Monday, January 9, 2012

Jan 8,2011

Dearest Family, HOLA!!!
How are you all? From the sounds of it, it had been a fun couple of days the last week or so . . .  with all the flu and colds going around! Hopefully that is all behind you and you are all feeling MUCHO better this week! J
This week has gone SO FAST I can’t believe that it is Monday already! I have been studying a lot about faith this week and how I can increase my faith to find the people that Heavenly Father has prepared for me to teach. Alma 32 has some really good insights, but this is kind of the things that I learned: 1-You have to have a desire. This leads you to the next step: to ACT! So this week has been spent working on increasing my desire and acting! It’s been so amazing!! Some days it is hard to get out of bed at 6:30 in the morning whether you are wide awake or not, it’s intimidating to go tracting and talk to people that you have NEVER met before in your life and teaching lessons to people who are twice your age it scary!! J (Not to complain, but I wanted you to know where I’m coming from!) This week to increase my desire instead of dreading getting up I wake up and think how excited I am to be a missionary today!  I think, “Today I only have 10 hours to find the people that heavenly father has prepared for me! “ We leave our apartment at 11:00 and don’t go back usually until 9:00 at night. It sounds silly but that way I am excited to see the miracles that can happen and I give it my best to work hard every minute for those 10 hours!  This attitude has really made a difference this week! WE FOUND 4 NEW INVESTGATORS!!! This is HUGE!! J We count someone as a new investigator after we have taught them 1 lesson and have a return appointment or after 2 lessons with a return appointment.  Lots of miracles this week!!           
1-      We were able to teach Tom this week even though we thought that we wouldn’t be able to see him for 2 weeks! We were in Manchester having dinner with the Schulte family and then they were going to come to an investigators lesson with us. That investigator cancelled on us and so we decided to give Tom a call.  He didn’t answer, but we left him a message and decided to just show up! We pulled up with Bro and Sis Schulte and see him running frantically around his house turning off lights! Ha ha, at first we were a little worried that he was going to pretend like he wasn’t home, but he did finally answer the door! J  Tom is the vegan guy that we stopped by with the “trespassers will be shot” sign. We left him a book of Mormon last time but he hadn’t had time to read anything. We taught him about our purpose in life and a little about the restoration of the gospel. We were SO glad that the Schulte’s were there, they were really able to relate and share testimonies! (Lessons with Members there are always so wonderful! And the Schulte’s are basically the GREATEST!! (Bro Schulte said that he does know Bishop Olsen, but he wasn’t really sure where he remembered him from!J) Anyways- so we were able to give him some things to think about and set up a time to come back! It was incredible! The spirit was definitely there and we were SO EXCITED!!!
2-      Shirley was our next miracle. She is an older lady that we tracted into and is Lutheran. She is very close with her pastor and very dedicated to her faith. We talked a little about the Book of Mormon the first visit and left her a copy to read. When we went back this week she told us how surprised she was that it was very similar to the bible! She was really excited that we had a lot of the same basic beliefs! She said she was going to continue to read the Book of Mormon and wants to see us again this week! J HOORAY!!
3-      Mark was another tender mercy! We were in Stockbridge and were stopping by former investigators. We stopped by one apartment and a man answered, we asked for the lady that the elders had taught and he told us that his dad had recently moved in and the last lady was long gone! We didn’t even skip a beat! Ha ha! We introduced ourselves as missionaries and told him about the book of Mormon.  At first he wasn’t interested, but then he reconsidered and told us to come back in a few days. We did and were able to get to know him more that night. We taught him about the restoration and the importance of prophets, we explained that we had proof that we have a living prophet today who is called of god! This proof is the Book of Mormon.  He said that he had never really thought of it before but having a prophet really made sense.  He doesn’t read very well, but we are praying that he will read the Book of Mormon and really give God a chance to tell him that it is true! We will see him this week too!
4-      Our last miracle was a man named Jerry. He was another person in Stockbridge, but we had tracted into him. He is older and likes to think abstractly. Ha ha! In other words he uses really big words and sometime some really strange ideas! J We didn’t have a lot of time at his visit but we invited him to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it is true. He really likes our visits and knows that we have something that he wants; I just pray that he has the faith to pursue it.
We have been so blessed this week! We were able to have more members at our lessons which helps not only the investigators to see that there are normal people living the things that we teach, but also helps the members to get more excited about missionary work. We have a great ward and it’s so fun to get to know them better and use their talents to help us spread the gospel! J
Okay- so I know this is getting long and I’m running out of time, but I have a funny story! J Our heater has been acting funny the last few weeks and this week it finally gave out on us! We don’t see our manager very often to tell her cause we are NEVER at our apt. But finally one night we ran into her and were able to ask her to send in the repair guy. It was like 9:15 and she was like, “Oh yeah! No problem, we will have him come over soon to fix it!” Little did we know how soon! J We were in our pj’s and snuggies (The Wrathall’s gave us both a hot pink snuggie for Christmas!! We use it every night! Especially with the heater out!) Anyways, so we are in our pj’s and snuggies and we hear someone knock on the door! Nobody ever knocks on our door, especially at 9:30 at night!! We peeked out the peep hole and there was this sketchy looking man. Sister Burnham recognized him as the repair man so we let him in. It was really funny! He saw us in our snuggies and just kind of shook his head as he headed to the back room to check on the heater. So he figured out what was wrong and told us he couldn’t get us the part until Monday.  He said he could manually turn it on and let it heat the house but then he would have to come back in like an hour to turn if off! Mind you- now it’s like 10:00, and we are super tired!! We told him that we would just bundle up and make it work. We did NOT want to have to worry about this guy coming back at like 11:00! I’m pretty sure that he thought we were crazy but he shut the heater off and left. He said he would be back in the morning if he thought of anything else to try! We joked all night long about him coming the next morning while we were doing our companionship study! How he would feel as we were singing and praying and talking about scriptures. . . .  Well lo and behold!! The next morning right as we were getting out our hymn books guess who shows up!!! Ha ha! We both couldn’t believe it when we opened the door and he was standing there! J We just cranked up the Mo-Tab and read those scriptures extra loud! J We said something to him about it and he was like, “No worries ladies, you just do what you do! I have faith in Jesus too! So, I don’t mind one little bit!” Good news is: we had a really great companionship study with an audience!  Bed news is: I don’t think he is really interested AND the heater is STILL broken! Ha ha! Hopefully it will get fixed today! J
So- I’m not sure if I will have time to write another letter today, so just know how much I love all of you! J You are the GREATEST EVER!! I pray for you every day and show your pictures to everybody that will look! I JUST LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! J
Remember that with faith, you can do anything!! Heavenly father will bless us with miracles as we strive to increase our faith.
Mom- please tell Dona that I’m NOT in Africa!! Ha ha! It shouldn’t be this hard to send me a package! LOL! J Tell her that I love her though and I’m super excited to see what is in this package if it EVER gets here! J

Lots of Love to all of you!!
Love, Lisa

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