February 3, 2014

We had such a fantastic week this week. It was really sad to see Sister Hatch off, but I'm just excited to be here in Huntsville. The work is picking up at an incredible pace.

Sister Obeta is my new companion. She is a convert to the church, and has only been a member for a little over 2 years. Her English is really impressive considering she's only been learning for 3 months now. She is very quiet, but very sweet. And a real trooper, because she braved the snow storm with me yesterday when she's used to 100+ degree weather year round.

So our zone started this "finding challenge" a few weeks ago, which is a list of 41 different ways to find new people to teach. It's a race between the 15 or so companionships to see who can finish them all first. We just found out yesterday that we're in the lead! We have been doing everything we can to find all the Marshallese people in this town. We've mapped out every apartment complex and have been going around meeting everyone we can and finding out where their friends live. We even met a few people from Kiribati that Sister Obeta was able to talk to.

We also set a baptismal date with a little boy named Isaiah. Isaiah is the son of a less active member of the branch and his wife, who comes to church pretty regularly. He's turning 10 next week, and we asked him if he had been baptized yet. He said no, but that he really wants to. So we made plans for him to be baptized on February 22, provided that he is able to understand the lessons by then. We're so excited! This will be our branch's 4th convert baptism in 2014. At this rate we'll have enough people for a ward soon!

Yesterday we spent the day walking because of the snow. This couple stopped to offer us a ride and the wife said in broken English (they were hispanic) "Your message must be really important if you're willing to walk all this way in the snow to share it." They accepted our invitation to come over and teach them! Our mission president promised miracles if we were willing to get out and work hard even under bad conditions and he was so right.