Monday, September 17, 2012

Ashley Ltr: 20012-09-17



Hey fam!

Thanks for the letter! It sounds like everything is going great at home! Court!! I'm so excited for you!! I better be getting pictures in the next e-mail! Have fun! Mom and dad Happy (late) Anniversary! I'm so glad you had a good day! I love you guys!! Yah I'll ask Sister Cox if she can put a little something together for me. When we were at her house I was looking through the book and inside there were wedding announcements from different missionaries. And guess who was in there?? Bro Nay who used to live down the street! I'm like 99% sure it was them, his name was Russell and her name was Amanda and it looked just like her, they got married in 2000. Does that sound about right? Anyway it was way cool!! If you can ask them if they remember Eddie and Rose Ann Cox. We have district meetings every Thursday and yes it was one of the Elders who gave me the blessing. :)

I think we're going to drop Josh, he avoids us when we try to visit and always makes up an excuse as to why he can't come to church at the last second and he always asks us for money. Its frustrating and we've tried everything we can, its sad because he was so ready but maybe later... And Christy isn't doing any better either. She is still very depressed and told us she's had suicidal thoughts. It's sad but I don't know how much we can do to help her either... :( Evon has cancelled on us the last two times so I don't know that anything is going to happen there either. We did have a cool experience a couple of days ago though we were out tracting with a member and we get to this house and we explain to the guy who we are and he says let me get my wife. So she comes to the door and we explain again and teach her a little bit about the restoration on her doorstep. She didn't seem all that interested at first but we asked if we could leave her with a prayer and after we said it she was crying and told us she felt something and knew that God sent us to her that day. She said she'd come to church yesterday but didn't end up coming... :( BUT we do have an appointment with her this weekend. Hopefully something will happen there. -Side note: As I'm sitting here a HUGE rainstorm just started!! I've never seen that much rain in my life! It's just like a big wall of water!

While our work with investigators isn't going so hot right now, we have been able to get in touch with several less active families. We found one guy a Brother Hayes who hasn't been to church in over 50 years, and hasn't had any contact with the church in over 6 years, because no one has tried. He was pretty shocked when we came to the door but we had a really good talk and he said we really got him thinking about how he needs to get back into church. Him and his wife just got custody of 2 great grandkids and he wants them to be raised in the church. So that was awesome! If I do nothing but help reactivate people I really will be happy with that. There's also another couple the Harrisons, at first they were very reserved but we helped Sister Harrison with some yard work on Saturday and Bro Harrison works at a carpet mill and we expressed an interest in seeing how it all works and now he's going to set up a tour for us. So the walls are slowly coming down, they like us. :)

We had our bi-zone conference this week with the Knoxville zone, Elder Foster from the quorum of the 70 came and spoke (he's from Rigby and knows grandma and grandpa!). It was an awesome conference, President and Sister Irion are the best. So loving and so dedicated to moving the work forward here, their energy and enthusiasm rubs off on me and makes me want to become a better missionary. They talked a lot about working with the members and that is where the real magic happens, I just wish that was happening more. Please look and pray for missionary opportunities all of you, those people are out there and really its only through the members that this work will move forward.

I can hardly believe Taylor is already coming home! That did go by pretty fast. I hope he gets feeling better soon, being sick is no fun period and when you're on the mission it's even worse. I've been getting a lot of headaches lately, sometimes they're so bad I have to lay down for an hour or so it's awful. I think I need to drink more water... But the water here is nasty! Oh well I'll just suck it up and do it.

Things with Sister Walker and I really are going pretty good. :) She really is a sweetheart just not a good people person haha. I enjoy working with her now though, we probably only have 2 more weeks together which is way weird to think about... Can you believe I've almost been out here 3 months! Sometimes it feels like it's gone by crazy fast and other days it feels like I've been out here forever... But I really do enjoy it most days. Working with the members has definitely been my favorite part so far, it's awesome to work with people who really do have the desire to move the work forward.

About the coat, yah I like that one. Probably do the medium just to be on the safe side, I do have long arms. I guess last winter here well there wasn't one really haha but the winter before that I guess was wayyyyy cold! They said it's like no matter how many layers you put on that humidity still seeped right through.. awesome. And I don't care which color you get black or red, surprise me! Thanks for the suggestion about the spirit of Elijah dad, I'll have to study up on that for sure! Also any luck with finding a gps? I know the garmin brand is good. I gotta get going. Keep the letters coming! I love and miss you all!! xoxoxoxo

Love,

Sister Bedke :)

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