HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!! ...almost!

HEY EVERYBODY!!! Another week has quickly come and gone! It is seriously SO amazing to me just how quickly time really DOES fly by out here! So, here's what happened this past week! Monday night Sister Schramm and I had a really ...interesting... lesson with our investigator, Derek, and his brother, Desmond. It started out really good and we were talking about the Book of Mormon and having a really great lesson on that, when someone knocked on the door. There were other people (including women, don't worry, they were just busy making dinner in the kitchen right next to us) in the house, but nobody was getting the door; so Derek got off the couch and walked over to the door to see who was there. Now, this wouldn't have been a problem (aside from it being a slight interruption from our lesson), except for the fact that he didn't have any pants on... Yep. He was in a tank top and boxers. So Sister Schramm and I immediately looked away as soon as we saw he was getting off of the couch cause we guessed that he wasn't wearing any pants cause he just had a blanket wrapped around his legs. Can you say AWKWARD?!?! ESPECIALLY as a missionary! Also - we realized shortly after he stood up that Sister Schramm was sitting on his pants on the couch that we were sitting on. Don't worry, he quickly got pants on after that and it was fine, but it was just SO awkward!!! Anyways, after that, it was time to go home to our apartment. When we got home, we got talking about a wonderful rewards program for ourselves to give us positive reinforcement for us to do better work as missionaries (cause that's the way that I work best), and Heavenly Father inspired us with this BRILLIANT idea of a points system! Some of these things we were already pretty good at, like we always get up on time, but since I'm not really a morning person, it still feels good to know that if nothing else, we get to give ourselves one point by getting out of bed in the morning! :) Here's how it works: There are 13 possibilities of points that we can get per day, and they are as follows: 1. Be up by 6:30 AM 2. Be out the door of our apartment to go to the gym by 6:42 AM 3. Begin prayer for personal study by 8:00 4. Every new investigator 5. Get into a home on initial contact of meeting someone tracting 6. Practice teach 7. Be 1-7 minutes early to meetings (such as church, missionary meetings, lessons, etc.) 8. Pray for names twice a day (we have a list of names of all of the progressing investigators in the mission and we update it every week and each companionship prays for each individual investigator by name. It's really cool! We're supposed to do it twice a day - morning and night - but it takes about ten minutes to do it, so we've been slackin' on that and doin' it once a day, but it's ok! We'll get that point!) 9. No dishes in the sink from end of dinner to breakfast the next day 10. Be out of dinner by the hour 11. Use the word "light" in every initial contact - whether street contacting or tracting. Example: "Jesus Christ is the light of the world"; "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in Heaven", etc. This keeps things interesting and fun and causes us to think more! 12. Be done with nightly planning by 9:45 PM 13. Kneeling for nightly prayers by 10:30 PM Anyways, we told our District Leader, Elder Stone, about our points program, and he really loved the idea! We even joked with him and said that he could give us a reward if he wanted to, and he said that he will! So, we need to earn a total of 48 points per week (and you can't subtract points, you can only add them), and then Elder Stone will give us a prize! We weren't very good at keeping track of our points earlier last week, and our exchange threw us off, so we started officially keeping track on Saturday. So that's what we'll do. Saturday to Saturday we'll keep track of points and then cash them in to Elder Stone! It's been really fun, actually! And the best part is, it causes us to both be equally accountable for things, but eliminates the negative-ness of expectations. For example, if one of us is kneeling for bedtime prayers by 10:30, but the other one doesn't kneel til 10:31, we miss the point. But it's ok! We've actually had a lot of fun with it! And we've even both had times where we've said to each other, "I'm sorry I made us miss a point." Anyways, we talked to our Sister Training Leaders about it more on Saturday, and they LOVE it, too! They even asked us to e-mail it to President Riggs! So who knows?? This could go viral throughout the mission - at least with Sisters! :) Anyways! Wow! So sorry that took me forever to tell you all about that! I hope that y'all had as much fun reading about the points system as I had writing about it! Haha! Anyways, Tuesday was really good! We went on exchanges and I went with Sister Roper and Sister Schramm went with Sister Stones, and it was SO good! Seriously, it helped me out SO much! I felt like by the time I woke up on Wednesday that I was finally able to get out of that funk I was in of feeling homesick, and just not like myself, and I finally was able to honestly say to myself, "I think I'm gonna like it here in Kingstowne. I think this is gonna be another home away from home for me!" And I LOVE it here! And it IS a home away from home! Wednesday was wonderful! We had dinner with the wonderful Sheng family! I love them! Then that night we had a miracle tracting/street contacting (I'm not sure which it would count for since we were about to go to her house, but we met her getting out of her car) that night! We met a woman named Tisa, who fairly warmly invited us into her home. We had a great Q&A lesson with her, AND a return appointment - FOR THE NEXT DAY!!! Plus we invited her to be baptized, which she politely declined... but it's ok. It's the nature of it all! :) Thursday we did a lot of weekly planning since we didn't have time for it Friday, so that took most of the afternoon. Then that evening we had dinner with the Anderson family, and they're super great! And then that night, we had another lesson with Tisa AND her husband, AJ, who's blind! It was really cool! They're wonderful people! I love them both! :) Friday we had a Sister's Conference with all of the Sisters in the mission, and that was SOOOOOO good, and SOOOOOOOOOOO fun! I got to see Sister Lochridge, Sister Woodbury, Sister Akin and her tall trainee, Sister McBride, and all of the other wonderful Sisters who I LOVE! I am SO grateful that we had that time! It was wonderful! President and Sister Riggs talked a lot to us about modesty, but even more than that, about the Priesthood. They talked about the sad chain of events that have been going on in SLC recently with the "women for the priesthood" act. It really just makes me SO sad to see women from our own church rallying against us. I mean, really. God gave men the power to administer the priesthood through giving blessings, etc., and women are nurturers. All faithful members of the church (women included) can access the POWER of the priesthood through faithfully reading the scriptures, praying, attending church, obeying the commandments, etc. However, only men can ADMINISTER the priesthood. Personally, I am very saddened that this has even been an issue in our church at all. We all just need to have faith and realize that there's no way that we'll ever know everything or understand everything in the church. However, the important thing is that we recognize that we don't understand everything, but instead of starting a rally, pray and ask in faith; or if it's a really big deal to you, privately speak with a church leader. But there's no need for anyone's personal views or opinions of the way that our church is run to influence others not of our faith, or of our faith through big, public acts and displays that end up on the news and in the newspaper. This is not the way that God would have things addressed. Saturday was SO great! We had Stake Conference that night, which was WONDERFUL! I was able to see some people from the wonderful Crystal City ward, which made me SO happy! :) I also was able to see my wonderful President and Sister Riggs and talk with President for a minute and just say "hi" to him! I really love President Riggs SO much! He's like my earthly Heavenly Father! :) Sunday was pretty good, too! We had the other session of Stake Conference, which was really great! :) I was able to see Sister Lopez from the Crystal City ward! She saw me and came running up to me, and gave me a big hug, which really made me feel loved and missed in that ward! I love her SO much! :) Anyways, I gotta run, but I love you all SO much! Just so you know, y'all CAN e-mail me now if you want, cause I can print out e-mails for free at the club house of my apartment and read them later! I really would LOVE some mail! :) THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!! LOVE ALWAYS, Sister Aubrie Orrock P.S. I get to watch a couple of real movies with the missionaries in my zone on Halloween! We're having a big Halloween party together cause we can't be out proselyting from 5:00 to the end of the night! I'm excited! I hope that y'all are safe on this Holiday week! I love you all!