It has been a good day!
And it has been a good week!! Let's get this email party started, shall we?
Tuesday: Mike was AWESOME!! As you know, we have been praying super super hard for him to accept the Word of Wisdom. We get there and he tells us he has been praying every day for health and wisdom and I'm like oh boy have we got some wisdom for you! So we go through the Word of Wisdom and immediately he is so accepting of it! He is like okay if this is what I have to do to get baptized, I will give these things up. It was awesome! And he told us that he prayed that morning to be able to quit smoking. He said he didn't know why, but sees now that it must have been a premonition. Mike is just the best, he is so prepared!! Now we just gotta get him to church!! We hoped he would come yesterday but he never showed up 😕 That night we had the ward trunk or treat which was fun, we had a good number of less actives there that we invited and even a couple people we are teaching brought their kids!
Wednesday: Halloween!! Lol all of our appointments fell through. We had dinner with members and then that night they didn't want us out trick or treating so we went to the church and watched a training video and did some contacting. Then we were supposed to go in at 8 instead of 9 so we did that.
Thursday: Zone Conference!! We woke up at 5:30, left by 6:20, drove to the sister's in Franklin, left there at 7:45 and got to the church building in Brookville at 9 o'clock! It was a lot of driving Haha but zone conference was awesome!! Its great to be with other missionaries and to get re-pumped up and excited about the work! President Bednar gave a great lesson on the Holy Ghost-how it is a constant companion but that doesn't always mean you feel this boom power. It's most often just peace and joy and comfort. And when you are intune with the spirit, your thoughts are promptings, even the little things! You don't have to recognize in the moment you are receiving revelation that you are receiving revelation. So just get up, get going, and the spirit will guide you! It was awesome. We had great break out sessions with training by Zone Leaders and STLs (sister training leaders). At the end we had a little testimony meeting and I bore my testimony of how this gospel and missionary work are so full of joy! President talked about how the joy we feel as missionaries is typically because we are filled with spirit so I talked about that and how even when it is 7 PM, pouring rain and freezing cold, knocking on strangers doors in skirts, I am still so happy. And that is because of the spirit!! It is awesome!! That night we came back and had time for our Book of Mormon live class which was good, we talked about Enos.
Friday: we did our weekly planning that afternoon and that evening we taught Ian, the 18 y/o and he told us that he prayed and God told him he needed to get baptized! So that was cool! We had his lesson at the Dodson's house again and it went well. We then drove out to Corry again and taught the Ingram family! They are just so awesome!! Its returning members, Hope, her husband Greg, and their daughter Cherity, and non-members, Ariana, Kalinda, and Jasmine, who are Cherity's daughters, and Tabatha who is Hope's sister and her husband Mark. They are all so eager to learn and are so focused when we teach. The spirit is strong in those lessons. Tabatha had a lot of fears about what happens after death and so teaching her the plan of salvation answered her questions. They are all awesome. We are hoping to invite them all to be baptized next time we meet with them! Pray for them!!
Saturday: They say that Saturdays are prime proselytizing days but no one is ever home on Saturdays. Every Saturday is basically just us driving all around, having failed contact attempts. But it is all good! We have gotten a lot of referrals this week! It was super awesome!! There was a man, named Aleksey, who is this super cute old Russian man! He is the jolliest Russian I've ever seen! He requested a Bible so we came to his apartment and brought him one and gave him a book of mormon as well. We are going to go back later this week and meet with him.
Sunday: church was good! We only had 2 people we are teaching come, Tabatha and Mark which was a bummer, we hoped more people would be there. It's definitely a sign of how much I have come to love all these people by how sad I am when they don't come to church. But anyway, it was a good fast Sunday. Also, a man came up to us who I guess was the Stake young Mens president and said they had some leftover cereal from an activity yesterday and asked if we wanted any, and we were like yeah sure, so after church we go to his car and literally he gave us so much cereal, 7 BOXES!!! Hahahaha so yeah, all we are eating now is cereal I guess! We visited with a less active family that night and they were really nice. The parents are this really old couple, in wheelchairs and stuff, they were super cute. And they live with a daughter that is older that takes care of them. All members for many years, they just can't come to church for health reasons. They were awesome though! We also had call-in's with our district leader that night as we do every Sunday night. We often see the other Erie ward Elders in the building on Sundays and we always leave jokes on each other's cars. 😊
Life is good! It is getting colder here, but that's alright! Walmart is all decked out for Christmas already and it is funny. At the beginning of the week, when it was still October, we have a certain number of miles we can use and we were running low so we walked to some appointments from other ones and I got a taste of how it is to be a foreign missionary! Fun stuff! Haha
Hope yuns are all doing well! (I always heard before the mission that people say that a lot here but I hadn't heard a single person say it until last night, the older woman we visited with said it a few times haha) I am always praying for you all. I loved seeing your cute Halloween pictures!! So fun!! Have a great week!! ❤
Love,Sister Bates
And if you ever want to send fuzzy/warm socks, I would gladly accept them 😉
 |
| ZONE CONFERENCE |
 |
| We ran into Big Foot! I had to get a picture for my Washington friends! |
 |
| We pass this all the time. |
No comments:
Post a Comment