January 23, 2012

Well, I have never been so full of food in my life...and it is ALWAYS that way. The people here in Deep Run like to feed us. A lot.

Last Monday we went to the high school and played football with ourselves. It was pretty entertaining seeing as how there were only two of us. We had sooo much fun! The weather was really nice too. We went to the Smith's that evening for dinner. They are such good missionaries. They invited our investigator, Greg over for dinner and then we were able to teach him about the Plan of Salvation. Greg understood it, loved it, and asked a lot of good questions about agency, etc. We gave him the Book of Mormon on CD and according to his wife, Miranda (who is a member) he listened to it the whole way home!

Tuesday we spent a lot of time tracting with nothing too exciting to report. We had a referral that a member gave us, but the directions they gave us were 'country directions' and we spent a loooong time trying to figure out which white trailer and which dirt path it was on. We were unsuccessful in our attempts, but we are not giving up. The Turners weren't able to meet with us in the evening so, our dinner appointment held us captive for three hours. We tried to leave once our dinner and spiritual thought was over, but that failed. I am never going to tell people we don't have an appointment after dinner ever again. I learned all about alexandrite, kindles, and deep sea fishing. Woot! Missionary work would have been a nice alternative.

Wednesday was district meeting. We read from Alma 32. That chapter blows my mind every time I read it. We talked about the difference between interest and desire and the importance of constantly nourishing our investigators' seeds of faith. We talked a lot about member work. Did you know that sharing the gospel with those around you is a commandment? I didn't. We found some good scriptures in Doctrine and Covenants 100:5-8; 16:6 and the George Albert Smith quote in Preach My Gospel on pg 12 is pretty great as well. I would invite you to check it out! :] One thing I learned is that no effort is wasted. Sometimes it is easy to get discouraged when we are trying our best to share the gospel and set and example, etc, but don't ever forget that every effort is important. You never know whose life you are touching when you do a simple act of service or share a testimony of a gospel principle. Every thing we do shows who we are and all good things take time and lots of patience. We went to a restaurant after district meeting called the Peach House. A member works there...so we thought we'd stop in and say hello. It's kind of like Zupa's, but a lot less healthy. We went to Claire's afterwards. Her boyfriend bailed on her last Sunday for church..so we asked her if she would invite him to come again. She had already asked him...and she invited her sister who has taken a couple of the lessons. Claire taught her about the Word of Wisdom and her sister has stopped drinking coffee now. She is such a good missionary. We had a really fun lesson with her and went through all the articles of faith. She is still working on getting her picture ID so she can get married soon.

We were finally able to meet up with a less active on the ward mission process last week and we met with her on Thursday. Her name is Brooke. She is a paramedic and her husband is a firefighter. Brooke is super sweet and has a little boy who is also super sweet. He wanted to share his pudding, jello, and chocolate peanut butter balls with us. We talked with Brooke for a while and read some scritpures about prayer. It is amazing to see how the spirit touches people and how everyone can feel the spirit. She told us that she wants to come back to church and that she knows she needs to pray more and read her scriptures more. We invited her to start praying every night as a family (her husband is not religious. At all.) She was super excited about it all and is excited to start doing that!

Friday we went to Mt. Olive and were able to meet with recent convert, Peewee. She has been struggling a lot. We had a good lesson with her and her dog and her mom, Butch. Peewee didn't really open up to us and tell us anything about any struggles she was having, but she did say that she would be at church! I am excited for her. We are going to teach her the lessons again and hopefully that will help her in developing her testimony more. As Sister Voyles (MTC instructor) would wisely say, "We don't teach the lessons to teach the lessons. We teach the lessons to strengthen their faith." That is what we are doing. :] After running around Mt. Olive all day we came back to Woodington and had a lesson with Miguel and Olivia (part member family). They are doing good. We read Alma 32 with them. It was so neat because Olivia really understood how important it is to nourish the testimonies we have by reading and prayer and going to church. Miguel really liked the Book of Mormon. He kept reading ahead when we would stop to talk about a verse.

Saturday was Black Saturday. We were on edge all day anticipating finding out about transfers. We went and stopped by all of our investigators to invite them to church. The Turners are still struggling a lot. I hope they will be able to rekindle that desire they had in the beginning. We have tried so hard to help them, but alas, agency is always the determining factor in the end. We made our way back to Mt. Olive to have an unexpected appointment with a spanish family and recent convert named Elmer. We talked to the elders about them because they wanted us to come over REALLY bad. So, we couldn't say no. The elders said they would be there as well because it was a farewell party for Elder Taylor (who is from k-town) However, when we got there, there were no elders. Just two english speaking sister missionaries and a family of no english speaking Guatemalans. We were able to talk Spanglish to them and figured out there was a big miscommunication. The elders were not going to be there for another hour. So, we went and found a "Restoration" DVD and watched it in Spanish with them..with English subtitles and then told them we had to go. They are such nice people. They wanted us to stay so badly and eat dinner with them, but we had already confirmed our dinner with another family. We spent about 10 minutes trying to explain this and then we were able to have a kneeling prayer with them and were on our way. We received the dreaded phone call of transfers while we were in dinner. Elder Garrett left us a singing message. He sang the "so long, farewell.." song from the Sound of Music and informed Sister Welch that she would be leaving. :( I am sad.

Sunday morning the Zone Leaders called us and we had our hopes up for a minute thinking that they may have changed their minds on sending Sister Welch off, but they just called to inform us that the Greenville sisters would be coming to Deep Run and that Sister Matthews is going to be my companion...again! I am excited to have her back. However, I am really, really sad that Sister W is leaving. I love her a lot. She has been a great companion to me. Church went really good. We went to both Albertson and Woodington wards. Claire came; her boyfriend did not. But, her sister came! The Turners didn't come and we were very sad about that, but Amy came and that made it almost all better. We went to Taylor's house afterwards and had lunch with her and her brother. Her brother made us a comic book called "super missionary" He is pretty hilarious. After lunch we rushed over to the other Turner family for their weekly retention lesson. We focused especially so on Amy (who is not baptized...yet). We talked about how we can liken the scriptures to ourselves (1 Nephi 19:23) and then we read 1 Nephi 8 about the Tree of Life. We were able to find out that Amy is afraid of sticking her head under the water after her sister-in-law and mother-in-law told her she should get baptized. She still has some other concerns, but now she knows that the Book of Mormon can answer any question you may have. Church related or not. :]

I know that the Book of Mormon was written for our day and that it really does answer our questions and concerns we may have if we will ask Heavenly Father for help to find answers to those questions. Sometimes it takes a while, but there are always answers; and sometimes they aren't the answers we want. I know he is mindful of each of us and knows us inside and out.

God Bless and have a wonderful week!

I love you all so much!Love,Sister J