Week 45

Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 9:44 AM

Well first off, I stinking forgot to say in the last email...... HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BEST FATHER IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!!!!!! Do know that on your birthday, I wished you happy birthday ;)

second,

Hey family, :)

Hard to believe it's almost May...I'm not sure what keeps happening...perhaps I blink too often or too many ospreys fly by (inside joke) I don't know, but April just disappeared like nobody's business.  I got letters from mom, grandma, Holly, and Stephanie H.  Thanks all.  Oh, mom and dad, can you track down my friend from bananas who served a mission in Mexico that joined the church in the singles ward?? I'd like to write him :)  

Well, another week, come and gone, we are crazy busy all the time...there's not enough time in the day to do all what we need to do, Tuesday this week is going to be nuts.  We have like 6 or 7 appointments and we're helping someone move.  God's trying to help us learn how to make sure our lessons stay under 45 minutes ;) haha  

Let's see...hmmmm...honestly, these emails are probably going to be like 2 sentences long by the time 2 years rolls around... I never know what to say.  We have a baptism coming up on the 11 of May.  So that's ridiculously exciting.  She's so ready and solid.  It's great. Definitely one of those who only hadn't joined the church because she "did not know where to find it" and yes, it came from working through members. ZING! another one for the members vs tracting score...hmmmm...if I didn't know better, I'd say that working through members is infinitely more effective than trying to find people on our own...perhaps that's why Elder Bednar calls missionaries full time teachers and members full time finders ;)  Here's an interesting thought that y'all can use for your own purposes.  This girl who's related to someone in the branch just entered the MTC and she's going to a non-proselyting state side mission.   The only lessons she teaches are basically the ones that the members set up for them. What if every mission was like that?? Perhaps, we, as members of this church, should convince ourselves that they all are... food for thought that you may feel free to share with anyone who is hungry :)

We really have seen some miracles this past week with following the spirit.  Here's 2 to build y'all up :)

1) we were driving down this busy street when we saw a lady outside that works at this store on the side of the road.  We'd talked to her before and everything.  As we drove by, we commented on the fact that we seem to see her outside all the time when we drive by for that 2 seconds every so many days...we said maybe God was trying to tell us something.  So, we decided to flip around and go talk to her.  We did, and it was an amazing experience.  We talked with her for a long time.  She shared some things that she said she doesn't really share with anyone, not really even with herself, and she also said that she felt something that she hasn't felt in a long long time while she was talking with us.  She was a precious daughter of God unknowingly crying out for help on the inside and God knew it.  It's a good thing we didn't just keep driving to go home and have dinner or something.

2) We were driving down another street, and we drove by a lady raking up some leaves.  It's impossible to stop the car every single time you see someone outside when you're driving but for some reason, we decided to actually stop this time and go see if we could help.  She, like everyone, said she was alright and didn't want us to get our clothes dirty...I can't tell you how many times people say that and I tell them, "these are our work clothes :)"  So we helped anyways, whether she wanted us to or not.  This gave us the opportunity to share about who we are and what we do.  She just "happens" to be in between churches right now.  Her past one wasn't fulfilling her spiritual needs, and we just "happened" to drive by that day after an appointment "happened" to fall through and we had "happened" to set a back up plan that sent us up that street that we wouldn't have normally taken.  Wow...that's a lot of coincidences ;)  God sure is lucky when it comes to Him accomplishing His work and His glory...or wait...maybe there's something more than luck involved ;)

Anyways, stay strong in this gospel for it is the only source of true happiness :)

Love,

Elder Patty