Sisters Jocey and Winegar planning

 Sometimes I don't enjoy planning. 

OK, now I'm good with planning

Sister Jocelyn and Winegar basement kitchen and dock

 This is our kitchen.  Its in a basement

 

We will sometimes eat our lunch from off the dock over looking this lake.  Just a hop from our current basement apartment.  This may be my favorite area.

Effective Tracting. Who Knew?

This week was good. We did a lot of tracting again. We're still practicing the lessons with members, but we're still trying to make sure that we balance everything out.

We were tracting on Thursday and first I had to use the restroom really badly, so we began walking in the opposite direction to a members' home whose bathroom I could use. We're walking and a lady with her son is out front, I'm working on talking to everyone, so of course, I open my mouth. We talk to her for a bit and then she said, "I'm Mormon. I actually grew up Mormon. I guess you'd say I'm less active now!" And so we try to figure out a little bit more about her and turns out she has a daughter who would like to be baptized. Her daughter is 8, so technically she doesn't need the lessons; however, we figured that we should teach her anyway because then her mom could listen in. Thankfully, we spoke with a lady that same night that told us that's how her dad was reactivated. And on Friday this lady showed up at our Fall Festival, she only made it to the end, but that's a great sign. And she said that we showed up at the perfect time she had recently been talking about getting back into the swing of things. We'll see how it all works out! (oh, and don't worry, she let me use her restroom) ;)

After that we continued tracting and we met this lady named Kaly. She answered and was so sweet and nice we talked to her about coming to closer to Christ by studying and praying everyday and using the Atonement. She was extremely receptive, so we transitioned into the Restoration. We taught her the entire lesson and as we were introducing the Book of Mormon she said, "Yeah!" And we're like, "Will you read it?" She was completely willing to try it out. We made sure she knew that the adversary would try and stop her, but that we would bring her one next week. We set up another appointment and off we went. We can't see her until Thursday :/, but we're praying that it will all work out! Wish us luck!

On Tuesday we went to the community center and stuff to find more service in the area, when we were finished we looked over our list and our gps to see who we should visit. This one lady's name kept popping out to me so we decided to go there. We get to this little, old house and there's a FOR SALE sign with a man's name on it. For a second we though, "Nah, she probably doesn't even live here anymore." Then we thought about it and said, "Maybe she's renting from the owner." So we knock. We man answers and he's definitely not the owner or the lady. In fact, he's renting from the lady, who part owns it with her uncle who's name was on the sign. He informs us that he's moving soon and that he's not interested, his dad grew up Mormon. We give him our card and tell him to call us if he needs help moving. That night, while we were at dinner, we received a voicemail from an unknown number. It was the man we had met and he said, "Hey you stopped by my house earlier. Would we be able to meet? I've actually been feeling really lost and I need some blessings in my life." !! YES! We set up the appointment for the next night because we didn't have any time that night. Unfortunately he called us the next day and apologized because him and his daughter had fevers and we'd have to come back another night. He sounded legitimately sincere, in comparison to 90% of the other people we talk to. That was nice. We role played with the couple we were going to bring as our team up and it went really well. They set a deadline for themselves to give some of their friends a copy of the Book of Mormon in three weeks. It's people that they've prayed about and really felt like would be interested in reading it.

Also, this couple is related to us. Well, the husband is. He's from William Wood's line! And he introduced me to his dad, who on Sunday asked if I wanted to take a name to the temple when we go next. Her name is Rachel Hassett Wood. She is from England and he got her record from England because some of his work is there. Also, the husband of the younger couple served in Japan and come to find out that William Wood may have been one of the first members in Japan just like he was in Arica, Chile. It was cool because I was like, "whoa! That happened to my brother when he was in Chile." His dad sent him William Wood's account when he was in Japan just like my dad sent Davis William Wood's account in Chile. Cool huh? Small world. Hope that made some semblance of sense.

We had our Fall Fest on Friday and it went really well! So many people invited their friends and we had the chance to meet most of them and it was really cool. Hopefully we'll start increasing our teaching pool. Sister Winegar and I have been focusing a lot on relying solely on the Lord. We pray earnestly for inspiration and guidance for the things that we need to do. It's been really cool to see how much the Spirit has in fact been guiding us. It strengthens my testimony on the care God has for his children. 

Love y'all,

Sister Smith

FINDING FINDING MORE FINDING

We did a LOT of tracting this week. But it was good. We're in the finding stages and we'll find someone prepared to accept the Restored gospel.

Honestly, this week blends. I almost can't remember anything super amazing. We did tract into a lady who really likes us and is slightly ADD so it took FOREVER to teach her. Thankfully, we have a better game plan for the next time we teach her and hopefully everything will soak in. 

We also have a lot pending. We have an FHE tonight with a family that's inviting their neighbors and we've invited a few potential investigators to. Please pray that the FHE will turn out! This couple is AWESOME and they want to start a tradition for once a month to help bring people to the gospel. We also have an activity this Friday that another family wants to bring their friends to and have us teach them. And there's a girl who gave a Book of Mormon to her friend and we were supposed to have a lesson with them on Friday, but he's grounded hahaha. Such is life when you're younger. But we have a lot of potential through the members. We're just patiently waiting for the next two weeks to pick them up. In the meantime we've been tracting and trying to think of more effective ways to find. It's been fun to try and figure out new ways. Nothing super great has come to mind yet, but we're determined to improve our contacting so that's it's more effective. Anyway. Everything is pending. 

President and Sister Bennion came to our ward yesterday and that was awesome. They told the same stories they told us when they first got here, but their stories are excellent so I enjoyed it. They also brought their daughter who has cerebral palsy and the ward really loved her. 

Anyway, it was a good week. I really love this ward, it's going to be great to bring investigators to fellowship with the members. It's a great area, we're just diligently working to find the elect. Sorry this email is short and kind of lame. It's mostly because I'm just excited to read y'alls emails. Not in the mood to type I guess. Hahaha I'm just selfish. ;)

Love y'all!

Sister Smith

Scheduling Mishaps, Mayhem and Miracles

This week was an amazing week! Truly, the Lord was using us as His instruments

On Tuesday we had an appointment scheduled with a family for 8 pm. The husband called us last Sunday and asked if we could come at 7 instead and wondered if we were bringing an investigator. We said that 7 worked and that we would not have an investigator with us (though, of course, we'd love it if we did!). Tuesday we show up and the house looks dark... Hmmm that's funny. Then we go up, there's no cars on the driveway. Okay. Then we knock on the door and it sounds like the knock reverberates through the entire front end of the house, like there's no furniture or anything in there. So we decide to call the family, ask if maybe they've changed addresses. We call and he laughs. He says, "Oh no. We moved to the Lawrenceville ward recently. I thought you might be the Sisters in our old ward. Well, maybe the Lord needs you in that neighborhood." That got me thinking that we should tract there just in case. We decided to just tract for 30 minutes. And thus we begin our door knocking. It's been about 30 minutes, no one really promising, but we've got two more houses left on the street and say, "What the heck? We'll just finish the street, there's just two more houses." At the last door we decided to knock on, a young high school aged kid answers. He says that his family would be interested and that his mom would be back in 30 minutes and we could come by then. We say thank you, visit a member in the neighborhood for a short bit and return. His mom answers and asks where the church is. We inform her and she got excited saying that she's sure the Lord sent us. They just moved from Ohio and they've been looking for a home church. When we told her that we were on missions for 18 months and we're from out West she got the chills. It was so amazing! She promised that she and her son would come to church on Sunday. I was on cloud 9 the entire night!

Wednesday something similar happened. Our dinner forgot she was feeding us, but beforehand we had gone tracting and met a lady who was shockingly open! She said that we could come back on Saturday. 

Unfortunately neither one of them followed through. I have come to learn that God does in fact love His children. As His servants, He tries to reach out to them through us, but they have the decision to either accept the message we share or reject. It's sad because usually if we're in the right place at the right time, the person feels the Spirit and knows we're messengers of the Lord. But life gets in the way and the adversary subtly stops their Spiritual progression. 

On Saturday we had a lesson with Lauren that was probably one of the most powerful ones I've had on the mission. We had prayed to know a date that she should prepare to be baptized and we both felt that we should ask her to be baptized on November 1st. We taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ after giving her a tour of the church. She was open, the spirit was felt, all was well. Then, we told her that we had prayed for her and wanted to know a date that she should be baptized. We asked her if she would like to make a goal to be baptized on November 1st. At first she seemed a little surprised at how soon the date was, then she smiled and said, "Yes. I will prepare for that." Then we asked her if she would kneel with us then and pray to know if that's the right date for her to be baptized. We knelt and she gave the most spiritually sweet prayer. She began pouring a sincerely heartfelt prayer. She asked to be worthy to be baptized on Nov 1st. Then she explained that she wanted to share this message with her family and friends and her FUTURE family! I almost started tearing up a bit. Her future family! That's amazing!!!!!!!! She knows that when she should be baptized. Moments like those are why I'm on a mission. They are so fulfilling and indescribable. It was humbling as well because she actually lives in Roswell, so we had to refer her to the Roswell Sisters. This work is not my work, this is the Lord's work. I don't even care that we had to refer her.  We had three extremely spiritual, uplifting and powerful lessons with her and the other sisters just have to teach the rest and prepare her for baptism. Honestly, I'm just happy that she's found truth and she feels it. Truly elect. She was totally fine with being taught by the other Sisters, which I love because that means she's converted to the doctrine, not the missionaries. So cool. Anyway. I reflected on  her prayer for the rest of the day and the next. 

I love being a missionary. It is extremely rewarding. It was terribly hard, but so worth it. One of our Assistants came to our district meeting yesterday and he gave an amazing training. One of the Apostles created this inverted pyramid of missionaries and their vision. It starts off with their Call, then Routine, then Obedience, then Exact Obedience, then She/He knows that She/He Knows, then Treasure Up. How it's so much more than just being obedient, it's about turning over to the Lord and treasuring up what He's given us.  But you have to do the things on the bottom to be able to achieve greatness, you can't just forget about the foundation of your learning, etc. It was really good, but he talked about how good missionaries have hard missions because they worked hard. So true! But it's such a blessing to do. 

Anyway,

Love y'all. It's Fall Y'all (that's some of the decor down here in Georgia when it's fall)

Sister Smith

Miracles upon Miracles. I'm sure I've used that before, but hey whatever

Since I first got here we've been trying to get in with a family that's active going at different times in the day and never seeming to catch them. Two Mondays ago we finally text the wife and asked if we could stop by real quick before we went in for the night. We visited and introduced ourselves and asked if we could do FHE with them every other Monday and role play the missionary lessons. She said yes and said that she really enjoyed our company and thought we were normal. Here's the cool part, last Wednesday she sends us a text basically saying, "I have a friend who had some questions about the church so I told her about y'all. Can y'all come over tonight for a lesson?" !!! Do you realize just how rare those moments are? Rare as rare can be. We're ALWAYS doing the finding, and this time our member did the finding and we're doing the teaching.

This girls name is Lauren. She is actually engaged to a member in a different ward who's just coming back into activity. She's amazing. She has been to many, many churches. She remebers as a child feeling a very calm, good feeling when she'd go to church, but as she's attended other churches she hasn't been able to replicate that feeling. When we went over the first vision she said that the feeling she got was peaceful. Then, we met with her again on Friday and she said that as she read, even thought she didn't understand everything, she felt good. She watched parts of General Conference, we're going to get her response tonight. I really love teaching her. She's super natural and we have sometimes gone on random tangents on food... I digress. I felt the Spirit SO strongly when recited the First Vision to her, it was so awesome. I was smiling like a total goob the rest of the night! Miracles.

Last night was pretty awesome as well. Our Relief Society President had us over for dinner after General Conference and invited two people we taught in Cornelia. That was awesome. They're on the email list, so hey!! :) 

General Conference was amazing. I can't wait to study the talks. I really liked Elder Christofferson's, very thought provoking. But really, I just liked all of them. Also fun story, I went on exchanges and we visited one of my old YASE counselors mom's and she face timed her daughter and I face timed her for a second. That was really cool. Tender mercy. 

I don't know what else to report on? We're just working on teaching more lessons with members and becoming better teachers, it's already brought the vision into fruition as seen with Lauren. I'm excited to continue working here and I love it. The Lord is in this work and it's so amazing to see. 

Love you all,

Sister Smith