More Changes

This week has been crazy!!! First of all we got an awesome referral from a member in our ward. The referral was for Lou who is Haitian but he has grown up in the U.S. Basically I was pretty excited becuase he is the first person I have met on my mission that speaks french. We went over and got to teach him part of the plan of salvation (some of his family members died in the earthquake in Haiti a few years ago) It was such a great lesson, he is so humble and he had lots of questions and you could tell that he was open to listening to everything we had to say. He is a college basketball player so we have only seen him twice since he has a crazy schedule. Then we found out that he is 20 so we will have to give him to the singles ward elders. But it was great to meet him and to get to teach him a little.

Also this week we had a funny experience when we were knocking. We knocked on this lady's door and she let us come in and talk to her. As it turns out she was like 92 and so she kept repeating herself becuase she couldn't remember what she had already told us (stuff about how she used to sing in the Salvation army band and how her son lives near by and she can pay her own bills!). So my companions start trying not to laugh because the situation is just ridiculous and so finally I just jumped up and shared a scripture with her and asked if we could pray with her. During the prayer my comps were still trying not to laugh and then as we made our way to the door as she kept telling us the same three stories over again. All in the average day of a missionary I guess.  T

his week we also had tune-up training (for trainers and their trainees) which was really good. We have a new AP and he is a really good missionary. Then we had zone conference which was about teaching with power. Also we have been teaching the after baptism lessons to a 16 year old recent convert named Ally. We took one of the other young women with us and it was a really good lesson. Ally has started going to seminary and stuff and I love how excited recent converts are to learn everything they can about the gospel.

We had a blitz this week in our area (where all of the missionary in the zone work in one area for a couple of hours) It was really good and we met a Jehovah's witness that we talked to for a while. We have run into Jehovah witnesses beofre but usually it is just when we are knocking and we awkwardly see them going around knocking in the same neighborhood. This guy we met outside of a yogurt shop and he was really nice. He knows a little bit about mormons and he said that he read the book of mormon and he knew that it was inspired. But he said that he had been called and chosen as one of the elect that will be saved and now he is waiting to be taken since he is no longer of this world. I've heard weirder before and I think it was just because I don't really know what they believe. But anyways the point of me saying this is that this guy randomly opened up and told us his life story. Sister Perry (who i was out with ) and I were talking about how this happens to us quite a lot. People that we talk to randomly open up to us which you wouldn't think because we are complete strangers who are just walking up and talking to them. Probably because we are representing Jesus Christ and people can feel the spirit when they are talking to us. So anyways it was just cool to think about.

We also got to go to our ward's trunk or treat this week which fun especially because we have to be in at 6:00 on halloween and we have to deep clean our apartment for 3 hours. But the craziest thing that happened this week was that they re-aligned all of the ward boundaries in our stake!! So bascially half of our ward isn't in our ward anymore. We are kinda bummed becuase we are losing a lot of the active families that we love a lot. Also Viv is in a complete other ward so we won't be able to teach her anymore. As of right now we don't even know what ward we are in anymore so it will be interesteing to see how everything works out. Its just weird having all of these changes in the middle of the transfer especially because I was finally getting to know the ward really well.

Overall it was kind of a hard week just because the work has been going really slow in our area and we haven't had a ton of time to proselyte because we have had a ton of meetings lately. But I was also thinking about how grateful I am to be a missionary. Heavenly Father has blessed me so much with helping me to overcome a lot of my weaknesses and to become a better missionary. He has surrounded me with a lot of good people to help and encourage me and we have been in a great ward. I just really feel like this is exactly where I am supposed to be right now  in my life and I am just grateful that Heavenly Father has guided me up to this point to where I am. Being a missionary has blessed my life in so many ways by helping me to become a better person and to have a better relationship with my Savior.

Anyways I love you all and hope that you have a good Halloween!!
-Sister Washburn