February 17, 2014

Dear family and friends,

The weeks here in Huntsville just keep getting better and better. We are still working with Isaiah and Emy. They haven't agreed to a new baptismal date yet, but Isaiah is still learning fast. On Friday, I taught him with Sister Newman, our sister training leader. He read a verse from the Book of Mormon, then looked up and said "Sister Newman, will you please read verse 21 for us?" That's a future missionary right there!

On Saturday we stopped by to see Porter, but he wasn't home. His niece, Tania, was inside cooking though, so we asked her if we could come in and help. She doesn't usually talk to us very much, but we talked her into showing us how to cook Marshallese food. It turned out she was cooking for a birthday party (as I said before, they are HUGE deals in the Marshallese culture) and had been cooking for the last 10 hours or so. She invited us in and immediately dished this huge plate of curry chicken and baby back ribs for us and sent her boyfriend around to the neighbor's house to get some rice. Then she offered us the only drink they had in their fridge. I'm still constantly floored by how generous the Marshallese people are. Tania told us that the birthday party was for Porter's brother's little girl. Porter's brother is a preacher for the First Baptist church. She invited us to the party but we were really hesitant to go because Porter's brother is very against Mormons. But she talked us into it and we figured it would be a good way to meet all the Marshallese people in our area. The party ended up being really fun and Porter's brother was civil, if not nice to us. And now we can say we've been to a Baptist birthday party! Haha.

We had our firesides yesterday on member missionary work. We had a pretty good turnout! We are challenging every single member of the branch to invite one friend into their home to be taught by the missionaries. I think they are pretty pumped now about sharing the gospel. It has been so cool to see the attitude of the members do a 180.

I just love being a missionary!