Happy Memorial Day!

Pictures of Sister Ririe at Zone conferences this week

Hey y'all!

This week - great. :)  SO much good stuff happened.  Where to start...

Houston.  It's great.  Except for the bugs.  And now that it's officially summer here, they are all out in full force.  Including the mosquitoes and fire ants - no fun.  Basically I smell like bug spray ALL the time, because if I don't, I come home with a bazillion new bites.  But that's alright - we survive.  

On to more spiritual and missionary matters (it's funny - at Zone Conference (more on that later) Sister Pingree gave each of us a cute little picture to put on our walls with a whole bunch of little sayings of how to be a good missionary - stuff like "smile" and "talk to everyone" and "wear your black name tag with honor."  One that had to make us laugh was "ignore the weather" ... kind of hard to do, when you're outside in the heat and humidity pretty much all day... but we do our best. :)  )  Now that my random tangent is over, I'll REALLY move on to the more spiritual and missionary matters of the week.

First miracle... Wes and Kelly came to church!!!! we were able to teach them this past week, and invited them to come, and they said yes, and then they actually came, and loved it. :) So for the first time since Robert was baptized, Memorial Springs had an investigator at church.  Things are moving forward - slowly but surely.  We're meeting with them again this week - Wes said he'd feed us barbecue, so we're excited.  And of course there will be plenty of gospel teaching too. :)  He's excited to learn, and Kelly is excited to be more involved, which is great.  It was awesome - at church, we sat with them (of course) so we could be there to kind of explain what was going on during the meetings.  It was fast Sunday, because we have stake conference next week, and I turned to talk to Wes to see that Kelly was already answering his questions.  She knows it all, she just hasn't been to church in a while.  I think she felt good to be back. :)

On a sadder note - We think Candy and Karen dropped us... they've been meeting with Jehovah's Witnesses for the past few months, and after their weekly appointment with them, Candy cancelled their meeting with us... we think the JWs convinced them to not meet with us anymore... :/  we'll try by a few more times, and see if we can't meet with them again.  When we met with them before, they said they had a lot that the JWs believed in that didn't make sense to them - I think we can answer some of those questions, if they give us the chance.

We were able to see Jo and Lesa again, finally!  Jo has been in the hospital for the last month or so, so we haven't been able to visit her.  But she's out, and doing well. :)  She's a sweetheart, I love visiting them! :)

Zone Conference was absolutely amazing!  I always love meetings with bunches of missionaries and President Pingree speaking to us.  It's weird to think that President PIngree only has about a month and a half left... I will miss him and his family!  But I'm sure the new mission president will be great too.  During Zone Conference we had great discussions about learning and working to please God instead of pleasing man.  It is SO important to focus on pleasing God, especially as missionaries, where we are called to be His servants in spreading the Gospel.  We aren't called to tell people the things they want to hear - we are called to spread the Gospel; some people call it hard, but it really is the thing that will lead them, and us, to lasting happiness.  

Each Zone Conference we have the opportunity to prepare a 3-5 minute talk - the subject for this meeting was "What have I learned from studying the Atonement in the Book of Mormon?"  Each of us prepare our talk, and then whoever is conducting announces the lucky few that will get to speak during the conference. ... yup, I was one of the lucky few... I thought I would be off the hook because I had been asked to give the closing prayer... guess not.  But it was good - I love reading the Book of Mormon, and as a missionary I have learned so much about the Atonement.  It was neat to share what I've learned with my fellow missionaries, even if it did mean I had to stand in front of everyone - still not my most favorite thing to do.  But I'm getting more used to it. :)

I'm running out of time - because of Memorial Day, the place that we usually email is closed, so there's only one computer for the two of us...  But I love y'all so much, and I hope you have a great week! :)  The gospel is true!!  I know it. :)

Sister Ririe

1 Nephi 6:5