Hello friends. It's been a solid week. I was able to do some lovely yardwork at Chuck and Joyce's house while in Malone on exchange. They're a super awesome old couple who go to the branch in Malone, I think I talked about them in an email a while back. Anyways, helping them prep their yard for winter reminded how grateful I am to be able share the opportunity of doing all the yardwork back home, with my sisters. Such a tender mercy.
On Thursday-Friday I was on exchange with Elder Little. He's in the Malone East area with Elder Hill. Elder Hill came out with me, and Little was a transfer before. So, between the two of them, they have minimal experience. And sadly, this was very apparent as we were on exchange. I pointed out to Elder Little that we needed gas, and reminded him several times. So, when the car started beeping and freaking out because it had no gas, we luckily were like 100 yards from a gas station. So we were able to get gas before a complete disaster. However, this detour, made us 15 minutes late for a lesson, where they had invited a member. The person we were teaching was a member, baptized in the 80's, but hasn't been to church since then. And considering the skunky smelling "cigarette" she was smoking when we walked in, she'd forgotten at least a few key principles. The lady is about 70, and can't walk. The member who had come with us was expecting it to be a sit down and teach kind of lesson, but we were standing, while the TV was blaring, the 3 pitbulls were barking, and the other 2 people in the house were yelling at each other. It wasn't really a "teaching environment"... The poor member they had invited, and who was the one who would be giving this lady a ride to church, was so uncomfortable. It was a rough "lesson", and the member lady said "that is what we call a hopeless situation"... So, the evening was off to a great start. Our final appointment was with the coolest lady in the world. She is being baptized this Saturday. She's the most golden investigator we've ever heard of. She is 100% on board with tithing, she quit smoking, coffee, and tea cold turkey about a month ago, and hasn't relapsed once. She was saying in our lesson, where we went over baptismal interview questions, that she'd "been looking for a church for 15 years, and she's finally found the one." It was so cool, she is the nicest lady. She's in her 70's, and is so kind. It was cool to see that it is in fact possible, to find a golden investigator. We had a great lesson, even though the Malone Elders had forgotten to confirm the appt... It was a unique exchange... And when I talked to Elder Davis, who was with Elder Hill, he said we needed to pray for Little and Hill. They haven't picked up an investigator in a few weeks, and even though it's 70 degrees at night still, Elder Little wears a coat, hat, scarf, and gloves. And Elder Hill literally carries a lantern, like a massive camping lantern, as they tract. Pray for those fellas.
The (second) coolest experience this week was our lesson with Ana yesterday. Idk if I shared how we found her yet, so here it is. We were tracting a street, and literally nobody wanted to talk to us. Until Ana's house. Her daughter, who's 16 answered, and acted like she recognized us and said "oh hey guys! come on in!" then she ran and got her mom. They acted like they knew us, and were super excited to see us, but they were busy at the time, and told us to come back Friday. We went back Friday, and Isabella (the daughter) had just got home from school. She said her mom had just run to the store, and that Sunday would be best. At this point, we were gettin a little worried that the first time they were a little confused, and didn't want us to come back. However, we showed up Sunday, and Ana answered the door, with her friend Angie. The house had like 10 teenage girls in it, bc both Ana and Angie have a 16 year old daughter, and they had friends over. Luckily, Ana and Angie told them to all go downstairs so we could talk. We taught the Restoration, AND the Plan of Salvation. They had about 1000 very good questions we were able to answer on the spot, and they both took a BoM and said they would read, and would make their husbands read as well. Both Ana and Angie's families attend the New Testament Church, and they share 95% of our standards, and many beliefs. But when they found out about the First Vision, and the restoration of the Priesthood, they were genuinely surprised and wanted to know more. It was such a good lesson, and Ana invited us over for dinner on Friday, as long as we could talk about Christ and our Church. We were more than happy to oblige. Their last question was "is this a meeting you two would fist bump after? Like was it good?" You better believe we fist bumped on their porch. Pray for those two families, they are as golden as we've found
in 12 weeks.
The other awesome thing that happened this week was one that was supremely awesome. On Friday, we drove down to Potsdam, crammed Davis and me, the Canton Sisters, and the ZL's into the truck, and drove to Utica, where we spent the night in the mission home, and then we spent
at the coolest meeting I've been to since Elder Bednar walked into the MTC. We were able to shake hands with Elder Gary E Stevenson, and Craig C Christensen of the Presidency of the Seventy, and then they both spoke to us, and holy cow it was so cool. Definitely an awesome meeting. So awesome in fact, that Elder Manley crashed the truck in the parking lot, immediately following the meeting. That was a bit awkward. The ZL's were leaving the truck in Utica, and swapping to a different car. So immediately following the HUGE group picture we took, they ran out to go swap our stuff into the other car, so we could hit the road. And Elder Manley drove the back end of the truck right into some Sisters' Subaru. So, as literally every missionary in the mission came outside, the first thing we saw was Elder Manley walking around very stressed, Elder Wallentine looking very sad, and Elder Lee (the vehicle coordinator) laughing while also being angry. It was an awesome day.
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