New prospects

From email of October 13, 2009: We definitely got a touch of that cold weather. Burrr! There were a few days this week that we froze. Then to make matters worse, I picked up a cold of my own. But we're bundling up and plugging along. I love this cool, crisp weather because it's a fresh new start of the season.

The Lord is blessing us with new families to teach. In addition to the Campbells, we found another family of three that's really searching for something more. We had run across the mother right as we were leaving an appointment with Dominick on the same street. Her 11-year-old son had been asking a lot of questions about God and Jesus Christ for the past year and she decided she needed to address that topic. So she brought us over. We taught her, her son, and the boy's father (they're not married...yet!) and committed them to be baptized. And they accepted! They were super excited to come to church and to become involved in the community of Saints. But she works on Sundays so she won't be able to attend. We're still trying to figure out that situtation.

On Saturday we brought one of the Young Women out with us to an appointment, but that appointment fell through. So she consented to do some tracting with us! Since there were four of us, we could divide and conquer and we got a lot accomplished. She is the friend that invited Amanda to girls' camp, which led to her baptism last week. Because of this, she wants to be a sister missionary. She is going to make a great one, too!

The Relief Society had their monthly cooking class this week and the subject was, can you imagine, APPLES! I learned how to make baked apples and applesauce. Then we made "dinner in a pumpkin" which is a rice, cream of chicken soup mixture baked inside of a pumpkin. I'll have to send the recipe home because it was so, so good! Who would have ever thought to bake a pumpkin for dinner? There were lots of leftovers so they were kind enough to supply us Sisters with dinner for the next few days. That was such a blessing!

There is a new "mission culture" starting in the Connecticut Hartford mission. We are using the Book of Mormon more in our finding. Instead of handing out a BOM pass-along card, we hand out the actual book. Every person we come across we offer the book and commit to be baptized. I was a bit apprehensive to do this because I'm still a little timid, but since instituting this new culture, I've become much more bold. The Lord needs bold missionaries. We can't take the BOM lightly. It is evidence of the Restoration. It will bless the lives of people who are in darkness. My testimony of the Book of Mormon has increase dramatically in the past few months because of our focus on it. I love to read it! I encourage everyone to read from it daily. Make time for the important things in life!