lots of investigators and 5 Thanksgiving visits!

Someone misses home....and we miss her!!

So letters go out a little late today (about 3 hours later than expected), as we got a phone call from one of our investigators. A young mother with more troubles than any one person should have.  Anyhow... I did not expect to be a comforter like this. I'm not a mom. I've never been close to those kinds of problems. I've never been that sick. All I have is a little dark blue book and a lot of talk about things you can't see or touch or otherwise measure. But after a few hours we were laughing and telling stories and discussing plans for the next time we're coming over (tomorrow). I know I wanted to be a therapist/counselor as a teenager... but I changed that major awhile back. This is not what I expected when I signed up. Thank God for the Spirit! She hasn't been to church yet, but we think we can get her out to the Christmas party, and maybe the Relief Society event after that...

Our investigator, who is an engineer, seems to be taking this like a business transaction (Engineer!), so we're trying to get more of the spiritual side of things. He's learning a lot and asking a lot of good questions though. He also says he wants to learn more of Christ and follow him... So we'll see. He's been to church a few times, but consistency isn’t what it could be right now. Sigh.

Another investigator really needs fellowship and she's super excited to learn more about priesthood it seems. She was really surprised to see examples of priesthood authority in the New Testament... First time at church yesterday. Her husband passed away last month.  We read 1 Corinthians 15 with her (it’s the one about baptisms for the dead and the 3 degrees of glory) so we were able to testify of the priesthood and how we can be together forever.  Super powerful! The Gospel Principles class (adult Sunday School class) was on the Second Coming and so a lot of talk about judgment day. It got a little deep but I guess that means we'll have a lot of questions to answer when we visit with her next?

Our professor investigator who teaches sociology and anthropology is awesome - totally down with the idea of 'contemporary' prophets. He asked for a Book of Mormon even before we brought it up. Sweet!!

Good for you! (Mom had a very cool missionary moment when someone asked a very open-ended question) Way to share with her. I hope she gets directed to missionaries... The restoration video is also online (the 20 minute one is a lot easier to get through than the 1 hour one)...

The snow did not stay- after it snowed; it warmed up to the 40s and hung out there until 90% of the snow was gone. But it should likely snow again soon (it’s currently raining and hanging out at 36F... We'll see how long that lasts.)

The mom and daughter from China went back to China, unbaptized. Heartbreaking, but we're glad they're continuing to learn more.

We saw 5 different families on Thanksgiving Day. My tummy was destroyed. We made pomegranate pear Jell-O three times and will be doing it one more time for another member tomorrow.  Woot!  (a favorite, very sweet side-dish / dessert from home!  We sent a whole pomegranate so she could have the seeds!)

Attached is a bumper sticker we found that I thought more or less captured my feelings in this dreary weather.

The weather has been okay, aside from cold. It’s raining today, so it’s a mite warmer, but we expect it will turn icy shortly. (she’ll get snow on Tuesday night…. 29*….brrrrrrrrrr!)

Love you!

Snow and new investigators!

We have several places to go this Thanksgiving- it’s one of the few times that we have multiple open invitations. We also get into a bunch of member homes, even for a little while. And we more often get left overs. o: It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t send missionaries home with left overs until I came out. That’s the norm during at home. ): (VERY glad that she’ll be taken in for such a special holiday!!)

We also got the news articles (about Paris and the clarifications made to church policy); thank you. It’s nice to have a clearer picture of what everyone is freaking out about. Apparently many other missionaries in other missions haven't been told about the clarifications to the handbook. So they're having a harder time in some cases and they don't know why.

So we did get snow this week- 9 inches of it in one go. Mercifully we were inside for the whole time (smart/inspired planning on our part), but it’s REALLY cold now. It was in single digits the other day... Our sister training leaders came over for splits and we've been almost exclusively knocking this week (I think we clocked a total of nearly 20 hours this week knocking?)... And they came without snow boots. (WHAT?!?) Because neither one had any. Sister Marsh had some problems earlier in the week because she wore flats instead of her boots and she couldn’t feel her feet at all for like 20 minutes after we got in the car.... I dunno what she was thinking, but after that I was just not having it. I bought a pair for one of them and the other wouldn't let me pay for her (she didn't have the money) but promised up and down that her Uggs were enough; I was aggressive but she wouldn't budge (Such a mother hen.). Oh well. One out of two. My companion for the day (the one who got boots) knocked for 4 hours and was otherwise warm enough.

In our knocking escapades, we have met a couple of cool people- one wasn’t interested but invited us back for lunch the next day since she was making stuff for a Mary Kay party. I do like pulled pork sliders on pretzel buns - we had lunch. Another replied she was Catholic, but upon more talking she invited us to have some of her cookies she just baked (SO SOFT AND WARM) and invited to come back and tell her more about the Book of Mormon. Nice. The last one of note was a man from Romania with an eastern Orthodox Catholic background; he teaches sociology at the community college. His fiancé of 8 years is Calvinist; he was super enthused to have us come back and teach them more.

We saw the new video they're putting out on christmas.mormon.org (it doesn't come out until the 29th officially so I don't think it’s on the website yet), (it is, I checked!) and it’s pretty sweet. If you haven't seen last year's yet, I do recommend it. It’s called "He is the Gift". You should be able to see it on YouTube if you don't see it on the christmas.mormon.org website.

As for investigators, the two Chinese people we were working with essentially said “no” to baptism because they're still not sure about Joseph Smith being a prophet, and that’s one of the required questions for being baptized. But she otherwise wants to be baptized.  All in good time. She said when she knew/got an answer to her prayers, she would come back here and be baptized. How long from now we don't know, but I am happy to fly back here to be there for that if it comes down to it. Hopefully she'd return with her husband and daughter and all get baptized together. One can dream. But we made amazing headway with her - she'd never believed in God or even prayed before we got here, and she's accepted everything down to the word of wisdom... So! The Lord knows. He has a plan. It'll be okay. (What amazing experiences she is having!)

Love you! Love the Gospel. The church is true.

 

No tornadoes and no snow

Richard says it rained because he got his car washed. Sounds about right.  (Maybe he should have washed more cars….then we’d get more rain….Hey, Richard....)

It actually has not snowed yet- and the tornado warning came and went. It was only here about an hour- torrential downpour and incredible winds, but it did not linger. It’s actually been in the 60s the last two days; rain today and I think we'll start getting into the cold in the next week or so. But I’ve said that the last three weeks so what do I know? (weather reports said there was much snow in short order...hm....well, good)

Missionary work is very stressful; we're SO busy and so strung out sometimes. But we're learning to cope and to manage. I'm trying to make sure we get more down time and more unwind time because I think we’re just running ragged. There's a very high turn over of investigators here. Getting dropped, or having to drop people, really hurts, because we have such high hopes for them. ):

Plenty of little miracles interspersed with the frustrations, though. We actually just got a phone call just before email time from one of our Congo families telling us not to come back because what we teach disagrees with what the head of household believes. So we can't teach any of them. But we've had lots of right place right time moments and tender mercies. Sometimes it’s hard to get members out to lessons but the Lord provides. We've spent a lot of time with less-actives this week to varying degrees of rekindling sparks. We also got to work on family history; I had a grand old time! Not really figuring out new names, but attaching sources to old names which is helping in finding new ones.

I just sent a box home full of clothes I'm not wearing often enough today (if Katie wants to pick through them, fine, otherwise please pack them for me!), dad's borrowed scriptures, and some jewelry that needs some attention. Your Thanksgiving box has not yet arrived.

Attached are pictures of some AWESOME books I need to track down when I get home. :) (Each book is part of its own series - found them on Amazon... looks like fun!)

We're hearing all sorts of things going on in the world, but of course we're not getting anything more than passing comment. What’s happening in Paris? What’s going on in the rest of the world? (I put together a compilation of events, and send a hardcopy to her today)

We did pick up some nicer crackers, and some of the cheese that Nick likes (with the chives). Figured it was a safe place to start. We'll get something more fancy/unknown next time. I guess we’re not that brave. (Glad they are treating themselves!)

Love you!

Christine

getting colder and getting better

I'm doing pretty well. Keeping warm, trying to not stress too much.

Training goes well- my companion is well adjusted and more or less could be a trainer herself. The occasional situation baffles her, but that’s true of even seasoned missionaries, so I suppose that’s why they send us out in pairs.

We made up one of the two lessons (they missed two lessons when Sister Marsh was hurt and needed medical attention) - we actually haven't heard from the lady we were going to give a church tour. The other was super understanding and came to church for the 3rd time in 4 weeks.

The night is getting icy, in the 20s, but the day time hangs out in the low 50s high 40s. We're buying gloves today. We're otherwise ready for it I think.  I can't believe we're talking Christmas already! The highs are in the 50s here pretty consistently now, so I'm always wearing leggings or tights. We just Scotch Guarded our winter boots as well. I have a heavy jacket, but it’s not been quite cold enough to wear it (but we're almost there I think. I'm a baby. At least my companion is also a desert child so we can whimper about the cold together.) Thanksgiving is coming!

We have a couple of new investigators. One's a couple from the Congo with a tremendous testimony of Christ. There’s a second family from the Congo (we think) and they also have awesome testimonies. Unfortunately there's a language barrier of French. ]: And most of our members who speak it are male... so we try hard to make sure their wives are there too. The Chinese mother-daughter pair is moving forward with investigating as well. They were apprehensive about committing to a date (the 24th), but it would help to happen here and now. Turns out NO ordinances at all can be done in mainland China. They don't have the keys for it there. No convert baptisms. No priesthood ordinations. The only one we're aware of (aside from Sacrament) is Patriarchal Blessings (individual blessing for revelation - more explanation here). They even have to have separate congregations for Chinese citizens and foreigners. No fellowshipping/intermingling. We're not even sure if they can get on the lds.org website and stream General Conference (worldwide conference so we can hear from the top leaders - twice yearly.  Read what we learned from them last October here). They can't receive mailed church magazines or anything that might even be half way considered proselyting material. Hard stuff indeed.

My companion got her stitches out today; the doctor said she's healing up well. She slipped off a narrow ramp (it was wet) up to this overgrown farm house. We didn't see what cut her up, but her stitches came out today mostly pain free so it seems to be all well. Which is good, because we played volleyball for our dinner hour on Thursday and she dived for a ball. Mercifully no stitches popped. Miracle. Busy week, and another busy week to follow.

Love

Christine

Investigators and Injuries....all in a days work

Our cell phone (which is our alarm clock) didn't update for daylight savings time, so we ended up waking up an hour early and going back to sleep. Ooops. (Better than waking up an hour late!)

We were grounded for Halloween and for the 30th- no more missionary work post-6pm unless we had a member taking us. So we stayed in and went to bed early. Hurray!

We had a lot of cool things happen this week. Yesterday we had a dinner with the Stake President (regional church leadership) and his wife, and they had a friend over to join us. She and her daughter are from mainland china and turned out to be semi-interested in the church. We taught them to pray and about the restoration. We have another appointment with them later in the week and hope to get them either baptized here or ready to be baptized when she returns to her home country. We have until the 28th to find out which.

Sister Marsh took a tumble while we were at an old farmhouse outside of town. She slipped and cut her leg badly enough to need 14 stitches. (We hope she is healing!) It was especially heart breaking because we had had two lessons lined up (concurrently) so we were actually going on splits with ladies in our ward to get it done. Needless to say, it got cancelled. Such is life.

We had two investigators at church, which incidentally was Stake Conference (regional church meeting, instead of a regular congregational Sunday meeting).  Hopefully we'll be seeing them again soon.

Still no lessons with the lady we committed to a Dec baptism date... A little stressful because we really need to talk to her about either marrying her BF or them moving out. \ o / We'll see how that goes. We haven't even gotten her to church yet, so struggles all around.

It’s transfer week, and surprise, surprise, since we're only half way through training, we're staying together. Another 6 weeks in Iowa City. We'll see if that change comes Dec 17th.

 All my love,  Christine