Jan. 3, 2011

So today marks my 12 months left in the mission. Today, 12 months from now, I will be headed home! Yikes!!! It's a little bit crazy to think about it, really.

This week was good. Not great... but good. We had a lot of potential at the beginning of the week, but unfortunately, as seems to be the pattern of the last 5 or so weeks, we've not been able to keep most of those appointments. We're working hard with the investigators we have and we're doing our very best to find new investigators. We have lessons scheduled with 7 new potentials this week, and we're hoping that they'll keep their appointments, so at the very least we can share with them a bit of the spirit before they decide if they're interested or not.

We did have one really great lesson with Alisha this week. We've been working with her almost since I first came here. We met her tracting in August, I think. Things have been slow with her mostly because her brother, Robert, is terminally ill, and lives with Alisha. He has Sarcoidosis, which I don't know what that means, except that it's terminal in most cases. Robert used to be a Pentacostal minister, and Alisha had been a member of the faith at one time in her life. So was Alisha's mom, before she died twenty years ago. Anyway. We've been working hard and slow with Alisha. At one point, about a month ago, she wanted to drop us, saying that it was just easier to stick with what she knew (Pentacostal). We brought an amazing ward member with us who convinced her to let us keep coming, just so we could share with her our basic beliefs. Which we've been doing. We thought we weren't getting anywhere until we stopped by a couple days before Christmas just to say hi. She ended up telling us that she loved the Book of Mormon, and that she was really starting to find truth in it and in what we were teaching her. She falls asleep every night reading the book of mormon. It was great. In the same breath she also told us not to tell Robert. She's worried about upsetting him in his final days. He was just diagnosed with congestive heart failure, which means he doesn't have much time left. We are sad for Robert, but so excited for Alisha... Well, we had a lesson with her on Wednesday. We taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ -- namely, Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Holy Ghost, Enduring to the End. It went really well. As we taught, I felt that it was exactly the time to invite her to be baptized. But I wanted to give my companion the chance to do it. Luckily, she felt it too, and almost before I could even catch it, Sister Christensen comes out with, "Alisha, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the Priesthood Authority of God?" I was like, YES SHE DID IT!!! Alisha didn't say yes immediately. She has some legitimate concerns about her brother and the way that her mother (who is in "heaven") will feel about her converting to a different religion. We talked a lot about the Plan of Salvation, which we taught her previously, and how her mother, and soon her brother, will also have the chance to hear what she's hearing, if they haven't already. And that she'll be able to perform the work for them so they can join the same church she's in. That really soothed her concerns. We're going to go off the regular path this next week to teach her about temples before we go back on schedule with the lessons. After we talked about that for a little while, we asked her if she knew that what we were teaching her was true. She said, almost. And then I committed her to a baptismal date. I said, "if you find out that this is true, will you be baptized." she said yes, and then I said, "we're holding a baptismal service on January 22. Will you prepare yourself to be baptized on that day?" and she said yes!!! It was an awesome experience! I loved it. It was a great lesson, and we're excited to keep teaching her! It will be amazing when she finally gets in the water, all dressed in white! I can't hardly wait!

Other than that, we've been pretty much tracting and visiting our less actives and former investigators, trying to get new people to teach. It's going to be a good week.

I hope all of you are having a great week as well, and that you're doing well. I love you all a ton, and I miss you, and I'm looking forward to all of your letters and any pictures that you want to send as well--- is that hint subtle enough for you. **wink, wink** LOL.

Love, Sister Reid