Friday, February 7, 2014

February 3, 2014

Dear Family, and dear friends,
       
Oh goodness! I am so happy to hear about Brookie's birthday and I can't wait to see pictures. I can't believe she is 7 today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY BROOKIE! I LOVE YOU! I have been thinking about Bookie a lot lately and how she will be baptized next year which is so exciting! She is so special.
       
Well this week has been pretty good! Nothing huge has changed or happened. I have had some good experiences though. On Tuesday we took Sister Yorgeson to an appointment with Cody, pretty much one of the best people ever. She is so sweet, but she has been going to the ward in Lander Wyoming because her daughter goes to that ward and she doesn't want to change also. Well after having Sister Yorgeson come and the lesson not going the way we expected at all, at the very end Cody mentions how she wants to try out our ward this Sunday! Such a blessing, it's cool how Heavenly Father works. We had no idea that bringing Sister Yorgeson was the answer to that problem, we just thought they were a great match and would get along. She actually did not make it to church sadly...I don't know what happened but at least she wants to try our ward out, and hopefully in 2 weeks, since next week she works.
       
Another good thing that happened is we found 4 new less actives to start working with :) wahoo. The sad part is one of them doesn't ever want to come back, but she lets us over. She has lost her testimony and it breaks my heart completely, cause she is such a sweet person but her faith is gone. Missionaries, I guess used to work with her a ton but never got anything out of her, maybe we can help, i hope so. All the less actives we found have been offended in some way or another. 2 of them know they need to change and i know they will, and then the 3rd one told us she wont, but we have seen her twice now and she is super excited about reading and getting back into the gospel, just not the church part. I have no worries though, cause I know she will get back.
      
So we have these investigators who at one point did take lessons, like years ago but they have pretty much just become friends with the missionaries. Well we have been trying to fix that situation, but honestly have not been brave enough, so we went and saw them this week, and I was determined to re commit them to taking lessons. I have been working on being courageous and so I asked them, just straight up "would you want to take the lessons again" and for me that took a lot, it is scary! Well immediately the 14 yr old daughter says "yes" and the mom thought for a second and then said "ya that would be nice" so again if we act on our faith we will see blessings. I did not know if they would say yes, but they did! I am so excited and I have realized that just asking blunt straight to the point questions even in situations where you don't know why you should ask, that if you just do it it all works out. I am still earning how to make them flow better and not be weird but anyways it's cool to be courageous. Most of the people besides this family that we work with that I am scared to ask bold questions are less actives. I think it is because they have had months, and even years to stir on a certain principal of the gospel they disagree with and they will be very blunt and sometimes rude with their answers as well as they have some really deep doctrinal questions and I don't always know the answer to! That is such a hard thing to address with less actives, because a lot of what is stopping them from coming back is either they are offended, and won't move past that.  If they disagree with doctrine, and doctrine never changes, and so it's hard to help them move past their issues. I have learned so much being in Riverton.  I think less actives can be harder to work with than investigators!
         
Well enough of that  I will move on.  On Saturday we had some amazing opportunities to serve in the community. In the morning we helped with a winter 5k and held stop signs to stop traffic so runners could cross the roads, then in the evening we helped with the Crab Crack, that is put on by the rotary...a club thing I think. Anyways it was in the Catholic school gym and it was so fun.  We helped serve the dinner with endless crab. We just had fun with it and talked with lots of people as they came though the line. We didn't have a chance to really ever bring up the gospel since I just would put a thing of food on their plates but apparently we made a good impression in the community (I will explain in a minute) It was a blast, they offered us dinner so we could eat and stuff, which we should have taken cause it was crab, but a less active that we were meeting with for the first time was feeding us dinner, so we didn't want to fill up. We did eat some cake though and I ate a couple spoon fulls of the shrimp gumbo. Anyways, so we leave and go to dinner and while we are outside the house we get a call from the lady's husband, and he says "ummm so she got called into work and we can't feed you tonight, Sorry I should have called earlier," WHAT? So lame! We could have had this amazing crab dinner but we chose not to, just for this lady and then they canceled. So we had a kinda bummer rest of the night but that's ok.
        
On Sunday we taught Relief Society and Young Women's combined. We of course taught about missionary work and it went pretty well, (luckily).   Teaching lessons like that still scares me! haha Well anyways we had a couple people mention that they heard from people at the dinner how great we were and they were very thankful. I was happy to hear this because we really want people to notice us in the community and realize we are not that scary. That was such a relief. Well I really can't think of anything else to say! Sorry I feel bad that this is short haha. 
 
I love you all so much and pray for you all the time.  I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that he loves us so much. I know that we have a Heavenly Family who loves us and has provided us with everything we need to return to them eventually. I love this gospel with all my heart and soul and I am always learning more and gaining stronger testimony. I love you all :) Be happy :)
           
                           Love Andrea

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