Hola!

Oh, that weekly email time, when as usual I don't know what to say.....

Well, this week we had an AWESOME miracle finding a new investigator! His name is Bill, and I actually talked to him like my 2nd week in Woodstock. Sister DeRuvo and I were at a park waiting for someone we had an appointment with so I told her "Go talk to that man over there" and she said "NO WAY, I'm talking to the nice looking couple over THERE!" So she talked to the couple and I talked to Bill. He met with the missionaries probably like twice years ago with his ex-wife so when I walked up he was like "No thanks, not interested at all" but was friendly and chatted for a while. Eventually he opened up about his life long search he's been on for the truth in religion and aid he'd actually like to come to church sometime, so we swapped numbers. Called him the next day and it was a wrong number, I was so sad. (And the appointment we had after talking to him was not a good one, so bummer day.)

Then this week we were having a day where all our appointments fell through, we were going to drive to another town but everyone cancelled so we were just driving and walking around Woodstock dropping by some less actives and Sister DeRuvo pointed out Bill down the street. So we ran over and said hi- turns out he accidentally gives out the wrong number all the time and had been really disappointed we never called. So we swapped numbers for REAL and set up a time to meet. We taught him the plan of salvation on Friday and he loved it, he'd start to ask a question about it like "well then why does God send some spirits here on Earth for such a short time and then they died as babies?" and then immediately answer himself perfectly like "well maybe actually that spirit didn't need to stay here and be tested, they just need to gain their body and then they've fulfilled their purpose." We were like, how long did you meet with the last missionaries? Only twice?? He also had some cool connections, like he studied native american religions for a while when he found out his mother was native and he really liked their beliefs about Spirits and how we existed before this life, and so we got to explain about how the Nephites had the gospel on the American continent as well but it had been lost through apostasy so you can still see parts of the truth in their beliefs. Awesome conversation.

Unfortunately, I think day light savings messed him up a bit so he wasn't at church, but we'll see him again tomorrow.

BUT it was a cool testimony builder that the Lord really knows what he's doing- the appointment where we met Bill and the day we bumped into him again were both rough times where you could look at it and think it was a waste of time or a pointless day when in reality it was just part of a grander plan. You can't see how the Lord is arranging things to put you in the right place at the right time, so you just have to be open to the Spirit so you're able to recognize those chances when they happen.

Sorry to hear you're still down Mom, hopefully this week you'll recover totally! And glad Dad's first week of work was peachy.

Yeah, Sandy didn't affect us like at all, I'm way more distraught about the tiny bit of snow we had the other day than the hurricane rains lol yesterday was the first day in about 3 weeks though without any rain, Sister DeRuvo and I have been rejoicing in the sunlight!

I think that's the extent to my exciting news. Oh, except my new district leader gave us some crazy news (he was like "I don't know if I can tell you this...BUT I'm not a ZL anymore!" (and it's his last transfer so he spilled pretty easy)). He told us that there are SO many sisters about to come into the mission President asked all the ZLs what areas they wanted sisters in and told them about how they're going to probably have some all sisters districts- meaning there will be sister district leaders. It's gonna be like a temple square mission lol! It's nuts, but there's such a huge influx of sister missionaries that it's going to start being way more common. He said they "probably" won't have a whole zone or sister zone leaders, and we were like I HOPE NOT, no priesthood in your whole zone?? SHEESH! That also means pretty soon just about every sister in the mission is going to be training at some point. So Erin, I don't know if my mission is unusual or if that's going to be world wide, but brace yourself for some potentially cool leadership callings!

Well, loves ya lots! Talk to you in a week!