Happy Canada Day and 4th of July

Happy 4th of July! Yesterday in church Bishop gave a talk about "Freedom" and Captain Moroni and the Title of Liberty and it was really great. 

We have met a lot of Less Actives this week, which has been awesome. People that the Ward has never been able to meet, and the Home and Visiting teachers have never been able to get in with. Some of them said we could come back, so we have. 

Ruben is a Less Active who lives in our apartment complex, so we see him around a lot. His wife is a non-member and they like to feed us and have us over. She was very closed to anything spiritual happening at first, but still liked having us over. But slowly we have been a few times now and she is open and she told us the other day she was researching on Mormon.org about the church and had been looking up stuff. We were excitedly surprised! And Ruben, who got baptized in Mexico 40 years ago when he was 8 and hasn't been consistently to church since said he wanted to come, and they both came to church yesterday. It was a miracle and we are so glad. We hope to continue teaching them! 

There is another girl in our apartment complex who is super nice and she has a really cute puppy. She said she would listen, so we went over and taught but she was very closed minded and not willing to try. She said we were "Mormon because our parents were" and if I grew up in India or China I would have been Hindu or Buddhist. I was able to tell her that I may have if I grew up there, but if someone presented me with a Book of Mormon and asked me to pray about it, if I prayed with real intent, having faith in Christ, a real desire to know, I WOULD receive an answer! And I WOULD find the truth. 

We met with Eli again, and we set a soft date for baptism with him, he is learning and progressing. He is changing, and wants to be a better person. Unfortunately he didn't come to church because he forgot to set his alarm. 19 year old boys... sheeshhh... Ha ha but we'll meet with him again soon. 

Carl and Dana are GETTING BAPTIZED this Saturday! 5:00 pm our time. Dana has been sure she wants to get baptized the whole time, but Carl has been hesitant and not sure. But this week we went over on Tuesday and we went with Brother Gaskill and he was like Brother Gaskill, I"m getting baptized on July 6th are you coming? We were like WHATT?! So yes he decided it was the right thing and we were really excited! We called our Ward Mission leader because we hadn't planned anything about the baptism yet because he had been hesitant, but the Ward was great and we got everything planned out at church yesterday and everything is set! Yay! 

The Members of our ward are awesome! Most of them are BYU graduates and work as bankers, for Bank of America or other banks that are headquartered in Charlotte. There is 1 Utah fan, Brother Hart and everyone else is BYU. Ha. The Ward is great though and we are fed almost every single night and it's great. We are in a really nice area with really fancy homes and it is very well off.

We have been out with a girl in our ward, Kelsey, who is 18 and is thinking about going on a mission. We have spent time with her and she really likes coming out with us! (We also like going out with her because she's available most of the time, not working, and has a car to take us places) 

We are going to see this family tonight that everyone says are "Dry Mormons" in other words, he went to the University of Utah and played football there and knows everything about the church but hasn't joined. His wife is interested in meeting with us, we've only met him, not his wife but he seems really nice. They are friends with most of the Ward so fellow shipping will be good too. 

FUNNY STORY FOR THE WEEK: This week we had District Meeting and we gave up our car to the Elders for the week. We haven't biked very much, mostly we have used members to give us rides. Sister Diaz hates riding her bike in her skirt, I don't mind it so much but she really hates it so she makes sure we have rides. Which is fine with me! Anyway, we gave the Lake Norman Elders our car, and they were surprised to find some goopy bloody substance on the back window. So we laughed really hard and we explained what happened. The night before we were coming into our apartment and as we were coming in we found a cat. I  didn't think anything of it and just walked past. But Sister Diaz is really an animal person and she started petting it and it didn't have a collar or anything, and it had been injured. Something had hurt it behind its ears and it was bleeding. We took it up to Blair (the girl with the puppy) because she knows alot about animals. She called an animal hospital and they said they would take it. But she didn't have time to take it over. So we put the cat in the back of the car and took it to the hospital. The cat jumped up by the headrests because it was scared and we took it to the animal hospital. And it was after dark, and District meeting was first thing so we didn't have time to clean it so the Elders had to... 

It is starting to get really humid and hot here! Welcome to the South! Whew! Everyone says if you can get through July and August they are the most hot and humid and the rest of the year is nice. :) 

Oh and Transfer calls are this Saturday so we'll find out about transfers. I don't think I will be transferred this time, but maybe Sister Diaz. We'll see.