Week 20

What a cold week! And its supposed to get colder! Grrrrr. I am not looking forward to it but I will survive. This week has given me more things to add to my list of reasons I won't live in Illinois. It is so much colder here. I thought I knew what cold was, but I was wrong. The humidity here makes everything so much colder. 

Tuesday we visited Virginia. She is doing well, but her health is not helping her. :( She is still going strong and I love hearing her testimony. We got to see Jonathan that day too. We tried to help him understand the idea of baptism with proper authority. He has already been baptized and loved his experience and with the language barrier, it makes it harder to help him understand. We had dinner with the bishop's family which was wonderful.

 

Wednesday we finally took a day off for Sister Edgel. She had been sick for the past week and she hasn't really done anything for her health. I think Heavenly Father really provided a way for her to get better. Our appointment for Tuesday night as well as Wednesday morning cancelled on us and we weren't able to makes solid plans for Wednesday. I am so glad that we were able to find time for her to rest. While she slept in, I still went through the normal morning schedule, and i organized the whole member area book which felt good to get done. I was able to clean a lot and I enjoyed reading and studying more. It was really good. And now Sister Edgel is doing much better. Surprisingly I have been able to stay away form getting sick. I hope that it stays that way. 

 

We were able to meet with Jonathan again and it was a wonderful lesson. He said that he wants to get baptized! We told him that he has to come to church for at least three weeks and he misunderstood and thought that he could get baptized after three days. it was funny. His parents go to a different church and so I hope that we can help him come to our church. He is 18 and a Junior in high school with no car or driver's licence since he is from the Congo. He didn't come to church this week. It is also hard to talk to his parents because they are never really home. We have no idea how his parents are taking us meeting with him. They speak even less English than Jonathan so when we do see them it is hard to really get to know them . i hope that we can help  Jonathan come to church and really help him progress. 

 

We picked up a new investigator this week! It was great! We had met Bianca tracting and she was a little interested. She recently moved here and is looking for a church for her children. We were able to teach her the Restoration and give her a book for Mormon. I really hope that she keeps her commitments and that we can continue teaching her. her story is quite amazing and she is so nice. 

On Friday we went to visit a recent convert, Indea, that moved into our ward. When we went to go visit her though we found out that she was in the hospital. She has multiple health issues. We went to the hospital and we felt so out of place. We didn't' know where we were going and it was so quite. We eventually found her though and talked to her for a little while. Hearing about her story really touched me. She has been through so much that I could never even imagine going through. I think it was Heavenly Father's way of helping me realized how blessed I am and how wonderful my life really is. I truly feel blessed to have this gospel in my life. I am fortunate enough to have grown up in the gospel so I didn't have to search very far to find the truth. 

 

Saturday, our cars had to be parked in the morning. Every once in a while the District Leader will tell us that we can't drive our cars because of weather conditions and for safety. But we still wanted to do missionary work so we walked. and walked and walked. Sister Edgel had a shovel in her hand and I had a car scraper in my hand. We decided to shovel Virginia's drive way, but when we got there it had already been done. We had walked for about an hour in a foot of snow to get there to find out that Brother Allan had already done it. haha We were on our way to the Allan's house for the Missionary Coordination meeting when we got the message that we could drive our cars. It would have taken us another 40 minutes to walk back home so we just walked to the meeting instead. Brother Allan joked telling us that he saw us walking that morning. After the meeting, Joanna, his daughter, drove us home. Later that day we visited Robin, a recent, convert, who is preparing to go to the temple. We watched Mountain of the Lord with her and it was really great. 

Sunday was great as always. I love being able to go to church and be surrounded by great members. We had dinner at the Goodrich's home and they had a yummy dessert called earthquake cake. I really liked it. This week has been good even though it was a little slower than the past weeks. I am still so grateful that I can do this missionary work. it truly is a blessing. Love you all!!!!!

 

"Consecration is the only surrender that is also a victory" -Neal A. Maxwell