Catch up!!

Wow I am behind with blogging. Christmas was hectic but I will do better now. This is pretty hilarious.

Nov. 8
Well, as you can tell from the title of the email, Sister Allen and I woke up today to snow on the grass. Well, not quite snow, but mostly ice everywhere. Patrick can understand what I am talking about. Here in New England, everything is ice. So the winter will be full of exciting coldness which consists of ice encompassing everything. Oh yay... BUT, with the change of weather, that means CHRISTMAS is coming soon! This also means that we can start listening to Christmas music! Sister Allen says we can't listen to Christmas music until Thanksgiving. I am slowly changing her ways and now she has moved it up to November 11th. WOO WOO!! CHRISTMAS MUSIC!!!

We taught a less active family last Monday who says that living in Connecticut is like living in Hell and they want to move to Utah. They rely on others to make their religion happen. It has caused us to become very grateful for our families and where we live. Also it made us reflect on our attitudes and how attitude is everything. We talked to them about how it shouldn't matter where you are, but it should matter if the spirit is in your home and if you have a loving family and children. They didn't respond to that well. So thank you family for realizing the important things in life... Love and family.

We taught Marie and she knows everything about our church is true, and she knows the Holy Ghost is present, but she does not want to break the tradition of her family and Catholocism. Wierd, we haven't heard that before. So, we taught her about what Christ expects of us here on earth. We will see how this week goes when we lay out that she will be in trouble if she doesn't accept it.... haha just kidding but really. You should all read D&C 39 and place your name in there. Its pretty cool, we may do this with her.

We had zone conference on Wednesday and it was SO AWESOME!! It was an extreme spiritual boost which rocked. President Pehrson is such an incredible man, he has such amazing insights on everything. We all bore our testimony and it is incredible how much my testimony has strengthened of the knowledge of the gospel.

So I had quite an interesting experience..... We were tracting and there was a dog barking and it was a golden retriever. Sister Allen suggested we not go to that house because it wouldn't stop barking. I thought that since it was a golden retriever and they are usually pretty nice I figured we would be fine and a dog isn't going to stop me from sharing the gospel...... So, we walked up to the dog and I was being nice saying, "hi puppy!" Then I turned to sister Allen and said, "See its a nice dog!" As I said that, the dog, ATTACKED ME!!! I went running and screaming and sister allen followed me. Luckily there was an invisible electric fence around the yard so the dog stopped there. Let me just say my fear of dogs has sadly returned.

The next house we went to, a lady walked out and said, "I bet I can challenge you." In our confusion, we said, "ok?" She then said, "You are Jehova Witnesses aren't you." We said no and said we were from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and she then said, "Ya I don't like you either, so you can (with a wave of her hand) keep walking." Haha we just laughed because she looked like an idiot. Then, we went to another house and this guy said "I don't want to hear a bunch of mumbo jumbo from radicals.." He was blind and couldn't see how pretty we were, that is why he was so rude... haha.

So we had planned to tract Victoria Street and on our drive there, S. Allen said, "Hey we should tract Northridge one of these days." So we just happened to end tracting Victoria street early, so we decided to take up Northridge with our spare time. We walked up to this house and knocked to find two adorable 15 year olds who just happened to stay home from school that day because they didn't want to go. They let us in and we talked to them about religion in their lives. They were catholic and didn't understand the trinity. We explained to them that they are 3 separate beings but one in purpose and they were like "wow that actually makes sense!" We told them that we weren't planning on tracting that street and how it wasn't a coincidence and one of the girls said, "Oh I love signs from God!" Haha my kind of girl! Anyway, they want to learn and love everything we say. We just have to meet their parents haha hopefully they will be ok with us coming over. Once again the Lord puts us where we need to be!

We went to dinner with sarah, one of our recent converts and it was quite traumatizing. We went to her favorite pizza place (which wasn't our favorite) and it was just... interesting. The cook, as well as sarah, had quite the cough and she kept scratching her dead skin which flaked onto the pizza. I think Sister Allen was 2 minutes short of throwing up. You can use your imagination with how wonderful it was....

We met with Nick and we set a baptism date for him! He wants to get baptized on his birthday and he is excited which is december 7th. So we are doing very well and have a lot of success.

Well, I had a very spiritual moment that I want to share. There is a song that is called, "My Kindness Shall Not Depart From Thee" and it talks about how the Lord will never leave us. In 3 Nephi 22:7-8 is where they took the words for this song.

Although we may feel that sometimes the Lord has forsaken us, it is because he wants us to be strengthened in our trials. He does this because he loves us. And although He does this, His kindness never leaves because He is doing this for us, to pull us and change us in ways we never thought we could. How blessed are we to know why the Lord does this and that through our trials we are strengthened. "I love the Lord! In Him my soul delights!"

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!
TAWANDA!

Love, Lil