“Missionaries, missionaries, missionaries…everywhere I go, there's missionaries."

Words of a 5-yr old visitor. And you know what, he’s right.

First of all: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

For his bday, here’s a couple things I love about him:
1. His wheeze laugh that I’m pretty sure I inherited.
2. His dutiful letter-writing.
3. How supportive he tries to be…even coming all the way out to Nauvoo to see me! :)
4. He’s an inspiration of physical fitness.
5. He focuses on the people he is with when he’s with them and let’s them know they are important.

There are many more of course, but that’s just a sampler.

Well, let’s see...adventures in Nauvoo. Everything’s turning Fall. It’s actually getting cold in the mornings. We’ll see how cold it gets in Oct/Nov out here in the mid-west. I’ll keep you posted. We leave in less than a week to our assignments. Kind of exciting!

DUSTY FARMER MIRACLE
So I wanted a while to go to my fav restaurant in the cornfields—The Dusty Farmer. Full of actual dusty farmers. It’s so authentic! But, being authentically small-town, it has bizarre and unpredictable hours so we can never seem to get there. So we FINALLY go one day and it was 1:30 and I knew they closed at 2. But things out here tend to also sometimes just open and close at will. So we get there and the door is locked. I was devastated. So I just leaned my hard against the glass door and stared inside all depressed. One of the sisters said, “well, what should we do…?” and I whispered “just stand here.” Apparently it was inspired cause 2 seconds later someone walked by inside. We got his attention and asked if they were closed and he said no. Turns out we just weren’t pulling on the door hard enough. Ha! So we got to go eat corn nuggets (fried creamed corn. Mmm…) and have loads of fun. Second obstacle…they don’t take credit or debit. So we all pooled together all the $ we could find but thought we might come up short. So they told us if we didn’t have enough we could just pay next time. Somehow, I’ve never had that offer in a CA restaurant. Ha! It was amazing. Luckily, we rummaged up just enough. Good times.

“TEACHING” APPT
Still doing the fake teaching appts but it’s cool because even thought the situation is fake, the doctrine is not and I’m always so blown away at how clearly the Spirit comes to testify of what we are teaching. :) The other night we taught the Normans (temple missionaries who I love DEARLY). We were talking about God and how they can know God is there and how they can know He would answer them individually. During the middle of the lesson they got a phone call from their son who’s kind of gone off track a little and is in the hospital right now due to some unwise choices. When we resumed the lesson we started talking about how much God loves them and wants to hear from them and comparing it to their own son. That no matter how many lousy decisions he’d made, time and time again, they still love him beyond measure and they still will be right there to give help with they need it. They can’t force him to make good decisions but the minute that on his own free will he comes to them, they’re right there. I loved it. It was just so cool how the Spirit taught all of us that day and how profoundly we felt God’s love while we were teaching.

ALMOST LIKE THEY’RE INSPIRED
So last weekend was the Church-wide Women’s Conference. (I thought of many of you while watching it cause we were all watching at the same time.) Long story short, I had a really rough day that day. Nothing really, just days where you can only recognize your weaknesses and Satan’s having fun seeing how discouraged he can get you. It’d gone on for a couple of days actually. But that night I not only got answers through Pres. Uchtdorf’s talk, but more importantly, I had a chance to help someone else out who was going through similar things and that really made my problem all go away. Which was funny cause his talk was about how service to others is the most fool-proof way to combat those feelings and the Lord blessed me with a chance right then to see that work in my own life. Loved it! I know the Lord’s aware of us and sends his servants—prophets and apostles, to give us very specific and important messages.

MORE INSPIRATION TO COME
This weekend is General Conference where the prophet and apostles talk to the whole Church about the things God wants to communicate to all of us. Anyway, woohoo! I’m excited. My invitation to all of you try harder to hear the Lord’s counsel to you individually through it this weekend. Whether that’s through taking notes, writiign down prayerful questions before you watch, watching more sessions than normal, going back over specific talks afterwards, or watching just some of it if you’ve never seen it before. I promise it will be well worth it and that if you’re sincerely wanting to be instructed from it, that you will be in a very personal way. By doing this, you’ll be able to see how well God knows you individually. Conference can be watched on www.lds.org.

Love you all!
Feel free to keep sending mail to my Nauvoo address.

-Sis. Cartwright