Family! I did indeed read Haley's emails first, and respond
to her first. I'M SO EXCITED FOR HER!! I'm relieved, for her, that she'll be
state side too. I was kind of hoping that she'd be sent to Asia somewhere so
she'd have to learn to like the food. But, I guess it's good she didn't because
she would have just starved. :) Being in the same state as Mike is definitely
weird, but I'm sure it will all be fine. She's gonna be awesome! Haley, you'll
be amazing, and you're gonna love it!
Quickly: I'm sorry that I haven't been very good about
sending stories about what and who I'm teaching. The Molina family, that I sent
pictures of, were baptized before I got to Chapel Creek, but we got to teach
them the New Member lessons. They're awesome! It was so cool to see the gospel
really change their lives. They've had a lot of hard things to deal
with--health issues, surgery, losing jobs--but they're so happy and absolutely
attribute everything to God and the gospel! Mayra called us the night after she
had surgery and just bore her testimony to us that she knows God is real and
that He has been watching out for her. It was great! Right now, we have 1 solid
investigator and 2 semi solid ones. Brianna, the solid one, is from a part
member family and we teach her in the YW presidents home. She has plenty of
fellowship and support from the ward, but not so much from the family. She
comes to YW activities and such, but she hasn't come to church yet. We're
hoping to help her gain a testimony of church, but she's only 14 and church
starts at 8:30 am. (They're in the process of building a new church
building. Until about July, we have 4 wards in one building and we get the
lucky first spot. If I weren't a missionary, I would HATE that, but I've
already been up for 2 hours by then. Haley, are you looking forward to that?
:)) I'll try and remember to keep you updated with her and the other people
that come along. Keep asking though!
The other day, we were actually on our way to stop by
Brianna's house to meet her grandma (who has custody of Brianna and her younger
brother.) There were two other sets of missionaries working on the same street.
Jehovah's Witness missionaries. I don't remember if I told you or not, but we
actually had a JW couple knock on our apartment door in Chapel Creek. When they
saw our tags and realized we were missionaries, they started slowly backing
away and didn't want to even take a card from us. These ones we met the
other day though, asked us questions and were very respectful. We taught them.
They taught us. Sister Mitchell offered them a Book of Mormon and a pamphlet.
They said they'd rather just read about it online, so we told them about mormon.org and they accepted
a card with that on it. I thought it was pretty funny, but it was nice that
they were so respectful of us. One of em said that she prefers to get her
information straight from the source, which was why she was so willing to ask
questions. I wish more people were like that! It's hard when people just Google
the church because you never know what they're going to find.
Because Sister Mitchell and I are both new to the area, we
don't have a lot of solid people to teach, like I said. But we still have to
work! So we've been visiting what we call Potential and Former investigators.
They're names of people who other missionaries that have been in our area have
met and/or taught. We've been going back to them to see if they're still
interested. It's basically tracting with direction, instead of just picking a
street and knocking every door. But we have done that! But doing this, means
we've done some walking and I noticed my first real missionary tan line. From
my shoes. So awkward looking! When it gets a little more pronounced, I'll send
you a picture. White toes with the tops being tan is not too attractive. But
funny!
All this work that we're doing without seeing obvious
results is hard. We're still working and I'm happy, but it's hard. I told
Sister Mitchell the other night, that all of this is making me more Christlike.
I have to have a lot more faith, diligence, obedience, and patience. That's
great for me--truly, I'm grateful for that--but I want to be able to do that
for others too. We're going to keep working, and I'm going to keep trying but
I'm looking forward to seeing the results in other people. Thanks for your
interest and support! I definitely appreciate the love and concern. :)
Drew (and Lida), I want to hear about Prom! Jack, keep me updated
on soccer. When do you have try outs? Spence, be aggressive! Haha mom says
you're playing awesome! Keep it up! Dad, have any of your sisters ever lived in
Mississippi? There's a guy in our ward who used to live there. He of course
asked if I was related to Jack Goaslind, and said that he met one of his
daughters (he thought.) a while back. I told him all of their names, but he
didn't remember which one. His name is Harry Brown. He said there was a
university in their area, so she might have been there for school? I don't
remember which school though. Mom, how's all the painting going? Are you doing
many boutiques? What about the kitchen? You mentioned some remodelling a while
back, but it was only once. Is that really still happening?
Well, I love you all! I hope you have a great week!
Love,
Sister Goaslind number 1!
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