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.