Hey y'all!
So, transfers came and went, and Sister Wahlen and I are still in Westlake.
I'm so happy - I feel like I still have so much that I need to learn
here. I've learned so much, but there is always room to learn more.
Especially while on a mission. But here are a few life lessons
learned from my first transfer:
1. Write it down! You think you will remember, but you won't. Especially
when you're meeting a bunch of new people every single day. Names and faces and
conversations all start to blur together. Sister Wahlen and I have had
fun these past few weeks trying to remember everything and write it all down.
It's way easier to just do it from the beginning. We're trying to
be awesome record keepers now.
2. Make good habits from the beginning. It's a lot easier than
trying to fix it later. Like the whole record keeping thing...
3. Be happy. Even when it is really, really, really hard.
Happiness is a choice, and it is always better when you chose to be
happy. Being unhappy doesn't really change anything about the situation, so why
waste the time?
Now that we've been here for a transfer, we kind of know what we're doing.
The area is established, the foundation is set, now it's time to really
get to work and find people to teach. We have a few investigators, but we
know that there are so many people here who are prepared to learn the gospel.
We just have to find them. And that's the hard part. Sister
Wahlen and I are really good at finding people that we can't teach - either
because they live in a different area, or are moving within the next week or
so. And the really awesome potentials that we have that do live in our
area are living in really tough circumstances that make it hard for us to meet
with them... it's rough. But we're trying our best, and the Lord will
make up for the rest. I love Luke 1:37 - with God anything is possible.
Ron is doing well - we hadn't seen him in a while, and we were planning
on calling him that evening (Wednesday), but he beat us to it - he called us!
Which is awesome - we've never had anyone that has wanted to meet with us
so badly that they call us to set up a time. He's awesome. Unfortunately,
his wife Maria wasn't going to be able to be there, so we had to scramble
around to find a member, because he wanted to meet with us on Thursday evening.
So we had about 24 hours to find a member that could go with us.
All the ward missionaries were busy, and so were the sisters who said they could come out with
us anytime... so about 2 hours before we were supposed to meet with him, we
were running out of options, and we called the relief society president, who
said she could come with us, which was a HUGE miracle. So she came with us, and
we had an awesome lesson. We taught the restoration, and he told us about
the experiences that he's had that has led him to this point - meeting with us.
He loves reading the Book of Mormon, and he really wants to come to
church, unfortunately his wife, and the rest of his extended family on both
sides, is very firmly Catholic, and she wants to go to that church on Sundays.
We invited him to pray to ask if the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and
he said a beautiful closing prayer. Sister Wahlen and I think that he
knows it is true, now we just have to get his wife on board. And we think that
the change scares him - he has been Catholic his whole life so that is all he
knows. But we'll keep working with him. He said that he loves meeting
with us, so hopefully we'll get to teach his whole family pretty soon!
We didn't have any of our investigators at church yesterday, unfortunately.
But a few of the less actives that we have been working with came!
Hopefully as we continue to work with them, we will be able to help them
continue to come. We're trying to help them find friends in the ward that
can help encourage them to come.
Thanks for the love and encouragement! I hope y'all have a
good week! Good luck with everything! I love y'all!
Sister Ririe
3 Nephi 9:14
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