Letter from Monday Nov. 18th

Hey there Family!! 

How is everyone doing? It's so wonderful to hear from all of you. This week has not been the easiest week, but I've definitely seen the Lord's hand in my life. 

I've talked a little bit about our one investigator, Jennifer, the one who had the baptismal date. Well, she has literally dropped off the face of the Earth. She won't answer her phone, when we go over there to see her and just drop by, she is never there. We have no idea what has happened to her. She no longer has a baptismal date now because we haven't been able to teach her and she hasn't stopped smoking. It's a little bit discouraging, but we are still hopeful that things will work out. Funny side story for ya'll though. We went over there on Friday to see if she was there. She wasn't there, but her mom and her mom's fiance were there so we started talking to them. We started to share a quick message with them and then after we had finished, things just got weird. The mom started talking about how the apocalypse has started to happen in other states, not Tennessee, mind you, but just other states. And then the fiance chimed in and started talking about how stars were falling to the Earth. Now, I don't know everything, but something tells me that I would know if stars were falling to the Earth. It was a pretty funny conversation from our end. Anyways, I sure hope all ya'll are doing alright with the apocalypse and falling stars. ;)

This week has been Sister Stone's last week, she goes home on Wednesday. A lot of the members here have told her that when she gets off her mission, it will be one of the hardest things ever and she will feel like she is in a dark hole. I am worried that this has made her extremely nervous about going home. This morning, she was working on packing a little bit and had a pretty good freak out about going home. I have been keeping her in my prayers and have been trying to do my best to comfort her, but man, she is sure scared to go home. 

I find it frustrating here when a member has us over for dinner and then expects us to stay at their house for two hours. Sister Wynn, Stone, and I talked about this and we have a game plan to change it! Pretty excited to put this into action! It should be great!  

Our investigators are okay. A lot of them seem to be pretty stand-off-ish about us. We are still continuing to love them and to try our best to serve them. I am so grateful to be a missionary, even with the days that are hard. On the happier side though, the Moore family is doing great. I made some pumpkin muffins yesterday so today we are hoping to drop in on them and teach them a super quick lesson. They leave this week to go to Arkansas for 5 weeks. 

Our one investigator Paul is... well he's Paul. He's what we call an eternigator. (eternal investigator). As missionaries we have decided that he wants to know all of the "meat" of our religion without first knowing the "milk." We have taught him the restoration, and missionaries in the past have taught him the restoration lesson. In the past, he has prayed about Joseph Smith to know if he was a prophet, and he said he got an answer and that was to stay baptist. We have asked him to pray about Joseph Smith again and read the Book of Mormon. He won't pray about Joseph Smith and when he reads the Book of Mormon he doesn't do so wanting to know whether or not it is the word of God. Ugh, frustrating. We sent him a text the other day inviting him to church. The text said: "Hey we'd love to have you at church on Sunday if you can make it!" He then responded back with "No more Pressure!!!..." Yeesh. 

This week we had to travel up to Farragut to get our car tires changed and get the engine looked at. It should have taken about an hour total, but people were slow and so it took 5 hours. It felt like a bit of a wasted day so it was frustrating, but on the plus side, we had a wonderful weekly planning session!

Random highlights of the week: I met a person named Michael Jackson! (Pretty sure he was lying, but whatever.) I got nicknamed Sister Monster by a two year old. (The two year old is adorable and loves to play with me while my companion sings in the choir on Tuesday nights.) 

We went to visit one of our potential investigators and she didn't speak very good English (native language was Spanish). They had some trouble understanding us and they had some trouble using the right words to express themselves in English so we couldn't understand them all the way. We were about to leave but we asked to say a prayer with them first. The dad says that we could. He says that we can pray in English and that he will pray in Spanish. It was super unclear about what he wanted done, but anyways, his wife and him both start shouting their prayers in Spanish and me and my companions were just there awkwardly. It was pretty funny after we got out of there, but man, it was sure awkward in there. We just ended up standing there until both of them were finished.

Love ya'll!

Sister Spencer