Hi guys! I love you all! 

We have one more week until transfers. My companion thinks this is my last week in Collierville, it's rare for me to stay any longer than I have already. Part of me wants to leave and see another state but also I LOVE the members in the ward and each person we are teaching. The wards feel so familiar & feel like home so it'll be hard to re adjust all over again. I want to stay here so that I can see Brandon be baptized but maybe my work with him was just to find him and teach him. It's hard as a missionary because sometimes you don't get to see the fruits of your labors until you are in another area. I also don't want to pack up everything!! That'll be a pain because I've scattered my stuff all over this apartment. 

SO much happened this week so I'll just give y'all the highlights. We were out tracting one evening in Oakland in this pretty poor neighborhood. I swear everyone in the south has dogs and they always sit on the front porch without leashes. I've been bitten by 2 dogs in my life so I always get kind of timid around dogs until I see that they are nice. We hop out of the car and start walking up the driveway to this home and the dog on the front porch sprints at us full speed. I didn't want to run because I knew I couldn't out run the dog. I screamed "STOP IN THE NAME OF JESUS" and grabbed my comp and put her in front of me. I thought it was for sure going to bite us but right as it got to us it jumped on us and licked us. I looked around and noticed that the neighbors were sitting on their porch smoking a cigarette watching us. I was so embarrassed that they heard me yell that haha. Also my comp told me she thinks I have PTSD from dogs maybe I do..

I have come to love our friend Beverly. She is the sweetest older lady in the whole world. We felt prompted to offer her a priesthood blessing so we asked Brother Tolbert in the ward if he would do it. He invited Brother Curtis and they gave her a blessing of healing. It was so powerful and Beverly felt the spirit so strongly. Beverly loves the fact that there is a prophet on the Earth today and watches conference videos multiple times a week. She told Brother Tolbert that she loves "Russell" haha. Beverly also never calls me Sister Reeves, only Caroline and I kind of love it. She always tells my companion and I that she sees the light of Christ in us and that she knows we are His messangers sent to her. Beverly said the second we walk into her home we bring the Spirit with us & that it stays in her home the rest of the day. Makes me so teary every time. Normally she is too sick to come to church but she came this Sunday!! I was so excited to see her. She takes care of her grandson, Landon. Her daughter got into alot of drugs and had a child who was a drug baby. He can't hear very well and is autistic. Landon ran up to me at church and just threw his arms around me it was so sweet. We aren't supposed to hug or hold little kids but it's so hard not to I definitely keep breaking that rule.

We didn't get to have a lesson with Brandon this week which was a bummer. He opened a food truck & was super busy preparing for the event. We ended up going and it was so much fun! There was a million food trucks and all of Collierville was there. It's a huge deal here, they have it once a year and it's called "Fair on the Square." We weren't going to buy anything because we are broke but we decided to get something small from one of the food trucks. Turns out the owner of that truck was a member in Nashville! He gave us like $50 worth of food and drinks. It was so sweet. We've actually gotten alot of free stuff this week. It's going to be very weird to come back from my mission and have to pay for my own meals and going out to eat. The members in Collierville take such good care of us

There is this couple in the ward who has 5 kids. All their kids are older and this couple thought they were done having kids but the dad kept receiving promptings that there was a little girl who needed them. He told his wife and so she started to pray about it. That night she had a dream and saw the face of this little African America girl with a really round face. She later saw a picture of a little girl who looked exactly like the girl she had seen in her dream. She told her husband and he said "Wait I didn't think it was supposed to be a down syndrome girl" but they prayed about it and adopted her, and named her Alexis. Alexis's birth mom did alot of drugs & completely neglected her little girl. No one wanted to adopt her because she is not high functioning what so ever and is very out of control. She throws anything she gets into her hands, including knifes. I was always so scared of her when we would go over. Sunday night I was sitting on the couch with my legs crossed, and Alexis came up to me, uncrossed my legs and wanted me to hold her. I did it and she just laid on top of me. She grabbed my hands and wanted me to play with her lips, that is her love language. I just sat there and held her for half an hour and I was just trying so hard not to cry. I felt the Spirit really really strongly while I was holding her. I just kept thinking about how unfair it was that she has to have this body but I also gained a testimony that night that she would some day have a resurrected, perfect body. I told her mom that and she just started to cry it was such a sweet moment for me. They are also trying to adopt Alexis's older sister Mariah. She's been living with them ever since I got to Collierville. Mariah has been coming to church and seminary every week! We even taught her a lesson, but this couple didn't want to push it because she is having a hard time adjusting to living with this new family. Mariah is 15 and her birth mom was trying to get her into prostitution to make money. So Mariah coming from that awful situation to living with these members has been such a huge adjustment so we are just trying to love her. I bet Mariah will see the difference the gospel makes in people's lives and eventually want to be baptized

Early one morning this week we played pickleball! The APs came and we had 10 missionarys there. It's getting warmer outside so there was more people playing at the courts. These older ladies were blasting their music and one of the songs said the F word. Normally I don't care at all and it doesn't bug me but it was my first time hearing that word on my mission. I heard it and my whole body froze it was SO weird. I looked at the other missionarys and the same thing happened to all 10 of them. We all felt the exact same thing. We all talked about it and everyone said that before their missions everyone cussed and listened to music like that but being on a mission it feels so different. I keep thinking it won't be hard to adjust to real life when I come home but maybe it will a little bit

Thursday we had Zone Conference! If it's a missionarys last zone conference they will give their "departing testimony." This sweet sister stood up and bore her testimony about the Holy Ghost. She said she got up one morning and started to plan their lessons for the day. She felt the strongest impression ever to cancel the first lesson they had for the day. She told her companion and her companion told her that they had planned this lesson for a while and that they needed to go. She got an even stronger prompting to not go to that lesson. She canceled the lesson and later that night found out that there was an open fire shooting on the street where the lesson was going to be and the exact time the lesson was planned. So crazy! I feel like I have a hard time acting on my first promptings but I really need to start

We were knocking doors and this lady named LeeAnne invited us inside. Her home was disgusting, it smelled awful and there was junk everywhere. I was scared to even sit down. We ended up teaching her the Plan of Salvation and she just started to cry. It was so sweet. I'd love to see what it feels like to hear the Plan of Salvation for the first time. But anyways I asked her to read a scripture for us but she told me she is blind. I felt sooo bad for some reason I didn't even notice that she was blind I thought her eyes were just white haha I didn't put two and two together. Anyways she was a super sweet old lady but I just felt so bad for her, her living conditions were just awful

So much more happened this week but those things are what really stood out to me! By the way I feel my southern accent really coming back. I say y'all every sentence as well as yes ma'am & sir. I also have started ended my prayers by saying "In Jesus name we pray, Amen". I really did not want it to come back but I guess it's inevitable. Also something I love about the South is that everyone wants to hold hands when we pray. I thinks it's so cute and makes the prayers so much better 

Love & miss you all! If you guys could keep Brandon, Beverly, and Susan in your prayers at night it would mean so much to me