The Power of Prayer

I'm so glad you heard from Hunter so quickly!  He is going to absolutely love it there and is going to do extraordinary things.  I told him last week....people will say serving a mission is the best two years of your life.  It's not the best two years of your life...it's the hardest two years of your life, but one of the best experiences you will EVER have!  I have already learned more from these 8 months of my mission than I have at any other time during my life.

So this past week has been pretty good. We actually taught a lot and we had a ton of appointments and the members were really good about coming out with us and some of them even made the appointments with people. Which is kinda how it should work. or at least this mission's vision. 

We worked with a lot of less actives this week. Most of our appointments with investigators canceled. And one investigator dropped us. We were sure he was going to get baptized soon. He was just starting to quit smoking. We were kinda really bummed and frustrated that he dropped us. It really wasn't even a solid reason. Just that he went to a christian concert and thought he felt the spirit stronger than even before and that his answer was to just stick to the scriptures and stop meeting with us. I really think that he'll call us in a few weeks though. He was progressing and then just decided to stop, we weren't expecting that at all. So that was kind of a big set back.

This week I've really been able to witness the power of prayer. A family has been fasting every day this week for the missionary work in the area. Specifically for the members finding people, but for the missionary work in general. And it has worked!!! this week we really didn't do anything special or make a huge special effort. And a lot of set backs happened this week. But I firmly believe that cause the ward was fasting for us that we were able to have so much success this week. It's going to be a great month! I love this ward a lot and all their efforts. We just got a new policy in this mission. So we're expected to talk to 20 people everyday we call them oyms (open your mouth). you have to teach testify and invite. This is pretty hard already and then they announced this week that tracting doesn't count. Which is basically how we got our oyms so we have to be super creative in our contacting methods. I told sister Andrasko that we should hire godzilla to come here and do his thing. Burning down houses and crushing buildings. Then we open up the church as a place for people to stay and have to relief society provide meals. I thought it was a pretty good idea. We're still waiting to hear back. haha I think I'm a wee bit too creative with my ideas. But it's better than flying a kite at a park.

We were able to teach our Asian investigator again yesterday! He's so cool. He's one of the most prepared people I probably will ever teach. He read 14 chapters this week in the BoM! It's hard to get less active members to read 3 verses! He's awesome! He's going to be out of town this week but he asked if we could teach him over e-mail. Cause he'll be in Vietnam. Oh and his wife has a job interview in Virginia which he's super excited about and we are too cause we know he wants to live with his wife. We're just kinda bummed that might mean that he's going to move. We have mixed feelings about this situation. We come back from his lessons and we're so happy cause it went so well! It's basically a discussion not a lesson. It's so cool to see someone progress like he is! He is now able to feel and recognize the spirit in his life and how reading the BoM has improved his life. I love it! haha it's for people like him that remind me why I'm a missionary.

I love you all!  Pray always...Love, Sis. Ririe