Aug. 9, 2010

Thanks for the news, and the letter I got this week. It actually came on Saturday, along with letters from the Harrison Park Young Women, and two of my friends, so Saturday was a great day! Tell the Young Women thanks from me, and I should be responding to them via snail mail in the next couple weeks, and I'd be happy to be pen pals with any of them. :)

I love the news about Kayti. It sounds like she's very busy, and I want to hear all about it, so tell her to write me!!! She promised! Also, that's cool that Jared's working. But a bummer that the truck is having struggles. Tell him thanks for updating my blog, and good luck with getting the truck fixed. Also, tell him to check his email, because I've sent him a personal email. :)

I'm totally jealous of the canning! And, if it's at all possible, I'd love some canned fruit. If not, I totally understand... it's heavy and expensive to ship, probably.

This week's news is kind of like last weeks. Both Lewis and Pupe are not really meeting with us right now. But things should clear up this week. We've started teaching the Crowders, who are that couple I told you about this week. We taught them about the Book of Mormon, and why it's important. Zola (the wife) pulled out her copy, which she's read so many times, it was falling apart. (YAY!!!) and agreed with everything we said. She totally has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, which is amazing! With Bill, we emphasized the law of two witnesses, and how, just like John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were two witnesses of the gospel, so are the Bible and the Book of Mormon. He changed from the beginning of the lesson, where he said "I'll never read that book, I have the Bible" to "I might read it." It's not a perfect answer, but it's a baby step. And I can tell that he likes us, so even if Zola gets baptized, and Bill doesn't at this time, he'll still allow her to attend church, which is good. And maybe someday soon, his heart will soften to the Spirit, and he'll accept the gospel too.

Our zone has a goal of making 84 contacts every week and teaching 20 lessons. Sister Silva and I had not yet met those goals this transfer, so last week we decided to make it priority. As of yesterday morning, we still needed 25 contacts and 3 lessons to make the goal. We started out by tracting before church, and only talked to 3 people out of 15 houses. It was a little discouraging. After church, we went tracting on a different street, and it was like every other house answered the door, and we even managed to teach 2 lessons to (hopefully) new investigators. We were just about finished with the street and we had 29 contacts for the day. So we'd made the contacting goal, but we still needed to teach one more lesson in order to meet all our goals. As we were walking back to our car, we saw a teenager with her puppy on her front lawn. We approached her, and started talking. Then her mom came out, and was really interested. So she invited us in, and we taught the first lesson. The spirit was so strong there. And the girl, Marlena, was picking up on everything we were saying. The mom, Laura, was asking questions, and wanting to know more. As we testified about how the Gospel blesses families, I know that the Spirit witnessed to them of the truth of what we were teaching. We left with a solid commitment to teach them again this week, and they'll read the Book of Mormon in the mean time.

After we left, I knew that the Lord had led us to that street, because we were commited to meeting our contacting and teaching goals, because when we meet our goals, we're able to find new people to teach. When we called in our stats for the week to the District Leader last night, I felt so gratified and grateful to be able to report good numbers. And I know that the Lord was helping us and leading us to the place where we could make it happen.

That's about it for my news this week. Sorry it's a shorter letter, but I promise that next weeks will be MUCH better, since we're teaching a ton! YAY!!

Have a great week everyone. Thanks for all your love, support, and letters. Especially your letters. They make me happy!

Love, Sister Reid