Missionary Birthday

Hope everyone had a great week like we did!

On Tuesday we went to the Mission Home to pick up our new companion! She is Sister Cowley, and she's from Colorado! It's funny because she's from Denver Colorado, and now she's in Denver, North Carolina :) She is 19 and she has a twin who is also on a mission. It was pretty cool because at transfers, President Craven was assigning who was companions with who and assigned Sister Thacker and us a companion and we sat down. Later, as Sister Thacker and I were talking we both said we just didnt' feel right, something was off with us sitting with her. But President stopped after about 10 companionships and said "Wait, Elders and Sisters, this isn't right." He grabbed his assistants, went out in the hallway and prayed for about 1/2 hour and then came back and redid the companionships and changed everything! This is when we were assigned Sister Cowley! She is so cute and wonderful and it's great to have her here. It's a little squished in our apartment, but it's good!

On her first full day of missionary work we were out leaving the "Savior's peace and blessing" or praying for people and their homes. The first door we knocked on we felt the spirit really strongly and so did she and Sister Cowley invited her to be baptized! She said yes and accepted a date and wrote it down ( the church address) on a piece of paper and we have been preparing her! I know this is because of Mom and Dad's fasting and prayer! Thanks :)

We also found this 89 year old man named Bob. If you have seen "princess and the frog" and you know the firefly named "Raymon" THAT IS WHO HE IS. He's so sweet. Sister Thacker teases me and says I have an old man crush on him. He's the cutest old black man in the whole world. He looked at the pictures in the restoration pamphlet and said "This is true. You have answered my questions

that nobody else could" Getting him to come to church may be difficult because he has gone to the same church for 89 years and that will be a hard habit to break but we are praying he'll come to church this week :)

We also met with someone in the ward who he is not a member, but his wife got baptized 10 years ago and the whole ward has been fasting and praying for him to accept the gospel for 10 years. It will take some time but we're hoping he'll be receptive!

Also I had a great birthday. The Bishop had us over and made birthday cake and they all sang Happy Birthday and it was fun :) And I put up our decorations from Mom's care package in the apartment and thank you so much for that :)

Thank you for all of your support and prayers, as always!

Trainer x2

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful week like we did. It started out with Sister Bowman (my trainer) who went on an exchange with me and gave me tons of advise and good ideas.

On Wednesday we started teaching, a daughter of a recent convert. She is 13 and doesn't really know what she wants and it's hard to gage how interested she is. But she listened and sat in on the lesson, and apparently that's more than she ever did with the Elders! 

We finally got in contact with three girls of a less active. Her 3 daughters want to have discussions with us and possibly get baptized. They are just crazy busy and were gone all of last week at the Lake but we caught them at home. The Mom wasn't home but their Dad was so we went outside and taught them on the porch. It went well and we have a return appointment with them on Thursday! Yay! They seem really sweet and interested in finding out for themselves. I know the spirit can speak to them, even if they are young! (12, 10, 9)

We also taught a
woman named Myra who is from the Philipines (Heather :) )and has lived in the US for a year or two. We have a return appointment with her tonight. But the lesson went really well and she was asking us why there are so many churches and how she can know which one is right. She told us she was Catholic, but didn't like how she never got to ask questions and just got "preached to".

We are also teaching a daughter of a Less Active member who is 9 years old and REALLY shy. It's funny, she whispers answers to our questions to her Mom's ears. She wants to get baptized, but is scared of water! We'll work on that :)

Also another less active has grandkids who lives with her who we had a lesson with but it's super hard to catch them at home. But their grandparents do want them to get baptized. The thing is they need to start coming to church! We can't have someone make a covenant with God that they aren't going to be able to keep. So as soon as they start coming to church with their grandkids, they can be baptized :)

Also we have a part member family of our "Super Member" who has given us a lot of referrals. Her husband is not a member and has had the discussions a lot but still loves the church he goes to. BUT he agreed to let us have the discussions with him and his family! We are praying it'll "stick" this time. She has been praying he'll receive the gospel for 9 years now, and has been praying for Sister Missionaries specifically. No pressure....

One lady we're teaching did come to the Saturday night session of Stake Conference. President Craven was actually there speaking. He met her afterwards and told her how much she needs the church in her life and she met Elder Steed (The Zone Leader) and Elder Clawson (The District Leader) and they all met her and bore testimony to her of how important this church is and asked her when she's getting baptized! We're working on it. She did go to her church this Sunday though, we just have to help her see how she needs to stand up for what she feels and come to the right church! Go where God wants her to go, not let her pastor influence her.

On Saturday night the whole adult session was about Members missionary work :) The Stake President talked ALL about helping all these new missionaries and how it is the members responsiblity to find people for the missionaries to teach and called to them to help us! What a blessing. And then all of the missionaries in the Stake (about 15) got up and sang "Called to Serve" in front of everyone! Pretty powerful.

Anyway we had a really great week and made lots of progress! President pulled me aside after Stake Conference on Saturday Night and thanked me for my hard work. Also.. Transfers are this week and we are GETTING A NEW SISTER! Sister Thacker will be the assistant trainer, I will be the trainer of BOTH of them! There are 15 Sisters and only 2 Elders coming out this transfer. Our apartment will be a little squished, but we'll make it work :) We pick her up Tomorrow! It'll be good actually, with 3 Sisters we can teach/ride with men or women. That gives us a lot more opportunities.

Dave (Forsyth) is here in town and I wouldn't be surpised if I come home and find a note or something on my door :) Sister Thacker says she'll hide me if we see him. Ha ha. She's funny. We think we're funny. We hope the new Sister appreciates our humor. We sometimes quote Nacho Libre. "I am concerned about your salvation.. you have not been baptized?!"

Thanks for all of the love and support!

Conference

Love you all! Had a wonderful week. Sister Thacker and I continue to work hard and find people to teach! The members have been great and the Elders and us have continued to work hard.

One investigator didn't end up coming to conference, her Pastor gave her some anti-mormon literature and we're helping work through her issues with it. There is so much of it down here! Darn Satan. There are so many misconceptions about the church it's crazy.

We did meet a woman who is one of the referrals we got from our SUPER member. She had her over at her house and we had lunch and had the first discussion. It went great and the spirit was strong and by the end she was asking US if she could watch conference and if she could have a Book of Mormon! We are excited to meet with her again this week and work with her towards setting a baptismal date!

We have like 3 Less Active families who want us to teach them and teach their kids who haven't been baptized but who were all out of town for Spring Break so we will hopefully start working with those this week!

I wrote down like 10 different questions I had for General Conference and they were all answered very specifically. It's amazing what General Conference can do. I loved it so much. I wished it would go on and on. It gave me strength and courage and faith to press forward!

Oh and on Tuesday I was praying telling God that I felt like I needed more experience. I prayed that he would either send someone with more experience or show me what to do and give me the experience I need to get this ball rolling in this area because I am a trainer at 5 weeks and I definitely don't know everything! And the next day, President Craven called and said he wanted us to go on an exchange with my trainer, Sister Bowman in Mountain Island. So that was definitely a direct answer to my prayers. I get to have her come here and give me advise and counsel and she is a super missionary and I am excited! That will be tonight-tomorrow night.

Thanks for all of the love and support!

Luck on my side

We FINALLY got our car back, on Friday afternoon. Yes, it had been gone for 1 1/2 weeks and we had been just on our feet. We walked over an hour to get to an appointment several times. So we're really glad to have our car :) ( Even though we still only have a certain number of miles we're allowed to drive it) 

 

Still working with an investigator who is progressing toward Baptism! Hopefully Conference this weekend will be good for her to see! We are hoping to have some investigators there at the church with us. 

 

On Wednesday we had District Meeting and interviews with President Craven afterwards. President Craven and I were talking and he mentioned how he talked to Dave on the phone and thought Dave was awesome! Ha ha. Then on Thursday we went to a "Trainers/Trainee" meeting for most of the day at the Mission Office and it was really good. We learned a lot about teaching. President Craven talked about how if we are starting an area and don't have much teaching experience, to start teaching MEMBERS! We're going to try and do that. Just have discussion in the members home to get some teaching experience and hopefully they'll start bringing friends and neighboors to the lessons.

 

Everyone is gone this week because it's spring break, but we're going to try and get that going. At the meeting it was intense, the assistants to the president had all of the trainers in a room and were like "If you can't live up to your responsibility to be a trainer, you had better tell President Craven right now and we'll find someone who can!" I hope I can live up to what the Lord expects of me, because it's a lot! I am doing everything I know how to do, and I am working hard and trying to be exactly obedient. It's just hard not to compare this area (Lincolnton) to my last area (Mountain Island) in my head, because there were lots of investigators, lots of baptisms, and just lots of work, and here starting a new area it's totally different. We have been doing alot more finding than teaching. But hopefully as we work hard and be obedient, we'll change that!

 

On Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, we had a bunch of extra miles so we went and visited a lot of Less Actives, and especially ones that were far away! We have visited just about every less active in our area. I think we have actually. 

 

So on Friday night we went to dinner at a members house with the Elders, we met them at a Mexican Resturant. I took a wrong turn, trying to follow the GPS but turned a little too early and got stuck on the Freeway somehow and there weren't any exits for miles and so we were late. The Elders and Brother Orlando thought it was so funny. And then when we leave the Resturant, we went to our car and I'm trying to pop the trunk, but there are lots of buttons and I don't know which one is which so I accidentally open the Hood of the car instead of the trunk, and the Elders are with Brother Orlando just laughing at us, and I finally opened the trunk but they knew I was Canadian and they were like "Open the Boot, Open the Boot!" And then that night we got home, and the key to the apartment wasn't in the pocket that it usually is in in my bag. We couldn't find it, it was cold and windy and dark, so we sit in the back of our car, searching my bag and the backseat for the apartment key, and we somehow locked the car and locked ourselves in.,., We found the key to the Apartment and went to get out of the car but it was childlocked, and we couldn't get out. We just laughed hysterically. So I climbed up into the front seat to get out, got kinda stuck and accidentally sat on the horn, and Sister Thacker is in the back seat just busting out laughing at this point. Can't even breathe. I don't know if it's as funny a scene trying to describe it, but it was hilarious. Then the next day, we visited a Less Active, and I was flipping around to park by their house, and made a turn too big and got stuck in a ditch... ya we were stuck in the mud. They weren't home but we went to the neighboors house and he's like I'M NOT INTERESTED and almost slammed the door and we're like WAIT no we're stuck in the ditch!" And he got out his cables and his truck and pulled us out. Maybe someday he'll want to listen to misionaries! But he was very helpful! Ha ha

 

Sounds like ya'll had a great Easter! We did too :) There weren't many people at Church because a lot of people were out of town visiting family. It was a little bit rainy and overcast but we had a Redneck Easter dinner with a very "country" family in our ward (which is a lot of the ward). It was pretty funny. We ate with this family, out in their barn next to their house. There were tons of people there and the food was so good. We had ham, which I'm pretty sure was fresh from that morning out on the Farm. Ha ha. It started raining and outside of the barn we ate in there was a bunch of mud, so the whole family started mud-wrestling. It was pretty funny to watch. They even poured a little water on the Elders and they almost got thrown in the mud too. 

 

Oh and today, we spent the whole day digging in an awesome members garden! She is wonderful. She's a stellar member who has been giving us lots of referrals, and giving us rides, and has been wonderful. If only every member were like her. She's only been a member 9 years but she's an incredible lady!

Love you all, thanks for the support and love!

Pizza for dinner everyday

So we found out on Tuesday that there was a dent in our car (That doesn't effect the way it runs. At all.) that the Elders before us left, and we had to go in to get it fixed... SO our car has been in the Shop since WEDNESDAY and will be probably until WEDNESDAY again. So we've been doing a LOT of walking! But it's good. It gives us a chance to lean on the Members a lot. We have been looking at it as a blessing that the Lord has given us to rely on them. We live off of a Highway so it's kind of scary because we have to walk along the Highway for 2 miles before we get to any houses! We always pray that we'll be safe.

 

We eat with the Elders in our Ward a lot, people will have all 4 of us over for dinner. And it's funny because almost every time it's pizza. And the Elders think it's hilarious to call people and request pizza because they see our faces when we get there and the Elders say "Oh this is awesome, we never get pizza!" and they look at us and we have to laugh and pretend to be excited. We're going to talk to them about that because it's happened like 4 times this week. Ha ha.

 

You meet some pretty interesting people tracting. We had a little old man who had dementia and told us the same story 15 times before we could leave his porch. He was really funny and proposed to both of us several times before we could finally walk away. Oh and we've had some rude people to of course. The other day someone opened the door and before we could even say a word she said "There's a road, HIT IT" and slammed the door. It doesn't make me sad for me, or embarassed at all though, it makes me sad for her. Every time someone tells me I'm wrong or tries to explain why they are right and I am wrong, it just strengthens my testimony.

 

We have been meeting with a lady named Margaret, who has met with missionaries several times before but she seems to be really getting it this time and is interested in getting baptized. A member even took us to a baptismal service at the Stake Center the other day and she was able to witness it and feel the spirit of it. We're working with her to set a date. 

Also there is a less active that we're working with who hasn't been to church in a while and has 3 daughters who haven't been baptized and she wants them to find out the truth for themselves. So we are going to be meeting with them this week too! They are a lot more receptive to Sisters than Elders, of course. :) We are excited to have the discussions with them!

 

We met with the Ward Council all about our "Blitzkreig" plan and they are super excited. Elder Gomm even got a lazer pen and brought a giant blown up map into Ward Council and made it all official. We are working with the ward to focuson one area of the map in the month of April (all of the Less Actives, potential investigators, friends and family of the Members in that area) and have 40 days of Fasting as well where every family we eat with will fast for the Missionary effort that day. :) We are excited to get the ball rolling on this plan that will start in April, until then we'll be on our feet! Hopefully we'll get our car back on Thursday....

 

Thanks for all of the love and support! Everyone should go take the missionaries out somewhere this week!