Almost one month in the mission field! That's actually kind of crazy. It has gone by so fast.
Anyways, I promised an eventful week! Here it is:
New missionary follow up meeting! Sister Jacobson and I got to drive up to Farragut and on the way there, we drove through Knoxville! She was SO excited when she saw the sun sphere because she's been in the Tennessee Knoxville mission for 17 months and had never been to Knoxville! It was so fun to see all the missionaries I came out with, I didn't really realize how much I missed my MTC companions until I saw them both. On the way back, we listened to a devotional called "Conversion of a Catholic Priest" by Bill Carpenter. 10/10 would HIGHLY recommend listening to it. I loved every second of it! It is such a powerful story.
We had a lot of our appointments cancel on us this week, but we did manage to commit Tim to come to church on Sunday, and he came!! Tim is 82 years old, is very hard of hearing, and loves to tease us in every way he can. I love it; he makes me laugh so much!! He is determined to read the entire Book of Mormon before he will commit to baptism, but he is realizing the effect it is having on his life and feeling the peace from his daily study of it. He is already half way through Alma! I was so happy to see him show up at church yesterday, we sat down with him and I explained the reverence of the Sacrament, and how it provided an opportunity for him to recommit himself to Heavenly Father and think about things he could be doing better. We made it through about half the Sacrament successfully and reverently, but then Tim learned over and dove into a not-so-quiet monologue about the first governor of Sevier county whose last name was originally French and spelled with an X but no one could figure out how to say it so he switched it to Sevier. (I had told him the origins of Shumway last week and apparently that's what he was thinking about during Sacrament haha!). Sister Jacobson and I were trying so hard not to laugh! I'm pretty sure the entire congregation learned about the French origins of the name Sevier.
2nd hour of church was a whole other adventure. I've been fighting a little bit of a cold this weekend and I woke up yesterday morning with the stuffiest nose I think I've ever had and a throat as dry as Nevada. So as I'm sitting in relief society, I start to feel this cough coming on. I HATE coughing in public, especially when it sounds like a barking seal, and you know that all the ladies in there are going to worry about you being sick. I couldn't just step out for a moment to grab some water because we were sitting in the very center of our row. No escape! So I decided to try holding it in. You know what? Not a good idea. You see: holding in a cough is not only extremely difficult, but it sets off a viscous cycle that spirals out of control quite quickly. Having made the mistake of holding in my cough, my eyes began to water from the effort and border-line painfulness of it, which causes my already stuffy nose to become even stuffier as the water from my eyes has nowhere else to go. I then no longer had the use of my nose for air, but if I breathe through my mouth, the coughing urge becomes 10 times worse! I came to a crossroads. I could either: embarrass myself miserably by exploding with awful noises of sickness, OR I could sit there and suffocate until class was over or I passed out, whichever came first. I was already turning purple at this point so I resolved to just suffocate. Well, here I am writing all of this to you, so I clearly didn't die, but I honestly can't say how I survived except by a miracle from God.
Hopefully I'll be feeling better soon!
I have loved this month and a half of my mission with all of its ups and downs. I know that as time goes on, those ups and downs will get deeper and steeper, but as long as my faith is firm in my Savior (which it most definitely is, don't worry) I will be able to learn and grow from it all.
Sister Shumway
Water bottles that Mom sent this week
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