Snow in Tennessee!

Dear Family!!

Well another week has gone by! It’s weird to think that pretty much exactly 1 year ago I decided to serve a mission…. And look where I am now!! God is good. I love my mission, even though some times can be hard!

The weather here is supposed to get down to 0 degrees tonight. It seems like the WHOLE WORLD is freaking out about it. I find it kind of funny! 

Samantha has been progressing super well this past week. Last week from when she came to church, everything turned out super nice. She said that she was confused about some things (baptism for the dead), but that when she thought about it, it really did just make sense! I was pretty nervous about how it would turn out, but she seemed to take it all VERY well. There was an 8-yr old girl who got baptized this past week. Samantha attended the baptism. We did a baptism calendar with her and she seemed really cool with everything! :D She didn’t show up to church yesterday… I’m really hoping that everything is okay. We haven’t been able to get in contact with her since Friday, so I am praying that everything is okay.

We were able to make some progress with Janet this past week. We didn’t commit her for baptism again, but we were able to ask her to pray about baptism for a different date!!

We have a great mailman. His name is Bobby. About a month or two ago, I decided that I was going to go out and meet him and make friends with him in hopes that he would always be diligent in bringing me my mail. The first time I saw him come up after deciding that I wanted to meet him, I quickly looked around to see if there was something that I could give him as a peace offering. I was in luck. The day before, I had made some absolutely delcious pumpkin muffins! Wonderful! Excited, I went out to meet him, introduce myself and asked him what his name was and if he likes pumkin. After telling me his name, he looked me dead in the eye and said: “I HATE pumpkin.” I was a little taken back, but I saved this new forming friendship by asking him what type of muffins he did like: Bran. About a  week or so later, I saw Bobby pull up to our mailbox. I paniced. I had forgotten to make Bran muffins. Luckily, I was saved by a nutri-grain granola bar. I went out, greeted him, asked him how his day was going and then offered him the nutri-grain granola bar. He informed me that he disliked nutri-grain bars but liked Christmas cookies (by this time it was getting close to Christmas). I remember thinking to myself “Great. I can do Christmas cookies no problem.” The next week however, due to a variety of different circumstances, I ended up making chocolate cupcakes instead. When I saw Bobby pull up the next day, I quickly grabbed some of the cupcakes I had made and rushed out to meet him. Nervously, I approached him and offered him the cupcakes, expecting, once again, to be refused.Thank goodness for me, he accepted the cupcakes and we had a lovely conversation. Moving forward, the day before Christmas, I left Bobby a nice plate of Christmas cookies in the mail box. And all in the mean time, Bobby and I have had many mailbox conversations. Anyways, you see what I am saying? Bobby and I have talked quite a bit and you would think that we would have a great blossoming friendship. So this past week, we pulled into the gas station to get some gas. Lo and Behold! Guess who is there! Bobby! I quickly jumped out of the car to say hi and wish him a great day! Our conversation went as follows:

Me: Hi Bobby!!

Bobby: Um, hi?

Me: How are you doing?

Bobby: Umm Good *Confused look*

*moment pause*

Me: Do you remember me?

Bobby: It’s been a while hasn’t it??

Me: Only a few days….

Needless to say. I re-introduced myself to Bobby. I am hopeful that he knows who I am now….

We’ve had some great success this past week. There was one night where we had an hour before we were supposed to go in. Almost all of our plans had fallen through, so we decided to go and contact an old former investigator. We go to the place and of course, it is an apartment complex and there was no apartment number on the teaching record. Since we have some time, we decide to tract the complex trying to find this person. The first house that we run into the people are SUPER nice. We are able to get a return appointment with them. We asked them if they knew any missionaries and they mentioned how a few lived right across the street. My companions and I don’t think anything of this since most people say that they Baptist missionaries. We go to a few more houses and EVERYONE is extremely nice to us and mentions something about missionaries living close by. Right before we knock on one of the last doors, I made a comment to one of my companions how it would be funny if it were actually Mormon missionaries that lived in these apartments. Well, right after we knocked on the door, Elder Toomey answered the door… Yep, we had forgotten that the Elders lived in our area. (We knew that they lived in our area, but did not know exactly where.) Anyways, that night, in about an hour, we got 4 new investigators and tracted into the Elders! It was pretty great. I was talking to my companions about that whole experience later and we mentioned how it was a tender mercy that we didn’t know that the Elders lived there… If we had known, we probably would not have tracted there since we would have figured that the Elders would have already talked to all of their neighbors. God works in mysterious ways!! 

Well the work is going well here. I have been working on fulfilling my goals a lot this week. It's amazing how much I can get done with the help of goals. Thank you so much for all of your prayers. I have particularly felt a lot of help as I have been doing language study. I really need it, so thank you! 

I love you all TONS! Thanks so much for all your emails and everything you do for me!! I really appreciate it! 

Love, 

Sister Spencer