Missionary work is
awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:D I am now
in my first area, Marquette Michigan! It is pretty much as north as you
can get, and I live right next to lake
Superior!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The lake looks like an
ocean and gets kind of moody with the weather, haha. It looks a lot like
Yellowstone here with a lot of pine trees and forests but no mountains, it
is sooooooooooooooooo flat! That is probably why everyone gets lost
here. We have already gotten lost twice. My companion is Sister
Brandley and she is the best!!! She plays the piano and one of the very
first things that I found out from her was that she started teaching piano
lessons as part of our missionary work!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so so
excited and happy! I think we will be teaching a lesson this week
:)
It is very cold here and at the moment it is
very snowy! We have a truck (the elders were jealous that the sisters got
the truck, haha) so that helps.
As for missionary work, we have teaching some
less active members that need a lot of love and the hardest part right now is
getting investigators and less actives to come to church. There is only
one ward here and it is huge! So a lot of the ward lives about 30 minutes
to a couple hours away from the church building. The actually broadcast
it to other places to make it easier but it is still hard. This week we
had two of our investigator families come to church and that was sooo
exctiing. It was the primary program and also we had a ward baptism after
church that Sister Brandley and I spoke at. So I gave my first talk on
baptism yesterday and it went really well. We also set a baptismal
date for one of the families that came to church!!!!!!!!!!! It will be in
December :)
We have a couple new investigators that we found
this week. The first two people that we talked to street contacting
we were able to give Book of Mormons to and we have a return appointment today
with one of them! She was playing outside with a super cute puppy and we
started talking to her. I'm excited to teach her later
today! Also, last night we met a girl named Evelyn. We actually
went to go see her room mate is less active but she was busy so we taught
Evelyn about the restoration. She is super amazing! She is a cross
country runner and is here because of a running scholarship she got, but
unfortunately she is injured right now. She told us that right before
every race she would always say a prayer. She said she didn't know why
but she said it always calmed her down and it was just her thing she did.
She has such a sweet spirit and such faith! We invited her to be baptized
if she comes to know it is true and she said yes!
We also contacted one of our referrals, a super
nice family! We taught two darling girls, Hope and Grace, about
prayer and the scriptures. Hope asked about Mary and wanted to know what
she looked like so she could draw her, it was so cute! We read in 1 Nephi that
Mary was beautiful and fair to answer her question. Children really
do love the Savior and are so faithful. That was probably one of my
favorite lessons.
Right now we are staying at a members home,
the Rayhorn's. They are super nice and have a great big sheep dog named
Riley. Riley is a very big but very sweet dog. As for meals,
we have had at least one dinner appointment everyday that I have
been here and the food is delicious! The members are absolutely
awesome at helping us with missionary work!!!!!!! It is a very missionary
minded ward and that is super great! I know that this gospel is so
true and that God knows each and everyone of us! Seeing
God's hand in the lives of His children is such a blessing! I have
seen that so much, even from the moment that I got to the MTC. I love you
all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
