May 6, 2013

Friends and family-

Thank you for your love and prayers!! This week we had a big Trainers/Trainee meeting at the mission office in Charlotte. We had lots of counsel from the Assistants to the President, and President and Sister Craven. They talked alot about the "Doctrine of Christ" and how it is a process of becoming. A lot of people down here think it is a "checklist" of things to do, but really it is about becoming more like Christ! It's something we do and need every day! We role played a lot of "How to Begin Teaching" or what to say when you first meet people. It was pretty neat because usually they have Zone Leaders come and evaluate our role plays and be there to train us but this time they had SISTERS come ( experienced sisters who have been out for more than a year) because there were alot more sisters there than Elders :) Then President Craven told us that the First Presidency has implemented Sister Leadership callings now, called "Sister Trainers" who will go on exchanges with the Sister Missionaries regularly. One of them was my awesome trainer, Sister Bowman. It's pretty exciting. Sisters really can do amazing things! Not that I'm biased or anything...

We had another meeting the next day, Zone Conference where we had a lot of training from our Zone Leaders. We were trained on one of the "Fundementals" of Preach My Gospel, how to help people make and keep commitments. Our Zone Leaders are awesome. One of our Zone Leaders demonstrated and invited the "investigator" to read the Book of Mormon and bore powerful testimony of it and the spirit was so strong the room went silent. The Book of Mormon combined with the spirit really is the most powerful tool in conversion, just like Preach my Gospel says.

We met with Bob again, we are not sure he can actually read... we're going to help him to learn how to read so he can read the Book of Mormon!

We are still working with the daughters of a less active, the Johnson girls, and they are getting baptized on the 25th! YAY!! We are excited, and we are really seeing a change in their Less Active parents too who want to come back to church and have the gospel in their lives!

Sister Hovis (our super member who gives us referrals every day and gives us rides and is incredible and has such a powerful testimony) called us last night because she was really discouraged we had hit a road block with her husband we have been teaching. He will have a hard time making the change to come to church. I opened the scriptures and prayed I would find a verse to comfort her. I think it was Doctrine and Covenants 98:1-3 that I found, about the Lord keeping his promises and making our trials work together for our good! I texted that and another scripture to her and she said she started crying feeling so much comfort and peace knowing everything would be okay. It's just what she needed. It's amazing that if you listen to the spirit and follow the promptings, the Holy Ghost will guide you with what to say and what to do in every situation!

We met with a lady named Sarah who we have met with before, off and on. She really wants to know the truth! She read the Book of Mormon and she has so many good questions! She wants to come to church, she just has a lot of health problems so we are praying that she'll feel well enough to come this week!

Susan is still good, we haven't been able to meet with her this week, she's been out of town but she was out of the Hospital after the Elders gave her a blessing! 

I know the Gospel blesses families so much! Thank you for being a wonderful family and great examples to me. Talk to you on Mothers Day! There is a lady in our ward who is letting us use her computers and she has a son who is Skyping home as well, she didn't know what time he was calling until he emailed today so we'll have to work around her schedule with him but hopefully after church, around 12:00 your time.

Love, Sister Forsyth