hi family!!
this week was awesome! of course I don't have tons to report, my bad
Tuesday we did service at a food bank, which was sooo fun! our district all went, which is Sister Fetuli and I, Sister Broederlow and Sister Webster, and Elder Teter and Peneloza! and they are all sooo much fun, we're all really good friends and joke around, and it makes me so happy to feel like I have friends here! We did some tracting later in the day, and we picked a street to try, but no one was home, or not interested (which is very typical) and we tried on more house on a street next to the one we were on, and we met the nicest lady! she has family that were pioneers, so she was super excited to talk with us about family history, and our missions! she is Catholic, but said she has a lot of respect for the church, and wants to find out what message made her family move from England to Salt Lake! we were SO excited. WE GOT YOU. she was busy the next couple weeks, but she said in two weeks we can come over! i'll be updating you all on that later.
On Wednesday we had exchanges, and so one of the sister training leaders came to our area with me, and sister Fetuli went to another STL's area. it was so fun!! the sister that came here is names Sister Thompson, and she is so fun, we got along really well. We had a lesson with our investigator that day too! it went really well, she is a very spiritual person, so she is very aware how she feels when she meets with us, and interprets that all on her own. she has said many times she will get chills when we teach her, or feel very peaceful and we're just dying like THATS THE SPIRIT!! its awesome. we will teach her again next week, cause she has some deadlines at work, but we are super excited about her.
Thursday we had zone conference, which was super good! it was from 8:30-4 so it pretty much took up our whole day, but I learned a lot!
Friday we had weekly planning, which takes forever, and we visited some people after, but as usual no one was home, so again- not much to report
SATURDAY!! Saturday was SO good. first of all, it was in the 60's and sunny, and so how can you have a bad day when its that beautiful? so in our zone conference, sister Murdock gave a training, and in it she quoted from the talk I think it was by Holland, like 15 years ago she said, about a potato farmer that got called on a mission to grow potatoes in Russia, in an area that had been not producing much. So he went, and grew a ton of potatoes, and people asked him what his secret was, and he said "we needed a miracle, so we prayed for one" and that's what she challenged us to do! pray for a miracle. and we did!
We went to visit a less active family, and when we pulled up we saw a woman with her dog in the field near this families house, so we said our prayer in our car, and went over to talk to her! she has been having a hard time lately, she is recently divorced, and moved in with her mom to help with her health problems. we did our survey, and talked about the book of Mormon with her, and read some verses from Moroni 10 with her, and she was teary eyed! she said she believes things happen for a reason, and she could have been outside an hour earlier, or an hour later. it was so amazing!! so we gave her our card, and a Book or Mormon, and went to the families home. When we walked up, there was a "for rent" sign in the window! so that family doesn't even live there anymore! The woman in the park was our reason for going to that house when we did. when we walked back to our car we could see the woman sitting, reading the Book of Mormon, so we went over and asked for her phone number so we can try and follow up in a few weeks. it was amazing!
When we were tracting, people were SO nice to us!! that never happens!!! one man gave us each a water bottle after talking to us, and another women (who we have a return appointment with) gave us a banana and a bag of popcorn! haha! (those are the picture I sent- if you were confused why we were posing with food)
then Saturday night we had a lesson with a part member family, and we had planned to go in and determine our relationship, and see if we needed to drop them, because they don't keep commitments, and cancel lessons often. When we went in, I just felt like we should not drop them, and I was praying in my mind that sister fetuli would get the same prompting. we sat around the table, and had a very open conversation with where they were at, and the wife (who isn't a member, she is a little standoffish to us) said she enjoys our visits and thinks about the message we share after we leave, and enjoys the peace she feels when we come over. and the daughter (12, not a member) said she likes our visits too! im not explaining it well, but it was SO amazing. we have been stressing over this family, and knowing how to help them, so it was so great to know they actually are benefiting from our being there!
Sunday was awesome too- a missionary from one of the wards had his homecoming talk, and he went to Brazil! It was super fun to hear his experiences and hear him speak Portuguese (for some reason im obsessed with Portuguese? I wonder why?) and we stopped by his open house which was fun, then had some member lessons in the evening.
it was such a good week! I still think about home everyday, and the amount of time I have left is on my mind a lot, but I can see miracles happening and its so amazing. I LOVE Sister Fetuli, I am soo grateful for her, and our friendship that we have. we have so much fun and so many inside jokes of weird things people say or do to us.
I hope Ben had a good birthday!! his party sounded soooo fun!!! I love you all so much!!
Sister Richards
