June 10, 2013

So! My new companion is Sister Summerhays and she has been out one transfer longer than I have. She was serving in Joseph City. She's from Cottonwood Heights and she is HILARIOUS! We got along from the second we introduced ourselves :) It feels like we've known each other way longer than a week! I am so blessed to have good companions like I have :) Speaking of that, I had an interesting week! Sister Harrah and I drove to Joseph City and Sister Summerhays's companion went with her to Farmington with our car and I stayed in Joseph City for 24 hours. It was sweet :) We walked around and said bye to people and had some interesting lessons. They've had 0 baptisms in the last 4 months. And we've had 5 in the YSA in the last 3!! There was a cute little girl who thought my hymn book was cool so I let her have it. Can I have a new one sent to me? I like it in green please :) We had a crazy week! We got the chapel reserved for Jeni's baptism on the 22nd :) We had set a date with a girl named Emily, but she wants to move it, but she is totally getting baptized! There's no way she's not! She came to the Book of Mormon institute class on Wednesday and was answering questions and giving insights! She's incredible!!!!!! We love her so much! I had an interesting experience. We had an investigator who had a date set and everything, who came into our lesson with 3 really hard questions. I had to ask if we could take these questions and think about them and get back to her the next day, and we just popped in the Restoration video. The next morning, I studied SO HARD to find answers to her questions. I was really nervous that I would be incapable because I've never studied like that before. But, using all my available resources, including the Bible, Bible Dictionary, Topical Guide, True to the Faith, and we even called President Batt, and we were able to find some solid answers to her questions. I was starting to get really excited for our lesson! Then at our appointment, we start to address some of her questions and she interrupts us to tell us that she is just not sure about the church. She doesn't know if she believes in our church or her parents' church, our prophet or their prophet, the Book of Mormon or not...and ultimately told us she doesn't want to meet with us right now. She promised to read and pray and says she still wants to come to church on occasion and to activities at the institute, but she dropped us this weekend. I was really, really disappointed. But I am also really grateful that I had that experience to test my ability to study and rely on the scriptures to find any answer to any question! Well, that's about all I got. I don't know anything else about the Phoenix mission except that my president is President Taylor starting July 1st. Can I get a new plaque? If so, I want it to have 3 Nephi 5:13 if that's okay! But I found a funny scripture for Victoria this week :) Matthew 23:24 says "Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." hahaha :) And I don't have any requests for my package :) THANK YOU! Love you, love you, love you!!!!!! -Sister Tolley