Sister Chloe Jeppson- Leeds England Mission : Pro tip: don't let a random lady put her cigarette ash on your forehead

WELLLLLL, this week was amazing!! and very interesting, if you couldn't tell by the title haha. So I will jump right in:

- For my first pday here we went to Raby Castle!! It was so cool and has been standing since at least the 11th century! We also went and hiked to a cool waterfall. ALSO, unknowingly, we taught a lesson on pday at the Grange Hotel, and after we went inside to use the toilet and saw beautiful artwork.

- We had zone conference on Tuesday and it was so amazing!! We talked about sanctifying ourselves and being about the Lord's errand. Asking ourselves, ''what would the Lord have us do now?'' Something I have been asked to do is to ''trust in Him''. As I have, I have seen so many blessings and I know that God is aware of me and my efforts.

-We focus a lot on returning members, meaning members who haven't been to church in AGES! It is really cool and I love it. We go visit them and help them remember why they joined the church in the first place. As we help people remember, we help them keep the commandments, and as they keep the commandments they can have the Spirit with them which then leads to them remembering more. It's a beautiful cycle

- update: we went to go help the lady that nicknamed me cat woman and turns out I am actually super girl and my companion is cat woman. So hey that's an upgrade, I'll take it

-but more on helping that lady, we were cleaning out her house and I have never smelt anything worse. It just was sticky and hot and smelled like the worse B. O. ever. Her husband lost his sense of smell and apparently she did too because it's just bad, but oh well

-HERE COMES THE STORY: So, we just had a tea appointment and it got over at about 7:30. The bus was supposed to come at 7:45, so we walk down to the bus stop in the pouring rain and wait there. Well it doesn't come at 7:45 so we wait a little longer. But as we are waiting, this cute little lady comes out from this shop to smoke a cigarette and sees us. She yells across the road something like ''Are you simon's daughters?'' and Sister Thuernagle doesn't really understand and goes ''yes!'' and we cross the road to her. I think she thought we were homeless haha. She comes over and proceeds to wipe all the water off us both and kisses our heads. She then keeps repeating, ''life is hard, i know, i know''. And cleaning us off. Then, she sees this zit on my forehead haha and looks at her cigarette, then asks for water from my water bottle to put on her hands. When I give some to her, she puts out her cigarette, gets the ash on her hand, AND PUTS IN ON MY FOREHEAD!!! I was trying not to pee my pants laughing so hard, I could not believe what had just happened. She told us not to pick our faces and then told Sister Thuernagle she has to keep warm for the baby and is rubbing her stomach haha. Then she gave Sister Thuernagle her sweater which was very sweet and yea. The whole time, she is talking in the most broken english because she is from Azerbajan and Georgia and doesn't understand much haha. But yea it was HILARIOUS!! I couldn't contain my laughter but I think she thought i was crying and homeless.

-and after all that, the bus never came, so we walked 4.5 miles home in the dark and got back at 9:30pm haha

-I will end with a spiritual experience: On sunday, I was super exhausted and just wanted to take a little nap, but I prayed for the strength to go out and have the energy to do some finding. So we go to this park to talk to people. Well, we saw a couple and was going to intersect their path to talk to them but they walked faster than we did and we ended up following them haha. We didn't want to completely follow them to the next park, so we stopped and talked to this man Steve on the bench. He was cool, but not super interested so we kept walking. When we got to the other park the ONLY people there was this couple we had followed and we walked ten steps in then stopped because it would be so awkward. But then after walking away we said we should pray about it. And i was like, well we know the answer will be yes so lets just go. And so we did, and man alive am I so happy we followed what God wanted us to do! This couple was the nicest and so open!! We talked to them for about 40 minutes and they are so open to learning more and to coming to church! It was the coolest thing. I know that God gave me strength to go out, and because we did, He put people in our path that are prepared to hear His message.

Love you all!! Hope you have a great week!!

Love, Sis Jepp:)