March, 28, 2011

Hello everyone. I hope you had a great week. And I'm happy to tell you that I did too! We had a GREAT week. Sister Barfuss and I are really stirring things up here in Colusa. She's such a great missionary and I'm super excited to have her for my companion. She's a great teacher, and we're becoming really good friends.

Some crazy things happened this week, and I'll start with the most bizarre: Last monday, we only got a half P-day because we went to the baptisms on Saturday. So we were working after I emailed last week, and we went to Maxwell to visit some less actives and Potential investigators we have. Maxwell is one of those tiny towns in our area with about 400 people living there. On our way there, we went through a crazy dark rainstorm, and it started hailing. And I don't know why I didn't even think about it -- since I've lived in Kansas -- but we found out later that the storm we drove through was a tornado storm, and an honest to goodness funnell cloud touched down just outside of Maxwell, while we were there. Who knew! Tornados in Northern California. And just two days later, on Wednesday, we were in Williams tracting, when a second Tornado touched down and did some minor damage to a neighborhood in the town -- luckily nowhere near where we were tracting (and by nowhere near, I mean, it was a couple miles a way. ) :) So that was some interesting stories to tell our investigators as we've been teaching this week.

We picked up 3 new investigators this week (which is 2 more than the average for our mission and 3 more than the average for our area, lol) and we invited two of them, plus one of our other investigators to be baptized and they said YES!!! So we've got some good momentum building. I'll start from the beginning:

We have a less active family in our branch who are hispanic. The kids all speak English but Eleanet, the mom, only understands, and has a hard time speaking English. We've been there a few times, but because of the language barrier, we haven't really gotten anywhere. So we asked our District Leader and his comp to come out to Colusa to talk to her. They're the Spanish Elders assigned to our stake. They came and found out that she really has a testimony of the church and that she really wants to come back, but she's had some sin in her life and she's not sure how to come back. They gave her a priesthood blessing, and then asked us to come back and start teaching her agian. So we've been over there several times this week. Eleanet is such a sweetheart! And I love her kids. She has 5, and she's a single mom. Her oldest is 15 and her youngest is 2. The 10 year old, Marcos, and the 9 year old, Victor, are both not baptized, but they want to be. So we invited them to come back to church, and we're starting to teach them the lessons so they can be baptized on April 23! BAM!!!

Plus, we were teaching one of our other investigators, Diana, on Thursday, about the Plan of Salvation. It's the 2nd time we've met with her. Her mom is a less active in our ward. Diana is about 35 and has two kids. As we were teaching her about the Plan, we kept talking about Baptism, and how it's necessary to get to the best place with our families and our heavenly father. As I was getting ready to have Sister Barfuss extend the baptismal commitment, Diana beat us to the punch and said, "I guess I'd better be baptized!" Sister Barfuss told me later that she was so amazed that things like that actually happen that she had no idea what to say. :) So we set her baptismal date for April 16th. That means that if things progress the way that we want them too, we'll have 3 baptisms before the end of April! Diana came to church yesterday, and she really loved it!

On Wednesday, we were tracting in Arbuckle (about 45 minutes from Colusa - population 805) and we ran into a man named Gary who is from Idaho. Sister Barfuss and he had some of the same towns and cities in Idaho in common because she went to college there. She was able to identify with him and make him feel comfortable and then we talked with him for several minutes about the Church. He's had missionaries over before, but never had the kind of experience with them that leads to feeling the spirit. Probably because Gary and his girlfriend were living together at the time and weren't in a place where they could feel the spirit. So now Gary lives in Arbuckle, and he lives by himself. He told us that when he left Idaho, he'd let the church alone, unless it found him!!! And there we were! So we set up an appointment for Saturday night, and we taught him about the restoration and the Book of Mormon. It went so great. We invited him to church for the next morning, and he said he'd come. He didn't end up making it because he had to take his mom to the hospital (she had some kind of pinched nerve). Do you see what I mean when I said last week that things get really hard when you're trying to schedule with a new investigator? But I'm really hopeful that Gary will continue to progress and we'll be able to teach him and help him be baptized!!! It's very exciting!

Things with our other investigators are progressing slowly, but steadily, and I'm very confident that with Sister Barfuss here, we'll be able to help them to continue to recognize the spirit and to learn about revelation.

Things really are going so great! It's just the boost this week that I needed to remember why I'm here, and the purpose behind why I came. Someone said at a training meeting this last week that I went to, "If you're not willing to give up everything for your purpose, then why is it your purpose?" And it's so true. As a missionary, my purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them recieve the restored gospel, through Faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, Repentance, Baptism by Immersion, Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the End. If I'm not willing to give up everything for that, than why am I here? Heavenly Father's sole purpose is to bring to pass our immortality and eternal life. And he was willing to give up his son for that. As regular members of the church, and regular people out in the world, you have to decide what your purpose is. And then make sure that you'd be willing to give up EVERYTHING for it. Or figure out what you'd be willing to give everything for and that's your purpose. If you'd give up everything for 30 more minutes in front of the TV, than that's your purpose. Which is unfortunate... but it's never too late to change, either. Make your purpose something that you could die for--and live for, and then work everyday at becoming the kind of person that could give it all up. It's hard, but that's what life is for, and it's why we're here.

I love you all, and I know that your prayers this week have really protected me and helped me to have success. Thank you so much!!!

Love, Sister Reid