What a week! For both home and here it sounds like! I am actually in Billings currently. Monday was a holiday and we had a meeting yesterday, and have ANOTHER meeting in Helena on Thursday so we are in Billings till Friday!
Last Tuesday, the transfer had begun. Transfers are always ridiculous and chaotic. The Cody Elders forgot to bring a bike, left both phones in Cody, and the car that was supposed to follow the transfer vans turned completely the wrong way, so we had to chase them for 30 minutes without a phone to redirect them.
Wednesday was bit better! We went and visited Steve. He is doing AWESOME with his family! They have family prayer and scripture study daily and I introduced them to the "Living Scriptures" cartoons online (remember those?). :) We taught Steve that there will be imperfect members who will offend him at some point of being a member. He replied with, "Oh yeah, I've already been offended by a family member. I just replied to the email with the written introduction to the Book of Mormon." Haha! Awesome!
We helped a family move Thursday morning. Part of that entailed moving a piano down a steep outdoor flight of about 10 stairs. My back was screaming the next day. The highlight Thursday was actually visiting a non-member family who is used to having home teachers. There was a brother/son in the family who was a convert and had home teachers. He recently passed away, so we have been visiting them time to time. The man there is not able to talk to his 2 younger kids and said he has faith and hope to one day see them. We testified that Heavenly Father knows EXACTLY what that feels like because he wants to be able to see us again too.
Remember Beau Brown? He's less-active and named me his "abuser" because I am very straight-foreward with him? Haha he says it lightly, but I didn't sugar-coat anything with him. Well we had a lesson with him before he moves out of our mission. During the lesson he pointed at me and said I was the reason he is on the path to the temple. Obviously it was the spirit through me, but it felt good to hear that I made a difference in his conversion. In a year he plans to go to the temple and I promised I would attend.The next day we helped him move and then we went to a mega garage sale. We bought a table and 2 chairs to eat on. Somehow it fit into our small car!
Sunday we had a sweet lesson with Sharon (the member of the "Restoration Church" in Independence, MI) as well as with an eternal investigator named Marva. We talked about the first few chapters of the Book of Mormon and I think it went pretty well. It didn't occur to me till this visit of why we are instructed to baptize at 8 years old. Christ tells us we need to become as a CHILD. 8 Years old is at the stage of being humble and submissive enough to make the conscious decision to be baptized. Babies don't know better, and you get more stubborn the older you get!
This last Monday we proselyted since today is our p-day. We found Sister Davis' sister who is less-active and are going to teach her! The goal is for all the sisters to be reactivated in order to go back to the temple before the mother passes away.
Yesterday was Mission tour! A member of the First Quorum of the 70, Elder Godoy from Brazil, visited our mission. He's a funny guy! We all sang "Called to Serve" in Portuguese to him. Our mission is #1 in Baptisms and has the least amount of people. Which means we are not good at finding but baptize nearly everyone we teach! Today we went to the temple which was sweet.
I am SO excited that Tawnya got baptized! I so wish I could have been there to support her. There is not a better feeling than seeing someone receive the restored gospel and be forgiven of all their sins. I hope all of you have a great week with Trek! And Jesse got HUGE! Love you all!