Week 40

Hello from Nibley!

WOWOWOWOWOW! It is so pretty here! It's like we live in a bowl because there's mountains that surround us! Also I love my new companion! She is so cool! She's from Soldotna, Alaska and has shot a grizzly bear down, snow machined, dirt biked, 4-wheeled, and can flies planes! Like literally she has done everything! She is athletic and so we go running every morning which is so great! I've missed running. I haven't ran since the beginning of my mission, so I am loving this. Also she's showed me pics of Alaska and it is beautiful. Definitely going to make a trip there after my mission! Okay so now for the highlights of my week… So first, I was so sad to leave my last area! I loved the members and the people we had been teaching and the work had finally starting to pick up. The hardest thing was saying goodbye to everyone. The members truly become your family here on the mission! I miss them but I’m excited to see what this area has in store for me.

Second... Sister Davis and I white washed into this area and we are opening the area, so we don't know anything about it. When we got to the area the area book had nothing in it... Like literally blank. We cover 12 wards and 1 stake so we just started calling all 12 bishops and 12 relief society presidents. It was exhausting, but we did it! We have started to get the hang of things here though. Lots of planning and working with leaders right now, but soon we'll have it all figured out! We also have an amazing senior couple, the  Sheens! Sister sheen is from England so she has the coolest accent! Our area is so huge! The biggest area I've had so far! It would be impossible to walk the whole thing and we don't have a car so we rely on members a lot!! We also have a lot of farm land and cows and horses in our area! I love it!

We already have a lot of investigators that we are working with! It’s amazing. The first door we knocked was this old lady named Ida and she let us in and we taught her a lesson right then and there. She asked us about baptism and if she would have to be dunked. I was so surprised how prepared she was to hear the gospel. The whole lesson the thought kept popping in my head to ask her to be baptized on a specific date. So I finally asked her to be baptized on March 25th and she said “I'm probably more ready then I think I am, but I need to learn more before I can make that decision, but I'll go to church." So yay for new investigator and we are going to do our best to help her progress. No hurt in inviting someone, so even though she didn't except a date at least we asked.

We had a guy call us asking us to come teach his 13 year old son who isn't a Mormon yet, so that was super exciting!  We taught this guy named Jorge (yes that's how you spell it). It's a pretty sketchy place. He has like a bazillion questions and they all are so random! Like why don't you guys talk about the Virgin Mary a lot? Or do you guys worship the angel on the temples you have? Etc… Yeah it was a tough lesson, but he came to Church and he went up to bear his testimony which was so shocking to us! We were a bit scared of what he was going to say because he'll surprise you but it was so great. He just bore his testimony that he knew God was real. It was awesome!

We met with this kid named David who is 10. He's been waiting for his dad to say he could get baptized because his dad is really against the church. Well we got the dads signature so we set a date of March 18th (My moms bday!!) Whoot it'll be a special day. David is a really smart kid and really has some in depth questions like why do bad things happen to good people? He asked how God could let 1000s of kids be in foster care (he was once in foster care when his mom was doing drugs). He was crying and it brought tears to my eyes. He said he didn't even know if there was a god if he would let bad things happen to people. He then said he went to church and felt something and knew that there was a god. He is an amazing kid and I can't wait to see him get baptized!!

And there are many other people that we have met and have had lessons with this week! I'm so pumped for this transfer, it is going to rock! It's snowing again here. It's like Utah decides to be almost spring and then changes its mind and goes right back to winter:/ but I love snow so it's all good!

Well hope you have a wonderful week! Love y'all!

Sister Lowe