YAY for being a missionary! What a wonderful yet very long week. I hardly know where to begin and I forgot to bring my planner so I could remember the days. I know I am a bad person for not having my planner on me. Anyway, last week was a lot of tracting to find someone to teach. The investigators that we want to teach are flaking out on us and we can't seem to track them down. We have tried multiple times to have a lesson with them and every time we are five minutes away and they call and cancel. We even had a member that was going to come to the lessons. BHAA frustrating! I think I was able to tell you about the William's family last time? Maybe? Anyway they are a family that we REALLY want to start teaching. We stopped by this last week to visit and gave them a picture of the first vision with a testimony from a family we have in the ward on the back. It was pretty neat. They are still deciding what they want to do, so we will still keep trying. There are a TON of less active families in the ward that we are working hard to reactivate. Lots of families with a couple kids that are members and then the last couple kids who aren't. Weird and both frustrating. We have some really great ward missionaries in the ward that are really starting to get some motivation to share the gospel. Sister Molina had a really awesome experiance that she was so tickled to tell me and Sister Lytle about. She had gone to a orthodontist appointment and gave the assistant a pass along card. It was the first one she had ever given out and she was so excited about it! We are so blessed to have a really great ward that sees the need for sharing the gospel.
We have been doing quite a bit of tracting lately and have had little sucess. A lot of people see our tags and think that we are JW's. Then there are the people that see our tags and immediately say that they are not religous and shut the door. We went tracting the other day in this really trashy neighborhood that gave me the willies but the street was almost done and we just wanted to finish it. A lot of the homes here have gates that you have to go through to even get to the front door and then the screen doors here are the worst ever!! They are completely metal and they have little tiny holes that make it so you can't see in but the people inside can see out. They are awful! And none of the doors have molding around them. They are super uninviting. Seriously if someone caught on to decor molding down here Woodgrain would really start making millions! So anyway, we had a really cool experiance the other day and it totally is worth all the slammed doors. So we were tracting on this long street that we had finished the one side of the week before and went to go finish it and we were walking along and nothing was happening. No one is ever home and everyone who is doesn't want to talk becuase they aren't church goers or they are busy. So we have like seven houses to go and we walk around the corner and the third house in we are walking to the doorway and this little boy opens the door before we even get all the way to the door. He was super cute and told his mom that someone was at the door and then ran away. So before I go on I should probably tell you that I have only knocked on one door and have been the one to start the conversation. I will tell you about that story next. So the Mom comes to the door and we tell her that her little boy is super cute and then words start spewing out of my mouth. I tell her that we are Missionaries from the church and that we have a message about how families can be together forever and all this other stuff and I ended with would you be interested in learning more? And the heavens opened and she said "Yeah sure." I was a little unprepared for that but it was awesome! We ended up giving her a BOM and a lesson 2 booklet. And then we scheduled an appointment to come back this saturday to start teaching her. Sister Lytle and I were so excited. We have been praying for what seems like forever for us to find someone to teach. We are so excited and are crossing our fingers that she doesn't cancel on us.
So the other story...we were tracting and up to this point sister Lytle had always been the one to start speaking at the door. I would give my two cents if the opportunity arose and if she left a gap for me to even say something. Sister Lytle's last companion HATED tracting so they never went and Sister Lytle would always do the talking. So she is just used to having to do all the work and sometimes it is frustrating becuase I have something to say but she won't stop talking so I can never say anything. Anyway, I told her that I would start the door and I am thinking that no one was going to be home, but this 19 year old girl opened the door, and it took my by surprise but I started talking and words started coming out of my mouth and I really didn't know what to say but whatever I did say must have been okay because after I said would you like to learn more she said yes. We found out that her name is Ariel and we gave her a BOM and asked her if we could stop by in a week or so to see if she had read anything and if she had questions. She told us that she was really busy so we couldn't make and appointment but she was happy to let us come over again to see her. The really unfortunate part is that if she is the only one interested in her family we would have to give her to the singles ward elders. Really stinky, but it was really neat that she was interested. We are planing on stopping by this week sometime to go see her. We also were able to share a Family Proclaimation with a guy that fixes pools. He was at his truck on the road and we were talking about the weather and he started telling us about his family. I asked if he had ever met missionaries before and if he knew what we believed about families. He was a really neat guy but he doesn't live in Antelope so we gave him our number if he had any questions and told him that we could get him in touch with the elders in his area. He reminded me a lot of Unlce Chris. Way cool guy!
Sister Lylte and I decided that we want to work on talking to more people, so we bet some elders in our zone that we could get more NNC's than they could. Really silly idea cuz these elders are on bikes and they talk to EVERYONE. Our normal weekly goal is 84 but they always get over 100 so we bet them we could get 130. They were all for it so we will see how this week goes. We are planning on tracting for 2 hours everyday.
I am starting to have slight physical signs of getting a lot of sun. The weather here is so nice. It is starting to get pretty toasty and I have learned that if nothing else skirts are a lot cooler than jeans so I am glad for that. I don't know if I told you that we have what is called suit jacket season here and it is during the winter which is when sisters have to wear long sleaves and nylons. I got here just in time for non suit jacket season so we only have to wear nylons to church, baptisms, interviews with the president, and zone conferences. So if anything I don't really need nylons but those little nylons socky things that you can't see when you are wearing shoes. I am sure Manda knows what I am talking about.
We went and played golf this morning which was pretty fun. There are two elders here that are totally hick and were playing in boots and cowboy hats. Don't worry I have pictures, it's pretty funny. I ended up not playing the last four holes becuase Sister Lytle has never golfed before and not that it is a bad thing but she was taking forever and there was like this old lady golf tournament going on so we had to pick up the pace. I ended up carying her clubs for her and taking pictures. It was really fun, but it reminded my why I love basketball! There is an Elder here that is super fantastic. Elder Owen is 6' 8'' and is going to play college basketball when he gets home...which is in like 3 weeks. He was playing in the church last Monday and he figured out that I was judging his shot. It is HORRIBLE! But somehow the ball makes it into the hoop, so I guess it doesn't really matter. We did get some funny pictures of him lifting up Elder Brown, who is pretty short, to fix the net. Quite a sight.
So I have about seven minutes left on this computer so I better start wrapping it up. I got six letters in the mail the other day and was SO VERY GRATEFUL! Thank you so much for them. I have had a chance to write back to almost all of them so be on the lookout for letters in the mail! Thank you, Thank you for sending them! I prayed a lot before my mission about helping me not to be homesick and my prayers have really been answered. I miss you all so much but I am so happy with the work here. I am really starting to see how quickly the next 17 months are going to fly by. I know that I have been prepared my whole life to do this and I am so glad that I made decisions in my life that allowed me to be able to be here. I have the most wonderful parents who taugh me, and a wonderful family who loves me and for that I am truely grateful. I know the gospel is true and that our Heavenly Father loves us. I will never forget what Grandpa said when he told us all to "Never loose your testimony, it is the only thing that is truely yours." I think about that often and am so grateful that I have a testimony that I am able to share everyday with everyone. I miss you all so much and I love you all ten times more! Please be safe in all you do!
SLY
Heidi
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