May 16, 2011

So it's not often, maybe never, I think, that I'm able to write to you
on one of my mission birthdays... But today I am 11 months old.
Someone asked me yesterday how long I'd been out on my mission, and
for the first time, I was kind of hestitant to talk about it. It's
weird. Up till just recently, I've been looking forward to being
finished. I'm still excited about coming home and getting back into
life, but I'm also not looking forward to it, if that makes any sense.
lol. It doesn't, but I can't explain it any other way... :)

I hope you all had a good week. Mine was pretty great. We did a lot
of teaching this week. We were able to meet with Michael finally(our
20 year old investigator that I think I told you about last week).
His work schedule has kept him pretty busy so we weren't able to meet
with him until just Saturday night. We taught him about the
restoration. We had a hard time keeping the lesson very spiritual the
last time. Probably due to his age and the fact that he's super
adorable, and the member we brought with us is a super cute girl who
is exactly the same age. lol. I should have realized.. hahahaha.
Anyway, this time, instead of doing much talking, we watched the
Restoration video. It went really great. When the video was over,
Michael practically had tears in his eyes and told us that he wanted
to have a spiritual confirmation that what we were teaching was true.
We told him how he could know and asked him to have a kneeling prayer
with us right then. The spirit was so thick in the room that I almost
couldn't breath. It was epic. My companion recommitted him to be
baptized and then set the date with him too. He said yes. So we're
planning on a baptism in June! YAY! The only tricky thing is that
he'll be moving to go to college in 2 weeks. :( So he'll probably
get baptized in the singles ward where he moves. No matter. I'm
priveliged to have been able to have this experience with Sister
Barfuss and Michael.

We had a pretty interesting experience regarding obedience this week
as well. It's kind of a long story, so hang on with me. :)

We had a mission conference on Saturday (I think I remember telling
you about it, and I'll talk about it in a second...) and we found out
early in the week that ALL of the other sister missionaries in the
entire mission were coming up to Yuba City, which is in our Zone, the
night before, so they wouldn't have to drive 2 hours (which would mean
that would have had to leave at 5:30 am) on Saturday morning to get
here on time. They would all be spending the night with members and
the other sisters who live in Yuba. Sister Barfuss and I have really
missed having sisters around, which, when you live in the south of the
mission, happens all the time. But since we live in Colusa, we almost
never see any missionaries, ever, let alone sisters. So we called the
Assistants to ask if we might be able to have a companionship or two
come spend the night with us, or if not, at least maybe allow us to go
to dinner with all the other sisters who were all getting together
anyway. They told us no, which I couldn't understand and so was hard
for me. 12 of the 14 sisters were together on friday night, and the
only ones missing were Sister Barfuss and me. It was really hard to
deal with. I was mostly over it on Thursday, but I was not looking
forward to Friday night, being in Colusa, working, while the rest of
the sisters were having fun together without us. So we went to our
dinner appointment on Friday night and sat down after dinner to teach
our regular dinner lesson. Which, by the way, is about internalizing
the Doctrine of Christ, and it has so far not failed to produce major
spiritual growth and commitment from the members we've shared it with.
The family we ate dinner with are an older couple. The wife is very
active, but the husband comes out of a sense of duty to his wife.
He's a convert of 6 years, I think. Anyway, we taught it and we asked
"how can you make the Doctrine of Christ part of who you are instead
of just knowing it?" and the husband said, "I don't know. That's the
problem I've been having. Can you tell me?" It was so cool to have
finally, after almost 4 months of working with this family, gotten to
where we needed to to help him find and grow his testimony. And it
wouldn't have happened if we'd been in Yuba with the other sisters.
So my testimony in following the counsel of my priesthood leaders has
really grown this last week. :)

So about the conference on Saturday... Here's who was there: Elder
Trythol, an Area Seventy over Northern California, Elder Waddell, of
the First Quorum of the Seventy, Bishop McMullin of the Presiding
Bishopric, President Halstrom of the Presidency of the Seventy, and
Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve. It was
amazing. We got to meet and shake the hands of each of them. They
spent about 20 minutes each instructing us on the messages that they
felt they needed to share with us to be better missionaries. Then
Elder Christofferson gave us an apostolic blessing. It was pretty
much amazing. I left feeling more renewed and committed to the work
than I ever have before. Maybe that's why I've suddenly gotten leary
about having been here longer than the time that I have left... I
dunno. It was good. And I'm excited to see the changes in me, my
companion, and the area I serve in, as a result of the the things I
learned there.

Well, this has gone on long enough, and I'm about out of time. I love
you all, and I miss you. I'm doing great. And I love the work!

Love, Sister Reid