A day in the life of a sister missionary

I decided on Thursday that I was going to try going out on splits with the sister missionaries in my home stake.  I’ve always had some sort of a desire to do so, and so I decided, why not try it?

The sisters told me a time and an intersection to meet them at.  I got there right on the time when I was supposed to be there. It was super windy, so to prevent my skirt from flipping I sat on a big rock at the corner and waited... Five minutes go by so I call the sisters letting them know that I am there… Ten minutes after that I got a response via text telling me that they are running late...Ten more minutes pass and I see them pull up, one of the sister’s hop out, and then the car drives away.

The sister looks at me and asks if I have seen the Elders, and I respond with a no.  What I didn’t know was that the people that we were going to go teach were single adults and this meeting with them we were passing them off to the Elders that were over the singles ward, MY singles ward.  She then tells me lets walk down the street and see if we can see them. We didn’t see them so she looked at me and asked if I could offer a prayer, and specifically ask for the Elders to show up.  After the prayer the sister said that we should walk back to the rock.  When we got to the rock I asked her if she had the Elders number and she told me that it was in the phone that the other sister had.  I then got the idea to call the ward mission leader from my ward and retrieved the number that way.  What happened was that the missionaries had the wrong address.  About five more minutes later the Elders pull up.  By this time we are about twenty minutes late for this appointment for these YSA’s investigating the church.

The four of us walk to the house and before we knock on the door the sister asked the Elders to say a prayer.  They did and we then knocked on the door.  A Hispanic lady with poor English came out to speak with us.  She informed us that her son and daughter both weren’t there; she didn’t know where they were, and didn’t know when they were coming back.  Feeling defeated we left a note for her kids and left.  The Elders took their own way and I followed the sister to the house next door where they were all out talking with each other.

The sister walks up to these people, calling them all by name.  It was a sure thing that she has talked to this family on multiple occasions.  They asked us what was up, and the sister told them that an appointment fell through and that she was disappointed.  This family told her that that was sad.  They continued to talk and the sister then got up the gumption to ask the older gentleman when he was going to stop smoking.  We then got into a good discussion about good options of quitting, which ended up with the guy saying that he could never quit.  The sister also asked the man about when he was going to go back to church and he talked about people wouldn’t accept him with him smelling like smoke.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw this two year old pop out of the front door.  The child continues to run around with much enthusiasm, trying to get the attention of me and the sister.  I finally got down to his level and smiled at him.  He then continued to roll around, and run between us.  Next he brought up a hand full of rocks and I bent down so I could have him show me what he had.  He then threw the rocks at my face and ran away laughing.  I didn’t really know how to respond. I mean, I was out there representing the church. Do I get stern with the kid, or do I just blow it off? Of course the parent didn’t notice so I blew it off.  The child continued to run through us again and even tried to run through my legs.  He then snuck up behind me and flipped up the back of my skirt.  Good thing there was the neighborhood boys ridding around because they got a good show… The parents got after him, and his grandma ended up picking him up and holding him for the remainder of the time we were there.

After this fun visit we were going to walk down the street and we witnessed a younger kid biff it on his scooter, so we helped him get to his house, with his scooter.  We then chatted with the mom, which ended up with her crying, and hugging us both, which was something I didn’t expect. 

We then headed over to the stake center because that was where we were suppose to meet up with her companion so she could head off to another appointment.  Her companion was running late so asked me if I had a question.  I then remembered about how on Sunday I had read about spiritual gifts, and specifically the gift of the spirit of discernment.  She then shared the story of Ammon, the guy who cut off all the arms, and how he used that gift with the king.  The sister then shared that it was a common gift that missionaries have.

Altogether, my experience wasn’t that bad. Was it a strong motivation pusher for me to go on a mission? Nope.  I do plan on going on splits with them the next time they ask though.