Amazing finding miracles

It's been such a crazy week, Christmas holidays are always interesting as a missionary. People have the most free time they have all year and yet are the absolute busiest lol but it was great. Highlight was Robin getting confirmed on Sunday! Especially when he told us after that about 10 people had told him to hold off till next week because his wife was too sick to come to church. Thankfully his wife kicked him out the door and sent him, so he didn't have that postponed.

We've been having some pretty amazing finding miracles as of late. I told Sister Wester I must be really thick, because I have to have the same lesson again every day- be diligent. As Sister DeRuvo always said, I'm so good in theory at this, but the application....not so much. But every time I am I see blessings. For example, the other day we were tracting for a few hours- pretty much the first time ever we've had both the time and the health to do a large chunk of finding time. And it stunk. Hahaha we both felt so rusty and there were only some people answering, fewer willing to talk long enough to even hear what we were doing, and no one interested. So after about 2 hours we were heading back to the car to head over to our dinner appointment and this guy pulls up to his driveway in his truck. I hate talking to people right as they get out of their car because I feel like I'm bombarding them when they just got home and want to go in, I always feel so awkward, and we were freezing and Sister Wester's boots were squeezing her toes so we were trying to beeline for the car and pretend he wasn't there. But I've been working on talking to absolutely EVERYONE possible so I made myself turn around and go talk to him. Ugh it was just as awkward as I thought, he stared at us with wide eyes and at one point said "Sorry you're really catching me off guard with these questions, I don't even have time to think about a real answer." Awful. Yet somehow he ended up being totally nice and interested, he took a Book of Mormon and actually texted us at the number we left him and we're seeing him tomorrow! Afterwards we were both like, OF COURSE, that's always what happens, it's always when you have every reason to not talk to someone that a prepared person jumps in your path! I should have learned that when we almost didn't talk to Brian and then he got baptized a few weeks later and now his entire family is investigating, but the Lord seems to have to go through it with me again on a daily basis.

We did it again yesterday, we were leaving the hospital from visiting an older member of the ward who is in there and we were almost to the car when Sister Wester told me there was a man she'd wanted to talk to but didn't because she felt awkward doing it on the hospital property. So we turned around and went back and he was still waiting for his taxi. It was literally maybe a 3 minute conversation before his cab came but as soon as we introduced ourselves he said "You know I don't usually tell people this but...." and started pouring out about this crazy experience he had where he knew God was real, and he gave us his address and took our card as he was getting in the car. We were both like, WHOA WHAT WAS THAT?? Thank goodness Sister Wester spoke up, because my head was down trying to hide from the snow and I didn't even see the man, let alone pay attention to any promptings to talk to him.

We finished the Book of Mormon as a zone! Got through the whole thing in 28 hours. I loved it, ESPECIALLY 3 Nephi 11. Not gonna lie, I like that chapter a lot but usually when I read the account of Jesus Christ visiting the Nephites the part I LOVE is chapter 9-10 when the voice speaks to the people in darkness, so chapter 11 is almost a little anticlimactic for me. But reading it this time was amazing, everyone got so still when we started reading about Heavenly Father's voice introducing Christ and the Spirit was burning in me as we read about him coming down. I could just feel the love in everything he said to the Nephites. The Elder who read the beginning of the chapter actually recited it from memory, he stared at the table to pretend to read to not draw attention but it was a really cool experience to just hear someone say those words. It made you step back a bit from reading and notice more the Spirit and feel how true that account is.

Whelp that's pretty much everything. Woodstock's good and snow covered! I finally remembered my camera cord so I'm going to try to email you some pictures now. Love you all!

P.S. Normal p-days on Monday start again this week.

Pictures of the week:

The family whose house we were at when I first got sick.

Me on pain meds in emerg! Before I have any idea about what's going on. 

This is the only pic I took in the hospital, Sister DeRuvo has about 30.

Sister Wester washing my hair our first night together, because I wasn't allowed to shower and get my stitches wet, and hadn't washed it in 3 days. 

  We got to know each other real quick.

Zone Conference

 

Robin's baptism! 

He has his eyes shut in EVERY picture except the one of just the 3 of us.

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S EVE! Good bye 2012. 

This is Sister Messer (Sister Wester's trainer and Sister Casner's current companion), Sister Wester, Sister Casner, and me. Probably the funnest part of the Book of Mormon Read-a-Thon was sleep over with Sister Casner and Messer afterwards.