Being a missionary is Bomb Diggity AWESOME!

This week was a really good week! Sister Odom's Birthday was this week so of course I decorated! We had a really fun time celebrating. We were able to have dinner that night with one of her favorite members and we watched the Mormon message with them called Origin, it is AMAZING. I am pretty sure it is under youth Mormon Messages. We had a neat conversation with them about the power of questions as we learn more about the gospel. Questions are absolutely necessary to progress. However, it is how we go about finding the answers to questions that can make or break us. On my mission I have decided to not be ignorant to things I don't understand but rather to search them out in faith and prayer. I have been able to grow spiritually more than I could have ever, had I ignored those questions. It truly all goes back to "If any of ye lack wisdom let him ask of God" (James 1:5) Meeting with people this week has raised a ton of questions. We met with a guy this week at Wendy's who was a new investigator of ours. As we got into talking to him we realized that the poor kid was SO confused by so many ideas of religion and the world that it was clear he just wasn't ready to be taught. He talked to us about different corporations of religion and politics as well as things like the Luminoty and Rastafarian. The idea of God to him was convoluted and the Book of Mormon seemed like a conspiracy to him. On top of all that his Spanish accent was very heavy and Sister Odom could not understand him. As missionaries we could feel that the spirit was gone and it would not be in our best interest to keep teaching him. Come to find out later that he is involved with dark things in his life at the moment. We pray for him everyday and hope that someday his relationship with God with be clearer to him. That is how life is. The adversary definitely uses our intellect and our idea of choice to confuse us about something so simple as "we are children of a loving Heavenly Father." After that lesson I reflected on how grateful I am to have the simple knowledge of the gospel and how blessed I am to be able to share the key to Salvation with those who are ready. I have never felt more strongly that the Church is True and God is so aware of every single one of His children.

The Randoms:
SO MUCH ROADKILL here and tons and tons of skunks
We had Thai food this week....well Oklahoma's version of Thai
I miss Seattle Food and Landscape
Love the Sunsets even more every day
Definitely a city girl, love hearing the Sirens every day
We get to go to a Nashville Tribute concert in a few weeks :D
Priesthood blessings are so inspired of God
We had STEAK THIS WEEK!
Being a missionary is Bomb Diggity AWESOME!!!

He makes me exactly what I need to be

Okay, so I apologize in advance for the scatterbrained email this week, I am pretty sure I say that every week but that is pretty much me in a nut shell.

          Alright so this week has been so good and definitely flew by. The work here is good but unfortunately we have a lot of investigators that aren't progressing. We have been fasting and praying so much for them. It has been such a humbling experience. This week we started up our booth at the University of Central Oklahoma. It was such a day full of miracles! We ended up having to eat lunch at 10 in the morning because of the way our schedule was that day so when we got on campus we were starving. As we walked on campus we saw a booth that was giving out free hot dogs and snacks....PURE tender mercy. Needless to say we took that opportunity right away. When we do the booth we set up a table on campus with pamphlets and books of Mormon and Mormon paraphernalia haha and have the students take a survey about religion and restored truths. (I know my grammar sucks right now). Being on campus I am so in my element. There is so much diversity, I love it! There are tons of people from the UK and lots of Asians and African Americans, I am right at home ;) Something we do on campus is called OYM-ing. It stands for Open your mouth. We walk around campus and just talk to people. It is so good for me. I really like getting to know so many people as well. Another thing that I love here is the service we get to do every week at a place called "Hope Center". It is a place where people drop off stuff they don't want- just like you would with good will, and we sort through them and put all the different things on the shelves, mostly clothing. Poorer people are able to come in and pick a few things for no cost. I love going through the bags because if we see things that we like we can buy it for $1 each. It helps hope center as well when we do that and it's definitely a win win situation. The people there love us and leave candy bars for us, it is so nice to feel loved and wanted when a lot of people continually turn us away. This past Wednesday we went to teach one of our investigators at the Chiropractic place where she works and after we taught her we were able to get adjusted. Talk about getting adjusted with a skirt on....haha it was definitely an experience. Luckily the guy who adjusted us is LDS and he was careful to keep our skirts down. The weather here is quite insane...this past week it was 80 degrees and then today we woke up with 17 degrees and now 28 degrees. Definitely not a dull moment. Sister Odom and I have been definitely taking short stress breaks when we can find a minute at Starbucks...these are our cake pops from this week :D

        Embarrassing Moment: Yesterday at church in Gospel principles we were going around and saying our name and another name for Christ. The person before me totally stole mine and I got so flustered haha, I ended up completely forgetting to say my name so Sister Odom said "and your name?" I said "OH yeah hahah my name is...KARLI...UHHHH I mean Sister Engelbrecht" Super funny, the class definitely got a kick out of it. Sister Odom was like uhhh...who's Karli OH HAHAH YEAH.

       Story of the week: I went on exchanges this week with our STL, Sister McKenzie. We went tracting one day (which I...well... not my favorite thing to do) and it was raining outside, which I loved because it reminded me of home. We initially went to a specific house looking for a woman named Doris and no one answered. As we walked around I felt like we needed to knock on a house where a little blue car was parked. It caught my attention and I couldn't stop thinking about it as we walked. I told Sister McKenzie we needed to go knock on that door so we did and it ended up being the house of the woman we were looking for in the first place, because initially we had the wrong address. Honestly, God does not let His children fail. I am seriously just a girl trying to do what my Heavenly Father wants and I am not anywhere near good enough butHe makes me exactly what I need to be. Now every time I see a blue car I am going to remember that experience:)

Love,

Sister Engelbrecht