A crazy week!

Hey y'all!

It's been a crazy week.  There's been so many people we have tried to visit, but people keep canceling their appointments with us, and then people won't answer the phone or respond to texts, and they don't answer the door when we try to stop by.  It's frustrating.  But we have had a few good lessons this week, mostly with less actives in the ward.  Some of them are so close to coming back completely!  That being said, none of those that we are working with came to church yesterday... But we'll keep trying!

We did have an investigator come to church - her name is Brenda.  She lives with one of the less actives that we've been working with. Unfortunately, Maria, the less active, didn't come with her, but Brenda felt like she fit right in. :)  We taught her the "powerful first lesson" which is the restoration, along with an invitation for the investigator to say the closing prayer and an invitation to be baptized, along with a few other things.  She said a beautiful closing prayer, and after, she said she wanted to be baptized, she just wasn't sure how.  We told her we could help with that. :)  She's being baptized at the end of October!  The only thing that will be hard for her is getting to church every Sunday, because she just started a new job and works on Sunday.  But she is prepared, and she wants to be a member.  We're so excited for her!

As for Ron and Maria, and Tish: we didn't get the chance to meet with any of them this week.  They are all to busy for us... but we'll keep trying to get in contact with them.

We've been doing a lot of finding recently.  Well, we've been trying to find people to teach at least.  We go tracting, we try talking to everyone on the street as we walk from place to place, we visit public places like parks and stores and walk around and try to talk to people... no one is interested in the message we have to share.  Which is frustrating, because we know that what we have can bless their lives.  Elder M. Ruesch - I agree.  When other people use their agency to tell us no, it is so frustrating!  But we move forward with faith, hoping that they will say yes to other missionaries in the future.

Saturday was pretty much my worst day yet out here on my mission. Saturdays are usually hardest for us, because it is people's day off and they don't want to set up appointments with us, no one is home during the day, and even if they are home they are too busy to talk to us.  And it rained really hard this past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.  Which wasn't too bad because I LOVE the rain, but  because it was so wet, not many people were outside that we could talk to. But because we knew it was going to be a hard day, we worked really hard on Friday night to plan every hour of the day with a plan, and a backup plan.  And EVERYTHING fell through.  Things we thought would take us a couple of hours (like trying to contact members of the ward that we still don't know well yet) ended up taking 30 minutes at most. No one wanted to listen to our message.  It was a discouraging day. And to top it all off, we had dinner with a part member family, and it was a mess.  We were planning on teaching a FHE lesson after eating, but everything was so chaotic that we didn't even get to share a scripture.  So at 7:00, we were out of ideas, and we were ready to give up.  But we still had 2 hours before we could go back to our apartment and turn in for the night.  Sister Wahlen suggested that we go meet our neighbors, because we've lived in our apartment for 2 months now and we don't know very many people that live around us.  So we went to our apartment to grab some supplies, and in our prayer before we walked out the door, I asked Heavenly Father in desperation to give us just one person who would listen to our message.  We

knocked on a few doors, and either no one was home or no one was interested.  We were SO ready to give up, just call it a day, and try again tomorrow.  But then we knocked on one more door.  A woman answered, and her face lit up.  She said she had seen us around the apartment complex, and she had noticed that we were always happy (which was a relief to me, because I definitely don't always feel happy) and that we had a light in our eyes, and she knew it was because of Christ.  She invited us in, introduced herself as Sandra, and we taught her a little bit about the Book of Mormon.  She is definitely one that the Lord has prepared.  We were so excited to find her, and she was so excited that we had come.  It was a tender mercy from the Lord.  I know that He knows and loves and understands each one of us, and that He will lead us to the right place at the right time.  Sandra is so ready to hear the gospel, and I know that it will bless her life so much.

Oh, also - we got a new Elder.  He's here in Texas while he's waiting for his visa to Africa.  So now we have 5 missionaries in the Westlake ward - a trio of Elders and Sister Wahlen and me.  It's pretty sweet - must be that there's a lot of work to do here!

I love y'all so much!  Thanks for the love and support.  And know that I love you and pray for you all the time!

Sister Ririe

Alma 26:27

P.S.  Sorry I'm so bad about sending pictures... the truth is, I'm not so good about taking pictures... but here's a few. :)

1. We finally got everything together - a map (pieced together from google maps print-offs, a ward directory where we write down everything we know about a person/family, and a whiteboard where we can write what we want to focus on for everyone we teach. It's awesome.

2. Proof that it really is this hot in Texas... yup, 110 degrees.  In the beginning of September.

3. They say Texan sunsets are awesome.  I prefer the mountains, but this one was pretty good.  The picture was taken at a park where we go contacting.

4.  Sister Wahlen and her "holy bag"... she had to get a new one because she used that one to shreds.  :)