California Girls!

Hello!

This week has been a busy one. Sister Scrinver and I found a less active member this week!!!! We met with her and just got to know her. She lives with her fiance. At first he kept to himself and was super awkward around us. After about 10 minutes of just talking he joined us and was totally relaxed. They are game designers and programers and they are working on this really cool project for the Radisson Hotel Chain. They showed us the demo and played it in front of us so we could see how it works. They are awesome! Come to find out as we were leaving that he thought we were going to be the preachy pushy missionaries he knows his church's missionaries to be. Once he observed we aren't he joined us and we enjoyed our visit. Dont worry we didn't leave with out sharing a neutral message ;D But what is cool is we have an open invitation in their home and they have offered to feed us too!!!! Hooray!!! They are really neat people and we are looking forward to working with them.

We also got a new investigator this week. She comes from a very abusive mother unfortunately. We talked alot about Christ and His Atonement. She is very spiritual and when we had her read some verses on the atonement she could barley read because of how strongly she felt the spirit. It was an amazing lesson! Now if we could just get her to sit down long enough for us to teach her again hahahaha she is super busy.

We taught a recent convert this week. We asked some of the ward members to help us teach the 10 commandments. It was a very insightful discussion. But the best part of the lesson was when we took the hand signs of the 10 commandments (we use them to teach) and then played the game signs using them. It was so funny and totally down to the level of the ward members. I know I will never forget what some of those signs mean now! ;D I might attach a photo of the hand signs we drew out for this lesson next week. It just turned out very well overall.

On Thursday Sister Scrivner and I had a melt down over our area. We ended up meeting with President. In hindsight it was all silly but still concerning. Our ward is a YSA ward and we rely a lot on referrals. Our area is also 2/3 of the valley which has over 1 million people in it. So for us to be able to find easily is difficult because all we do is drive to get to one area to the other. With school starting and us living next to the university we should start seeing more positive results of our efforts in contacting...hopefully. President Hall was able to help us think about our area and come up with a plan for the next transfer. But that doesn't help us right now so I was a little frustrated walking away from our meeting but in the end things have turned out alright. We decided that it was going to be necessary for us to have a sit down with a group of ward members we consider our friends. We had a group of 6 people after church yesterday who we know best. We asked them to evaluate us as missionaries in who they see us as and then to describe how they want their ideal missionaries to be. It was very insightful and luckily we aren't too far off that ideal stage. Of course there are areas of improvment. In our 2 hour conversation we walked away with a game plan. The wards expectations of us are to help them learn how to give the gospel to their friends. So we are starting "Our Night." This will be a night where the ward members gather together as friends and just talk about their efforts to do missionary work. This is actually an activity that the missionaries can "assist the ward members with their missionary efforts." We haven't had this happen before in our ward so we are super excited about it. There will be some weeks where we will offer training and then other weeks we will have activities that their friends can come to. The idea will be for the ward members to run it and the missionaries participate in it. That way when there are totally different missionaries the ward can train them as to how the missionary work goes on in the ward. We walked away feeling totally uplifted and encouraged that the Lord is really mindful of our needs right now and the wards needs. I know that the spirit was leading that conversation yesterday. There is no way we could have accomplished all that we did and have an action plan after 2 hours of talking about it. After all it has taken missionaries over 7 months in this ward to finally connect with the members! haha We were both invited to move into the ward after our missions because the ward loves us so much ;D I might consider it. I have never felt so comfortable in any ward ever! as I do here. And I am a missionary! One of the most temporary people ever! The members are just great and welcoming and friendly and they all love to laugh. Which just happens to be an "ideal Missionary" characteristic, and Sister Scrivner and I love to laugh ;D It was just so good. Sorry Mom and Dad. Maybe you will lose me to California hahaha ;D

Well I think that is it for this week! I love you all and I hope you all have a wonderful Blessed week!

Hurrah for Israel!

Love,

Sister Cottrell