we went out and did some street contacting, then we stopped by the apartment really quick right before going to our dinner appointment. Right as we were parking, lo and behold, we saw Jacob - our military man investigator who lives in the apartment building right next to us! I quickly jumped out of the car and called his name, and he came right over and talked to us for a minute. As we were talking to him, somewhere in the conversation, we got talking about cars, and we knew that we needed to get our oil checked, and possibly changed, since we've driven it nearly 5,000 miles and we haven't done that yet... Oooopsies... Well, we don't know anything about cars, and he's a guy and he does. So anyways, he agreed to check our oil for us later that week, and we made a deal that in exchange for him checking our oil, we'd teach him another lesson about the gospel (since we'd only met him once and taught him the restoration lesson in the parking lot a couple of weeks before)! He agreed and said that he'd do that on Saturday. Those were the main highlights for Wednesday. Thursday was yet another interesting, but really good day! Literally NONE of our plans came through, and we didn't have a single lesson, but it was really good! One of the main highlights, however, was while we were street contacting, we ran into a potential investigator named Christopher (he's a hispanic guy from Honduras), and he told us that he wanted to take us out to dinner on Saturday night; we agreed on the condition that we could teach him about the gospel while we eat. He agreed. That night, we had dinner with a WONDERFUL woman in our ward named Eileen! I cannot even say enough about her to truly give her all of the credit that she deserves! She is honestly a truly remarkable woman and I am SO happy and honored to have finally had the opportunity to get to know her better! :) Friday morning I woke up with the same 24-hour flu that Sister Akin had on Tuesday... THANKFULLY I never actually threw up from it due to my intense will-power to never throw up again (I'm serious). However, I felt feverish and achy and nauseous all day long. So we pretty much had a repeat of our day on Tuesday. We watched Legacy (MY FAVORITE MOVIE!!!), and The Testaments (another GREAT one!) and another movie about the making of the Salt Lake City Temple! It was really good! Saturday was SUCH a wonderful day!!! We started the day off by helping a new cute couple in our ward move into their apartment! After that, we went street contacting and ended up meeting this wonderful woman named Mary Ann (who is almost like an Italian version of Stephanie! LOVE her!) and we talked to her for over an hour! I stopped her first, then she saw our name tags and asked if we could sit down and talk with her for a bit! We were COMPLETELY caught off guard, but we of course said "YES!" and talked with her! Unfortunately we didn't get too many words in about the gospel with her, but she just needed a good listening ear. However, we do have a return appointment with her for tonight! So cross our fingers all goes well with that! :) After that, we had a WONDERFUL lesson with our sweet Keren! Her faith is growing - slowly but surely! :) Shortly after we got back from Keren's, Jacob checked our oil, as well as just about everything else in our car and said it's good to go! :) After that, the three of us went out to dinner at Chick-Fil-A and got to know Jacob better! We talked a lot about the gospel, and he really wants to know more! He's incredible! He's SUUUPER spiritual! He even teaches a Bible Study class in DC on Tuesday nights! :) He's getting baptized some day - I can FEEL it! :D Sunday was SOOOO good! Church was wonderful! And shortly after church, after we finished our personal studies, we went and visited a less-active member in our ward named Ignacio and his cute family! His wife, Sandra, is not a member, and they have two adorable children! We had a REALLY wonderful visit with both of them, and we got a new investigator with Sandra! :) The Elders were teaching her originally, but she wouldn't really listen to them and she wasn't progressing with them, so we did a little switch-a-roo. They gave us Sandra and we gave them Bobby - Keren's husband - since he's not progressing with us, and they had dinner with them and some members on Monday night, and Bobby really liked them. After that, we had dinner with a WONDERFUL sweet woman in our ward named Mindy! I LOVE her! I know that I was supposed to meet her, too! :) She even has two pet flying squirrels! How cool is that?? We were meant to be friends! :) Right after dinner, we were FINALLY able to go and visit Jan and Jack!!! It was SOOOOOOO wonderful to see them both! I LOVE THEM SOOOOOOO MUCH!!! Anyways, I gotta run, but THE CHURCH IS SOOOOOOO TRUE!!! I love being a missionary!!! :D I love you all!!! Love always, Sister Aubrie Orrock