Feb. 14, 2011

Hello dear family and friends! I hope that your week was awesome, and
that you're having a great valentine's day! I'm not celebrating that
particulular holiday this year, although our Zone leaders called us
this morning and left a voice mail saying that they had got approval
for all of us to bring "dates" to the zone activity today. About an
hour later they called and cleared things up saying that our date was
actually our companion. lol. Those silly elders. :)

It's been a good week for us here in Colusa. We've met with A TON of
the less actives in the branch, and been able to teach a few of them
about church attendance and why it's so important. We'll hopefully be
able to continue reaching out to them and get a lot of work done here
over the next several months and see some improvement in Sacrament
Meeting Attendance. We also got to meet with and teach Aaron, our 16
year old investigator. He's definately ready for baptism. He's
eating up everything we teach him. His mom came to his lesson with
him, and we were able to talk about the Holy Ghost, and what happens
in your life when you don't live worthy to have Him with you. Aaron's
mom talked about how she knew what that was like and that's why she
was coming back to church now. They were both in Church yesterday,
and stayed for all three hours. We're set for Aaron to be baptized
next Saturday, the 26th.

Speaking of baptisms. I got to go back to Antelope on Saturday for
Chris Walker's baptism. He asked me to give a talk on the Holy Ghost,
so I was able to get permission to go back there and see him get
baptized. It was so cool! His parents were there, and they're not
members. As I spoke about the Holy Ghost, I could really feel like
his mom especially, was really eating up everything I said. She was
really into it. I'm hopeful that she'll be able to investigate the
church and find out more about what her son is doing. There was a
HUGE crowd there from the ward he's been attending in Folsom, as well
as most of his girlfriends' family, who are all active members in a
different stake in our mission. There were a few members of our ward
there, which was really nice. It was fun to see them. And I got to
say goodbye to a few more people that we didn't have time visit before
I left. We had lunch with the Sister Tongi (who took my place) and
Sister Christensen after the baptism, and it was really fun. A really
great way to celebrate my birthday, actually!

In other news, here in the Colusa branch... We've been able to pick up
two new investigators. The first one we met with this week is a woman
named Leslie. She's a little older. Very catholic. But she has some
issues with the way that the Catholic Church does some things. She's
actually been meeting with the missionaries off and on for 15 years or
so. But they've never been able to get her to commit to doing
anything. So they've dropped her, then picked her up, then dropped
her... We were able to have her start reading the Book of Mormon this
week. Which is something she's never done before. She's actually not
reading it, but listening to it on CD. I got on her computer last
week and downloaded the first 2 books of Nephi for her, and then
burned them to CD. When we went to see her this week, she'd already
listened up to 1 Nephi 9. She had good questions about Nephi and his
family, and some of the commandments he'd been asked to do, and we
were able to help her understand the scriptures better. It was a
really cool lesson, and based on the fact that she's actually reading
the Book of Mormon now, we were able to pick her up as an
investigator. She'll come to church in a couple weeks, too, I'm sure
of it.

We were also able to meet a new investigator in Williams, which is
another town about 20 minutes from Colusa. Her name is Lorraine.
She's also Catholic, but stopped going to the Catholic church about a
year ago when the priest that she really liked had to leave, and they
sent a new one in that she didn't like. We talked about Finding Faith
in Christ and invited her to take the lessons, which she wants to do,
so we'll be teaching her every week now. She's got some good
potential.

We've also met a ton of really prepared potential investigators this
week. We have some really exciting appointments coming up this week,
and we're really looking forward to being able to pick up these people
and families and teach them about the gospel. The branch is really
excited too. Most of them can't believe that we've met so many people
and seen so much progress in just two short weeks. I honestly can't
believe it either. I made some big promises to the branch when I
first got here, and then had to go home and pray to Heavenly Father
and ask him to help me out. I knew there was no way I could do this
by myself. Luckily, the Lord wants progress here in Colusa as much as
I do, so He's blessed us this week. I only hope and pray that the
momentum we've struggled so hard to build in the last two weeks
continues on for the rest of the transfer and on into the next...

That's pretty much it for today. I'm sorry that I can't attach
pictures to this email... I didn't check last week to see if the
computers has SD card readers, and they don't... so I'll have to send
pictures next week when I remember to bring my USB cord to hook my
camera up to the computer. Sorry.

I love you all so much, and I miss you all like crazy! Keep the mail
coming and the long distance hugs and prayers!

Love Sister Reid

PS... I thought I'd brag for just a second about how it's been sunny
and 75 degrees outside for the last three weeks... How's your
weather? LOL.