Week 20

Hey everyone! What a crazy week! We had transfers this week! I'm still in the same area, but I now have a new companion! Her name is sister Wilcox, she from Orem, Utah and she been out a little bit over a year! She's wonderful! We're definitely going to be great friends.

We had several really awesome experiences this week. First off, we have an investigator named Raymond. He's been investigating the church off and on for about five or six years. He is a spiritual giant. He feels like he doesn't know enough and yet....he's the type of person that spends at least two hours studying the bible every morning. When he reads the Book of Mormon he looks at EVERY single cross reference in order to better understand it. How he isn't already baptized, I have no idea. So...he's only come to church a couple of times in the past couple of years, BUT he came to church on Father's Day!! It was so amazing. Sister Wilcox and I were at church about a half hour early, and when we walked in, he was already sitting out in the foyer, just waiting for church to start.

Another cool experience, Greg weber, another of our investigators is married to a woman in our church, she is recently reactivating in church and so Greg has been taking the lessons. From my perspective, he feels a little bit pressured so he isn't making the effort to read or pray or anything. I'm thinking that as soon as he doesn't feel pressured, then he will make the decision on his own to start reading and praying and stuff. BUT it's cool because he's slowly, unconsciously making changes that I don't think he has realized yet. Sister weber told us that At the table during dinner he's been the one

whose said, "ok, so who wants to say the prayer?". And during church yesterday, when the sacrament was about to start he reached over to his son and closed his coloring book and said, "wait till after the

prayer". I don't even think Greg is aware of what he is doing! He's slowly making little baby steps into changing his life around. It's been really amazing to see.

3rd cool experience: the  other night we were walking back to our car, we had 10 minutes to be home and I saw a couple of youngish kids on the side of the road with a ball. They were about 11 years old, and I just wanted to get home, but I knew that it was my duty to go over and talk to them, so I did and one of the girls paused for a second and then said, "so what's the difference between Mormons and other religions anyway?" SCORE. That is the best question ever. And we set up a time to come see them all again!

4th cool experience: we had set up a different appointment to see a 14 year old. So we ride up to this persons house (his name is Caleb haha) and we knocked on his door and Caleb's dad, Ron, answers the door. "Umm, Caleb is sleeping, what do you need?"

"Well, we're missionaries and we had set up a time to come and see him!" Ron then started talking to us and was so open and willing to listen said we could come back into his home soon to teach him and his son more.

Well! I think that's about all of the interesting news for the week!

Love you all!

Week 19

Hey everyone! :)

This week has been super fun! This week is also transfers...if sister Richardson and I make it another transfer it would be a miracle. So this week I could very well have a new companion.

We had the opportunity to teach activity days this week. There were about 20 girls and they were all so fun! They ran up and gave us a big group hug at the end. It was so much fun!

This week we started teaching an Ethiopian family. On our very first lesson with them they had some questions about why we needed the Book of Mormon and why we needed prophets. It was cool because as soon as we explained what they were and why we needed them, they both said, "ok!" And that was the end of it!

Another cool thing happened. We were walking along a neighborhood and we saw a black man and woman coasting down the street on a four wheeler and the woman was putting her arms in the air and yelling for

joy. We walked up and talked to them and the woman was so impressed that young people were out dedicating a portion of their life to talking to people about God. We set up a time to come back and share a

spiritual thought with her. At our appointment we taught the restoration of the gospel and we would ask her questions about how she came to know that there was God. As she was talking about her experiences I could feel the Holy Ghost really strongly. After we had finished the lesson she committed to reading and praying about the Book of Mormon.

2nd cool thing: our investigator Gus is on date for baptism soon. Today we drove by his house on the way to another persons house and we saw Gus outside. We decided to stop and see how he was doing. (Gus is

rarely ever home at all, let alone home and outside his house right at the time that we drive by. Definitely not a coincidence). We gave him a paper that had all of the rest of the things that he needed to do before his baptism. He seems excited although he said that it hasn't hit him yet!

3rd cool thing: we are teaching a woman named Bobbie. We have a really hard time scheduling with her. She doesn't have a phone, she's really busy, and whenever we see her she never has her calendar so she's

never sure when she's free. This week she had to cancel our appointment. A few days after that we felt like we needed to stop by her house. Bobbie was outside with her dog. We started talking to her and she had a few minutes before she needed to leave so we started teaching her the plan of salvation. And somehow got thought the whole thing in 20 minutes....that never happens! Especially with an investigator. As we were discussing, Bobbie had some really good questions that were out of sincere interest. After we were done she

just accepts the whole Plan of Salvation and said, "well I've got a little bit to ponder about then". And that was it. No hesitation even though a few minutes before she believed in heaven and he'll and didn't know that our spirits lived with God before this.

We've had a ton of amazing investigators pop out of nowhere this week!!

Someone a couple weeks ago said something that I really liked. "Excitement and fear are the same emotion. You just need to pick which one you want to feel".

but that's about it for the week! love you all!:)

Week 18

Hey everyone! This week has been great!

This week I have had several conversations about prayers. Why is it that we can't always get a "yes" or a "no" answer right away? The "just wait" answers are no fun! In a way I like to compare this to a
cake. When we are receiving a "just wait" answer it's because the ingredients aren't quite in line yet! God has the ingredients all gathered, but He needs to put the ingredients in the batter at the proper time in order for the cookies to turnout right! Sometimes when we are waiting for the answers to prayers, God is still in the mixing processing. He has to wait until just the right time for the batter to be mixed to perfection, because of course His cake would be done perfectly. The hardest period of time is the "bake" period. God has to wait until the cake is not too early and not over done, otherwise it wouldn't be up to par. So when you're not receiving an answer to your prayer, God just hasn't finished baking your perfect cake! So in reality, when our answer is "just wait", we need to realize that he is actually saying, "hey it's ok. I've got it covered. Your cake is being baked. If I give it to you now all you'll have is a ton of ingredients with no recipe. Just let me handle it!"

Funny story for the week: sister Richardson and I were out tracting. As we were going along I saw a white rope on the ground,so I slyly looked at sister Richardson ad said, "hey look! It's a snake!" Sister
Richardson looks at it and she says, "whooaa!,cool! Although I think it's only the skin!!". She walks a little closer. "Hey.... That's just a rope! Aww Sister quinton!! Rude!!"  Hmmm well I thought it was
funny:)

Another funny story: in this same neighborhood as the alleged "snake" we were about to head to our appointment, when we see a young guy walking down the street. We decided that we should probably talk to him. We started walking across th street, he sees us and starts quickly heading our way. As he's walking up to me, he says, "hey can I have a hug?" As he's saying this, he had his arms outstretched and was swooping in to hug me and I was panicking!! I threw my arms up and stammered, "umm. Uhh. WAIT!! Uhh" right before he was about hug me up he stops. Then with a smile says, "I'm totally kidding, I'm Mormon, I just wanted to see how you'd react!!" Phew. I was relieved!

This week we went to see a certain member of our ward twice. In our first visit, we came a little early and knocked some houses in a neighboring street, the. Headed over to our appointment. Second visit,
we went straight to her house and the first thing she told us is that two days ago they had found a Book of Mormon that someone had been burning. ...we had been there two days ago...we were so shocked that someone had gone out of their way to burn the book we had given them!!

This same ward member that we visited had some really intense mission stories. She has served her mission in Russia and as she was telling us some of the things that had happened to her my jaw just dropped! She'd been chased by drunk men, put in jail and was almost kidnapped. When I say almost, I mean that they literally had her and her companion in the kidnappers car and they had been driving for several hours into the woods. She was making her peace with God and she thought that that was going to die. How scary is that!

We had a couple of really cool spiritual experiences this week as well. We are teaching a man named Gus. His wife is a less active member. In our lesson I felt like I needed to give him a specific date
for him to be baptized. When I told him that date that he should be baptized on he paused. Then said, "you know...I feel like The Lord has been preparing me for 22 years for this. I feel an urgency in my body, like I need this and that we don't have much time." So cool!! In the closing prayer, I asked him if he would pray specifically to know if the date I had given him was right for him. So he starts his prayer, and right towards the end of it he said, "and Heavenly Father, the sisters think I should be baptized on the 21st...so is that the day for me?" As he said this I got warms chills down my spine. At the closing of his prayer, he had this really excited look on his face!

Another cool story is we have a great member of the ward named, janell. She is a member, but her husband is not. She's been teaching him the missionary discussions and reading scriptures with him every night for the past couple of months. He's had some things holding him back from meeting with us, but yesterday janell called us up and she was so excited! she told us that her husband had decided that now was the time to meet with us!!

 

This week has been so great!! Love you all! :)