Lisa 1.2.13

Hello Family!!!


Happy New Year!!! Hope you all had a wonderful week. We sure did!!! I
always love the holidays as a missionary, but I am also always
grateful when the holidays are over and everybody gets back a on
regular schedule so that we can meet with them agian! Last week I was
talking about how this week was going to be full of miracles. . . Well
guess what! It was!! :) I've learned a lot about recognizing the
miracles that God sends instead of expecting miracles the way that I
want them! ha ha! Oh, the joys of the virtue of patience! :) Lol, let
me explain: About 6 weeks ago I was transferred to Ann Arbor 2nd ward.
I hadn't seen it coming, but took the change and ran with it. The
first couple of weeks were a little rough, but then we had miracles
just happening and prepared people begging us to baptize them! It was
incredible!!! Then, agian, unexpectedly, I was transferred. And I feel
like we are going through the same thing all over again! We are
working hard, praying hard and have been blessed in ways that we never
would have guessed! :) This last week with the holidays everybody has
been gone and we've had a lot of time to find new people to teach.
Tracting isn't always my favorite thing to do and I knew that it was
going to be an incredibly long week if I didn't change my attitude.
So, I prayed that Heavenly Father would help us know where we needed
to be and that my attitude about tracting would improve. :) I have
NEVER tracted so much in my whole life, but I have NEVER LOVED it as
much as I did this week! Every door we knocked on the people were kind
and repsectful (even those that weren't interested.) I've never had
such nice people!! It was such a blessing!!! Saturday night rolled
around and we had already been tracting for almost 5 hours that day,
we knew after dinner that we had another good 3 hours a head of us.
(keep in mind that this if after we had knocked on doors all week
long!) But, we had felt REALLY good about this one street. We layered
up (It's getting PRETTY cold these days!) and headed out. The first
hour or so, we didn't have any success, nobody wanted to listen or
even let us come back. .. I was praying SO hard that Heavenly Father
would help us to find the reason that we were there. We walked up to
this one door and it was my turn. We could tell from all of the cars
out front that there was probably a lot of people here and that they
all seemed pretty busy. I just remember praying to love these people
and let them know how important this message is!! (Important enough
for young men and women to leave family and friends, home and
everything for 2 years to share it with others!! Even on a dark, cold
night in Michigan!) The man opened the door and I shared my tesimony
of the Savior and the Book of mormon. He got a BIG smile on his face
and said, "Hey, I know a Mormon!! His name is Mark Ostraff!!" I was so
shocked!! He actually wants to talk with us!?!? We smiled and chatted
for a few minutes and made some connections. (Mark Ostraff is our
Bishop.) But then he seemed to remember that he had company over and
needed to get back to them. He told us, "Listen guys, I would really
love to visit with you, but I have company over right now! Will you
come by another day??" We assured him that we would, and he wished us
a Happy New year and we moved on to the next house. :) The last week
or so, we have been praying really hard to find a family and we are
hoping that this Man and his family could be the answer to that
prayer!!! If not, I know that Heavenly Father will help us to find
them, I know that they are out there!! :) The other cool part to that
story is that we texted Bishop Ostraff to tell him about this guy and
Bishop told us, "Yeah! I remember him!! He always did show some
interest, but then he moved away! I'm so glad that you guys found
him!!!"

I think (besides the story I just shared!) that the biggest miracle
I've seen this week is my faith has grown so much and my attitude,
especially towards tracting, has improved so much! I'm excited to
start a new year and focus on being the very best ME that I can!! It's
so comforting to know that I have the Savior on my side. He is ALWAYS
there for me!!! I've made it a goal to go completely and thoroughly
through Preach My Gospel again before May. As I've studied it the last
few days, it's been so amazing!!!! This book really does have all the
keys to success, I love how the entire book is based on building and
strenghtening MY faith. It's been amazing to study and see how I can
learn and grow and how I can help my investigators in the process!
It's going to be a great year!!!

One more quick story: We have an investigator who we hadn't seen in
almost 2 weeks, he was in and out of town a lot and we could never
nail down a time to actually meet with him over Christmas break. So,
yesterday we went and heart attacked his door! It was SO fun!!! ha Ha!
We wrote a bunch of our favorite Book of Mormon scriptures on heart
shaped sticky notes and plastered them all over his door. He wasn't
home, so we didn't have to be sneaky, but we drove by last night and
noticed that they were all gone and his truck was in the drive way! We
won't see him until next week, but I hope in the mean time he reads
the scriptures and likes it!! I love being with S Mecham because we
are always giggling and doing something fun. It was nice to break the
norm and do something a little different though!! :)

I hope that you are all doing well and recovering from the Holidays!!
:) Sounds like lots of fun!! That's super exciting that Dee got her
mission call!!! Tell her congrats from me and that I will keep her in
my prayers!! She's going to be a FANTASTIC missionary!!! We are so
blessed to have so many missionaries out in our family!! You are the
BEST!!! I love you all SO much!!! CTR and all the important things!!!

RWLY!

Love you!!
Sister Bishop