Week 66 - The Ups and the Downs.

July 26, 2010


Hi all my loved ones!
It has been quite an adventuresome week! A lot of cool miracles and a lot of big disappointments. I'll start off with the bad news first and finish off with the good news. That seems like a good way to work it.
Sad news.......Karen decided not to be baptized :( She called us on Thursday and left a message saying that she didn't feel her testimony was strong enough and didn't want to be baptized anymore. Once we got the message, we called her back and ran over to her house as quickly as possible to talk to her. We visited with her for about an hour and a half trying to help her resolve her concerns, but no luck. She wants to continue trying out other churches and continue reading the Book of Mormon and praying. It's so sad!!! I hate when Satan gets his way! Grrrrr. Like Natalie told me one time though, I think we CAN throw Satan down and stomp him on his head with a little faith and love! :) ( I use that all the time now. Thanks Natalie!) She'll eventually come around. I don't know if it will be in the near future or way down the road. But she'll get there. She's had too many confirmations from the spirit to really deny the truthfulness of the church. I think she's just scared at the moment. Besides that bad news, we had SUCH a hot week this week, with tons and tons of humidity. It was almost a killer. One afternoon, we didn't have anything else to do to stay out of the heat, so we tracted all afternoon. Had dinner, then tracted again out in the heat. I was glad to have that day be over! hahaha. Good ol' missionary life.
Alrighty, now for some good news. We met with Elizabeth on Tuesday and had a GREAT lesson with her. When we told her about the first vision, she was like "Why have I never heard this before??" It was great :) She was excited to read from the Book of Mormon and continue learning more. She's awesome. But a little minor sad news....we haven't been able to get a hold of her since then. Hopefully she's still reading and doing great.......we'll catch up with her sometime!
Our investigator Jess is doing really well. She's a lot of fun! Her and her husband Jacob (who is a member) had a little bit of a hard/emotional week this past week but we taught them the plan of salvation and I think it brought her a little more hope. They both committed to reading the Book of Mormon together, so Jacob can help her understand and we should be meeting with them this next Wednesday. Jacob's mom, Sister Benedict (who gave us Jess as a referrel), called us yesterday and told us how she is impressed with how Jess is maturing and she is seeing a lot of good changes in her. Good! That's what we like to hear! :)
One other pretty cool thing that we experienced this week. Sister Westbrook and I had noticed on a previous progress record that sisters had visited a less-active family named the Emel's. Sister Westbrook had never heard of them before so we decided to go stop by and visit. They let us in and talked with us for a good amount of time! They are great people! They used to be very active about 7-8 years ago but let themselves get lazy and just stopped coming. They have 2 sons that are still very active in another part of Pennsylvania though. I guess they lived in a branch and he was ward clerk and elders quorum president at the same time and she was relief society president and they got burnt out really fast. And I think some of their inactivity is from being offended too. Anyway, they were tired of serving so they just stopped coming when they moved to this area. Sad huh? I know sometimes we can be over-worked, but that's when we learn how to deal with it and talk with the bishopric when we need a change. We invited them to come to church and even brought over another couple in the ward to meet them. Which they hit it off right away and they seem like they will be good friends! Yay. Hopefully we can start visiting them on a regular basis and help them come back to activity!
So good things are happening despite the challenging time too. I still absolutely love it here in State College! It's so much fun and we are (usually) so super busy! It's great! :) Love you guys a whole lot! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU GOT MY TRAVEL ITINERARY ALREADY! Sick. Well I guess I'll see you guys soon enough. Have a great week!
Love, Holly