Happy Halloween!

Hi Everyone!

We had a pretty exciting week this week! First I have to tell you about all our halloween adventures. Here's my journal entry from that day:

WHAT a day. :) This has seriously been one of the most entertaining days of my entire mission! To celebrate halloween, Sister Miller and I had to do something festive, of course... so we dressed up as "twin sisters." We had black and white patterened tops with a black skirt, black shoes, and a white cradigan. Oh, and curly hair. It was so great. But the best part is what happened to us while we were wearing our lovely twin sister oufits: we had just finished up in our area and were trying to get to our temple shift when we got stuck in a dead-stop traffic jam. We were sittting in the middle of Mira Mesa Boulevard for an HOUR! Biggest waste of missionary time ever. Ha. So we're hanging out in the car, just idling away, when all the sudeen the car started shaking... we had no idea what was happening to our car until is suddenly died, and we realized with horror that we had run out of gas!! AH! And then, of course, the light turned green and everyone was honking at me... we were in the MIDDLE lane, too, with nowhere to go. So two ridiculously-dressed matching missionaries got out of the car and pushed our poor little corolla out of the road, trying not to get run over as we laughed our guts out at how funny of a scene this must have been to all the cars around us. Did anyone get out and help these poor girls in skirts? No. :)

So we pulled it into the parking lot of the apartment complex right next to the street... then we hit a slight downhill in the driveway, so we were all of a sudden running alongside the car as I tried to steer through the driver's side window. Sister Miller started screaming at me to get in and brake before we ran right into the big cement apartment sign straight ahead. I got in just in time! Ha ha it was almost disasterous, but SO FUNNY!

To top it all off, the apartments we happened to pull into was the home of one of our ward members. So we called her and her boyfriend to come rescue us, but Batman and Robin showed up to save the day instead. (That's what they were dressed as for Halloween.) They went to the gas station for us and bought a gas can and everything! SO nice. We were so grateful for them.

Needless to say, we didn't make it to our temple shift. In fact, we were late for our 7 pm halloween-night-missionary-curfew. Oops! But this is why serving at the battalion is the best mission assignment ever: while other missionaries just have to spend their halloween night locked away in their apartment, battalion sisters get to have parties! :) The Rockwells (one of our senior couples) threw us a party at the battalion tonight! We bobbed for apples (which was hilarious... even our directors the Seegmillers soaked their heads), ate doughnuts on a string (scripture mastery version of course), and stuffed ourselves with all kinds of treats. It was a blast. I am so lucky to be serving here!

Ha ha. It was great. I think I'm getting worse and worse at driving... I never even glanced at the gas light that I'm sure had been on for like an hour. Stupid of me. :)

It has also been another miracle week. Of course, every week is a miracle week, but I'm amazed every time. I'd just like you all to know that since we fasted to find people to teach last Sunday, our teaching pool has jumped from 3 investigators to about 10 new/potential investigators. Crazy!! And so exciting.

Cody is one of them. The elders from our zone referred us to him... they had kind of a funny run with him buying cigarettes. So we showed up at his house on Saturday for the third time and he was finally home. That house is insane--there's a good 7 or 8 teen/young adult men living there who are all druggies. Slightly scary. Cody came out of the house to "protect" us from them all, in a way... he didn't want us going in there, not that we would have anyway. Two of them followed him out, though, so we were talking to all three of them. When we asked Joey, "Do you have a religious background or did you grow up going to church at all?" His response was, "No, I'm a meth addict." He left after that. Super interesting. Anyway... we gave a watered-down version of the restoration to Cody (he actually was decently responsive) and gave him a Book of Mormon. We also invited him to church the next day. He said he would come, but I kind of got the feeling that he was just trying to get us off his sidewalk. My hopes weren't too high.

So we're sitting in church the next day, waiting on the back row for the few investigators we had invited. By the time the sacrament started, none of them had shown up. I was slightly discouraged. Then, after the sacrament, our ward mission leader came and sat by us to figure out something for the second hour. After he finished talking, he said, "oh, and by the way, who's that kid in the T-shirt up there?" At first I didn't recognize who he was pointing to since I could only see the back of his head... then it hit me like a load of bricks that Cody had kept his word and came to church! He had gotten there way before us and was sitting in like the third row in the middle of the congregation!   ???? :D :D We were shocked. Not gonna lie, it was difficult to be reverent and contain our excitement. Good thing we were sitting in the back row. :)

We also added a girl named Paige. We had talked to her two weeks earlier when we contacted into her, but when we went back to her house last week her mom wasn't very inviting and told us she wasn't home. So we thought we'd try again on Sunday... her dad opened the door and when we asked for Paige, her mom yelled to us from the kitchen that she wan't home again. But then Paige walked right out! Despite her mom, she said we could talk to her outside on the bench. :) She was so sweet and so nice!! She told us she was curious about what Mormons believed, so we answered a lot of the questions about rumors she'd heard and taught her the restoration. And she said we could come back this Friday! The craziest miracle of this whole encounter, though, was this: we hadn't planned on going to see Paige that day. We had planned on visiting the houses of some former investigators, but when we got in the car, we realized with a sinking feeling that we had left all their addresses at home. So we had no way to look them up or get anywhere. So we resorted to the only places I could remember how to get to without directions... and the first one was Paige's house. I definitely believe it was divine intervention that we forgot to bring our address book that day. :) Cool, huh?

So it's been a good week. :) The scary thing is, it's been almost too good... Sister Miller and I are worried that with the new Mormon Battalion rotation that's going to be in effect relatively soon, and with all the people that are popping out of the woodwork for us to teach, we might be transferred as full-time proselyting missionaries! GAH! I don't know how to serve a mission as a non-Battalion Sister. It will be crazy. But we'll see.

Wish I could tell you each and every cool story that happened this week... but I had to pick and choose cause I'm out of time! I love you all so much. And I love God's children. I'm starting to feel like a mom in a sense... like all the people I teach are those I have to take under my wing and make sure they're cared for, spiritually. It's a pretty indescribable feeling. :)

I LOVE MY MISSION!

Love,

Sister Madsen