week 15

Jan 12, 2016

We have more snow than we have had the past several winters and Blythe, who loves snow, has none in Sunny California. I almost didn’t dare tell her about the snow, but I finally let her in on it this week and she said “I am personally offended!” She isn’t really though, probably just shocked that we are getting so much. She has been teaching a woman (Leslie) with cancer and it looks like she might pass away this week. We are praying for Leslie’s family this week that they will feel the love and tender care of the Lord while they go through this experience.

Blythe with her first companion, Sister Shumway.

She must be making artsy journal entries for every transfer.

Artsy stuff for transfer 2. She is coming up on transfer 3 soon.

So this week there’s been some pretty awesome things. Cevik’s back in town, and we taught him, though it went sort of awkwardly. We’ll be seeing him next Sunday, and we are hopeful we’ll be able to bring one of the couple of members that he knows.

We saw a family that missionaries have been knocking on their door since before I got here with no response. They’re a part member family and the mom (who’s the member) didn’t really want anything to do with the church, though she has several friends in the ward. We talked to the son, Chase, and he was really friendly, and we were there for about 10 minutes just outside talking.

A less active lady we’ve been working with came to church yesterday. She really likes us and has set up multiple appointments which have always fallen through. I didn’t even see for a long time after I got here. But we finally got in this week, though we were on exchange so I wasn’t there, and she came to church and brought her daughter. So I was super excited!

Also, Minoo, who is the one from Iran – we’re hoping to teach her soon and we found out that there’s a guy in the ward who speaks Farsi from his mission! The apartment complex in our area is such a melting pot and these things just keep lining up. It’s just crazy!

I also had my first really beneficial exchange this week. The other comp exchanges I’ve been on kind of felt like they were just filling time. We didn’t make much progress, I felt like. (In case you don’t know what an exchange is, it’s where you and your companion split up and go with your sister training leaders, who are sort of like a Sister District Leader. And they’re supposed to measure your progress and give you some pointers.) The other exchanges I felt like we were just doing it because we were supposed to, but this time, with Sister Fetui (who is awesome) I really felt like she was trying help me in the best way she could. She put a lot of thought and effort into it and it really helped me. It was crazy, though. She was supposed to go on 2 exchanges in 2 days and her Sister Training Leader companion would go on the exchanges with the other two Sisters. So the plan was they would each go with one from each companionship. They had to be done this week, but her sister training leader companion got super sick, and couldn’t do any of them, so she had to do half exchanges with us, for half the day and the other for the second half of the day. And then she would have to do it with the other companionship the next day, but then Sister Robison was too sick (she was in the other companionship) so Sister Fetui didn’t get to do it the second day.

Love you all,
Sister W.