18 Months of Preachin' Down the Bayou

Slipped in the mud in the Kisatchie Forest Hey y'all! I hope every one has had a good five days! I know it's been so long since you last heard from me so bare with me and the length of this email.  Some great news!!! Our mission is expanding! July 1st, we will have the Jackson Mississippi Mission as a part of our mission! So I could spend a lot of my time in Mississippi!! I'm so excited! It will be so cool to have double the missionaries, and a huge mission! More good news, Today is my Two month anniversary! I survived two months of mission by the skin of my teeth. Some funny news! Last p day we went to a small hike in Kisatchie forest down in Leesville to a little place called Wolf Cave. It's literally just a little cave at the bottom of a rock, but it was pretty fun to explore around it. You all know I don't have great knees, so I wasn't willing to wander very far, but when i finally decided to join the group of us that were crossing a small bo...

Mardi Gras hat I saw at Walmart Hey y'all! I hope y'all are doing great! I hope everyone is having fun with the snow! We finally got rid of ours, and it's back up to nice 60 degrees every day! This week was so great! We moved into our new apartment and it's sooo big! I, of course, got the biggest closet, so you could say I'm pretty happy with the move. I'll try to send a video tour of it! On Friday we met with someone at NSU campus to set up a booth and find new investigators that way. We are very excited to stop knocking doors, and find people our own age to teach! We will start that tomorrow! After that we went to Many for a technology training meeting that was four hours long! But! We get our smartphones soon! which also means, coming Febuarary 8th or so, you'll see me on Facebook! Don't worry! I haven't come home or broken any rules! Also, all you future missionaries out there reading this, be so grateful for the missionaries that h...

Dad did some family research and found that Abby has a great-uncle named Lewis Gustave DeRussy. He was in the military and built a fort in Louisiana named after him. He was also a state senator. He lived in Natchitoches ( Grand Ecore)  and died there and was later buried in the fort he built near Marksville, LA. Anyway, there is a historical marker in the cemetery in Natchitoches. It is at the Holy Cross Church at 200 2nd St, Natchitoches: The following markers are located in the American Cemetery , Second Street, Natchitoches, LA. They were erected by the Sons of the Confederacy to commemorate service in the Civil War. The three memorial markers are grouped near the center of the cemetery with the following marker of explanation: DeRUSSEY, Lewis G., Col. (born: December 7, 1795 / died: November 16, 1864 ), 2 REGT CSA Here is a bio of Lewis De Russy: http://www.fortderussy.org/derussy_bio.html The Life and Times of Lewis DeRussy by Steven M. Mayeux Lewis Gu...

Hey y'all! I hope your week was great! I'm moving today! My address will stay the same, but it'll be apartment 607. For those of you who don't know my address: 100 North melrose ave apartment 607 Natchitoches, LA 71457 I'd love to get letters from Y'all! Wednesday we went on exchanges, because Sister Brown and Sister Beck are STL's, they leave, and me and Sister Pfeiffer stay. This is her second transfer, and this is my first. When they leave I feel like they let a three year old loose in a grocery store to buy food for the week. It's pretty overwhelming and we mostly just tract. It was sooo nice outside! Sunny and warm enough to not wear a jacket, so we visited a few less active members. Right after we got inside of someones house, it started pouring rain. We get as much rain here in an hour, as Utah does all year. But when it rains in Utah it smells so clean and nice, when it rains here, it smells like straight trash. It poured like t...

At the lights by the river front Hey y'all! I hope your week has been great! A couple things before I get started. my next p day will be on Jan. 16th because of MLK day, and then again on the 24th of Jan. because we have Elder Costa coming for mission conference. This is gonna be a short email because not that much happened.  We met with a lady about a week ago and we set up an appointment to come back and just pray with her. So we came back, but before we went inside Sister Brown told me that I should pray and challenged me to pray by the spirit. So we go in and get to know her a little better, then we all kneel to pray and hold hands and I know that what I said was entirely led by the spirit. it was so cool to feel and be lead by the spirit who knew what she needed to hear. I challenge you all to pray being led by the spirit.  On Friday we went to a members house for dinner and watched a conference talk by Thomas S. Monson from before he was prophet. It's cal...

Hey Y'all! I hope your New year started better than ours! Our week was pretty successful! I've officially been out one month and it feels like I will never go home, but I'm kinda loving Natchitoches, even though it's freezing here. You better believe I'm wearing my pajama pants under a maxi dress with fuzzy socks and boots on right now. You could say I'm okay with it here.  Our apartment as I've mentioned in a one bedroom one bathroom apartment, with four girls living in it. So it just worked out that my bed was in the middle of the floor in our tiny bedroom. Well that was really overwhelming to all of us, so we spent one morning moving couches around, and putting box springs under beds to get them out of the way. My bed is finally out of the middle of the room, and I know that this literally doesn't matter to any of you, but you have no idea how happy I am to have a real bed that isn't in everyone's way, and the dumping grounds for e...