Miracle Miracle Miracle

Hey y'all!

This week has been absolutely full of miracles.  :D I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!  First of all... ROBERT IS BEING BAPTIZED THIS WEEK!!!  We met with him and Melanie and all of Melanie's kids (they are with her for their spring break) on Saturday, and finalized everything.  He is SO excited and SO prepared and SO ready to make this amazing change in his life.  And we are SO excited for him too.  :)  We talked about the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and how he's only a week away (well, he was a week away when we taught him last, now he's even closer!) from receiving that amazing gift.  He texts us every once in a while, telling us what he's studying and how he's feeling the spirit when he reads the scriptures and listening to conference talks and stuff like that, and he can't wait to be able to feel the spirit all the time. :)  He is so ready.  And the gospel will bless his life so much!  I'm so excited for him!  We were discussing in ward council yesterday about everything we need to do to make it happen, and the way that the ward is willing to help with everything really shows how excited they are to have a baptism too. :)  Robert is going to make an amazing member!  Melanie is doing great - she's excited to have her kids with her this week, and she and Robert are really learning how they can best help and support each other.  This Saturday... it's going to be great! :D

Second miracle for the week (these are in no particular order, just so you know) : We were tracting in a trailer park on Wednesday, and after going down a whole row of trailers without anyone wanting to listen to us, we were about to head to a different area.  But something told us "just one more row."  So we did, and the 2nd door we knocked on, the couple let us in!  We talked to them for a little bit, and were able to share a short message.  We'll continue to try and visit them.  And then, here's the really amazing part, we knocked on the next door, and they let us in too!  Two doors, in a row, and we were let inside and able to share a message!  Miracle!  This 2nd couple that let us in were Jehovah's Witnesses, and they didn't just want to bash with us!  I'm not saying that all JWs are terrible people or anything, but most of the ones we run into just want to Bible bash with us... but these two let us in and let us share a message, because they go door to door every weekend and they know how it feels to be turned away over and over and over again.  They aren't super interested in learning more, but we were able to plant a seed there. :)

Next miracle: so, remember Brehash, that guy at the gas station?  The one Brother Rackleff gave a pass along card to and he called in and got a Book of Mormon?  Well, we went to the gas station again this past week and he was working.  So we got the chance to talk to him, and he's read the whole Book of Mormon already!  And he really liked it!  He asked if we had any more scripture that we could give him, so we explained that we believe in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and he asked if he could have a Bible.  I'm not quite sure what his religious background is... we've only been able to talk to him those few times while he's working.  But we said we'd bring him a bible and invited him to church.  Later in the week he texted and said he wouldn't be able to come this week, but he said he'd come sometime in the future.  I feel like he's kind of holding us at arm's length... but slowly and surely we're getting there. :)  We'll keep in contact, and hopefully we'll be able to start teaching him soon.

Another miracle:  We've been trying to get in contact with a potential investigator (this one's from Brother Rackleff too - he is the best member missionary ever!)  We (both us and Brother Rackleff) have been trying to get a hold of him for about a month now.. he's a busy guy.  He lives in the one area that we hardly ever go, but we were having dinner with  Bishop Nordgran and his family yesterday, and this guy, his name is Abi, lives right across the street from him.  So we got a ride home from church with the Nordgrans, they dropped us off in the neighborhood and we went to try and contact Abi.  He wasn't home.  So we went to go do other stuff in the neighborhood while we waited for dinner to be ready.  As we turned the corner onto the Nordgrans' street on our way back, Abi pulled into the driveway!  So we were able to talk to him!  He is interested in learning more, but we weren't able to set something up right then because his schedule is so busy.  But we exchanged numbers, and hopefully we'll be able to meet with him soon. :)

Let's see, what else happened this week?  We were invited to attend the Laurel mutual activity on Wednesday night - they had a missionary activity where they studied and learned from Preach My Gospel, had a Q&A session with us, the missionaries, and did some role play - it was a lot of fun. :)  We're trying to set up a time where we can take the Laurels on splits tracting with us - that would be great. :) Good for the Laurels to get some experience, and good for us, because there are always awesome miracles that happen when we work directly with the members.  So we're hoping to set that up for an activity sometime in April.

On Saturday at around 2pm, we got a call from Brother Beckstead, (he's 1st counselor to the Bishop) ... he had forgotten to find speakers for church... so guess who he called... yep, the missionaries.  So, as soon as we got home that night (which was around 9:30, because we had our lesson with Robert and Melanie that night), we quickly planned and started on our talks - each was supposed to be about 15 minutes long, and we had less than 24 hours notice... and, on top of it all, it was daylight savings, so we had one hour less of sleep... lets just say we didn't get to bed exactly on time that night, and we were still writing our talks between ward council and the time church actually started.  But we were able to get them done, and we gave (hopeully) good talks. :)  Luckily for me, the theme was "trust in the Lord" which is what I spoke on for my farewell, so I was able to take a lot of the quotes that I had used for that talk and use them in my new talk.  So, in less than 24 hours, without lds.org, Sister Bonner and I were able to each give a 15 munute talk.  Miracle. :)  Do I ever want to do it again?  No.  But it was great.

Well, I think that's all for this week - there's a great week to come. :)  I love y'all and hope you have a great week!

Sister Ririe

Romans 13:12