Ohio can NOT make up it's mind

Ohio can NOT make up it's mind for what it wants the weather to be.. I don't know why I'm still surprised because it's been that way the whole time I've been here. We have a few bright sunny warm days and then we have days like today-- cold freezing rain and gray skies. I love gray skies though so I'm not complaining about that.

 

We had a pretty good week. We are tracting like crazy fools.. I have no idea how else to find the elect then to just knock on their door! It isn't working yet so we're trying to come up with new ideas for finding. Tracting is so hard too because we serve in farm land so we have to walk FOREVER to get to the next house. It's just not the best way to spend our time. This morning we had a really good companionship study and talked all about finding the elect and what we're going to do to find them. I'm excited to start putting it into play! It will be a process though.

 

 We had an amazing lesson with this family in the ward about miracles. They told us about some of the amazing miracles they have seen in their lives and the 2 daughters started telling us about people they have been sharing the gospel with! We were so excited! They asked what to say when giving someone a Book of Mormon so we roleplayed it with them and it was so fun. They were so excited to share the gospel with people they know! And the best part was to hear their testimonies of how the gospel has made them so happy which is why they want to share it with people they know who need more happiness in their lives. We could all have more happiness in our lives! The gospel is the key to that. Jesus Christ is the center of everything and He's the one who makes real happiness possible.

 

At sites we have been trying to go through all of our contacts that we've met online or on phone calls and organizing. So the last few weeks I have been emailing everybody to just see how they're doing and to see if they'd be interested in learning more or whatever. This past week at sites I had 3 return emails from people all saying they want to learn more and meet with missionaries. It was a huge miracle! I didn't think anybody would return our emails and that we would just end up dropping them. So I can't wait to go back this week and see if they ended up getting in touch with missionaries. Sooooo many miracles happen through the Visitor's Center. It's so cool! And a lot of the time we don't even know what's going on. So I'm glad to know that people are still genuinely interested.

 

Our ward had an awesome chili cook off this weekend. It was a lot of fun and sooooo delicious! And somehow the missionaries became the judges. So we definitely ate wayyy too much. It was cool because out of the 8 missionaries in the ward (3 sets of sisters and 1 senior couple) we all had the same vote along with a random vote. So of course, the winner from last year won again and everybody will be hearing about it for the next year haha. It was sooooo good though!

 

As a stake we have set a goal to do 4 hours of service a week. All of the members and the missionaries. We ask everybody for service opportunities. And one of the members in our ward told us we could do service for her for 4 hours on Sat and help her start her spring cleaning. Hahaha we agreed to help and it was so fun! I love her so much and her house looks awesome. It feels so good to clean and have the place you live be a place where the spirit can dwell. I've seen that in the places I've lived here. The spirit is so much stronger when our apt is clean and organzied and I love that feeling. I am a cleaning fiend now. So great.

 

This girl in my ward is totes going on her mission to Riverside. I'm so excited! Her farewell was yesterday and she did awesome and it's so weird to see her in that place and to think back on when that was me.. I don't like thinking about it because that means I'm almost done but oh my gosh! The things you can learn in 18 months blows my mind!!! I'm excited for all of the people about to start their missions. They have no idea what they're getting themselves into but it's so great :] Missions are the most amazing things in the world and I look forward to being a missionary for the rest of my life.

 

I love youuuuu!

Sister Maynard.