5-Month Mark!!

Dear Familia!! 

My 5-month mark is tomorrow!!!!!

Well, best news of the week is that Amy Wootten came to church yesterday!!!!! BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!! Her and her husband Paul came to the Baptism that Pleasant Ridge had on Saturday. We invited both of them to come to church, but only Amy came. Still though, when I saw her come in, I think I could have died from happiness. It was the best feeling!! Her husband, Paul (he's the non-member and Amy is less-active) is still being stubborn, but I feel like we did make a really good gain with him getting him to come to the baptism. One thing that I am not quite sure how to address is that he believes that the Holy Ghost was received when she was dunked because he felt the spirit there. We've told him that the Holy Ghost is received by the Laying on of Hands and showed him instances of the Bible of where that happened. But he just won't believe that. Grrg. Sort of frustrating, but we are still working with them!

We've found an awesome new investigator this week. We found her tracting. Her name is Samantha. She is 5 months pregnant, unmarried, and she does not believe in God, although she said that she would like to. However, she did mention that in hard times, she has taken comfort from the fact that there has been a guardian angel over her. So far, she has kept all of her commitments and really is just a wonderful lady. I love her so much. We are planning on going over on Tuesday to teach her the Plan of Salvation. I think that it should go over really well. Goodness, I am so excited about her! We did invite her to the baptism and she was going to come, but she got sick the night before so she wasn't able to make it. :-/. I think this next week will be so good though! I am excited for the lessons that we are going to teach her!

We've had some pretty funny experiences this week while we've been tracting. We were trying to contact one of the referrals that we got. The house number didn't exist (go figure) so we were just knocking on three doors before we left the area. At one of the houses, there was this super old guy who was chewing tobacco. After talking to him for a bit, he told us that he was a Baptist and attends church frequently. We told him that as missionaries, we had a unique message--that the same church Jesus Christ set up when he was on the Earth had been restored today and that we had prophets and apostles that lead and guide us. He responded with "Oh yeah, oh yeah, I definitely believe that!" Not sure what to think, we continued and told him that the prophet on the earth today was prophet Thomas S. Monson. To that, he responded "Oh I know, like I said, I go to church regularly so I keep up on these type of things." Hmm, guess it is sort of nice to know that the Baptist Church has started to teach our beliefs... makes thing easier for us! Haha, too bad he was a bit delusional. The other funny experience that we had was in that same complex. We went to a door and introduced ourselves. We said: "Hi, I'm Sister Spencer, this is Sister Wynn and Sister Liebing. What is your name?" The guy responded with "Hi, I'm Sister George!" It was pretty great. The guy wasn't interested at all though. He told us to go to a preacher's house to get saved. :P Silly guy. 

Later in the week, we finally met up with this one lady named Meagan. She seemed super interested and let us right in the house! (That never happens!!!) So we go in there and start to try and teach her. We didn't have a ton of time the first time we met up with her, so we just left her a Restoration pamphlet and then set up a return appointment to come back. When we came back, she had been super great. She had read the entire pamphlet and taken notes all over it! We were super excited... at first. After about 5 minutes of being in there, she started talking about how she wanted us to "prove that the Book of Mormon was true." We asked her how she knew that the Bible was true and she responded that she knew through Archeological evidences and that she wanted some for the Book of Mormon. She also added a quick note in there about how she could not trust her feeling because even murders sometimes felt like they were "called of God" to do a certain thing. Ha! We didn't quite know what to say to that. Interesting. 

We have been working hard this week. I am excited for this next upcoming week to improve even more. I have been relying more on the power of prayer and have found that that has SUCH a profound influence in my life! I am so grateful for prayer. This week has been a little hard for me because I hear so many people talking about going home for Christmas. While it is hard, there is still no where that I would rather be then out on a mission right now!

One of the things that I read this week that I have really taken to heart is in Mosiah. It's when Abinadi is talking and he is asking the priests of King Noah if they have applied their hearts to understanding and if they had the commandments written in their hearts. I think that sometimes here I just follow a rule because it is what I am supposed to do. this week I have tried to change that and get a desire to follow all of the rules. Dang, there really is such great power from following all of the rules!! 

I have been getting along really well with my companions. Really, both of them are amazing and I am learning so much from both of them. Whenever I get tired or anything, I just think of how Sister Liebing always has a head-ache/migraine and I never hear her complain. I am grateful for the example of Sister Wynn of always being diligent. I really love this area that I am in! 

Well I love you all so much and miss you tons!! Hope you all have a wonderful week!! 

Love, 

Sister Spencer!