Another Good Week

It's been a good week. Every week goes by so fast, I feel like I just wrote y'all three days ago. But a lot of good things happened this week. We had an awesome exchange on Tuesday with our sister training leaders. Sister Earl, who came out with Sister Bell, came here to Camden with me. We had a little time before our first appointment so we decided to knock on some trailers. We randomly picked one to start on, and the lady invited us right in. It turns out she's a less active member, and her daughter who lives with her is a member as well. They joined the church awhile ago up in Maryland. They're very northern and very funny. Hopefully we can get them coming back to church again. They still have testimonies, just have got away from living the gospel. I love it when Heavenly Father guides us to people in that way, even people who've already accepted the gospel once and need to find it again.

We also had ward council on the exchange. I have to say, I love going to ward council in this ward because the leaders are hilarious. So it's always an entertaining experience. And I also am so grateful that I have this opportunity to see what goes on in running the church. I've definitely gained a greater appreciation for all my church leaders seeing how much work it actually takes to keep the church going. And I feel like I'll be much more prepared to serve well in callings after my mission because I've been able to see such great examples on my mission.

Lately we've been spending a lot of time getting ready for the 5th Sunday next week. It's going to be a missionary Sunday, so I'm speaking in sacrament along with one of the elders and our ward mission leader. And then during third hour one of the senior missionaries serving in the stake is going to give a presentation on member missionary work. He's been coming to our ward coordination meetings so we can get ready for it. Sister Boyson and I are going to sing a missionary song she wrote, so we've been practicing that a lot. And Elder Ferguson wants us to demonstrate to members how to talk to their friends as part of his presentation, so we've been practicing different scenarios to present.

We had a really amazing lesson with one of our less active members on Friday night. The wife has recently been coming back to church, but her husband has kept giving us excuses, the biggest one being that he doesn't have a suit. From talking to ward members, he's always kind of given excuses and never shown much interest in coming back. But we left him a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon and he read it, so we discussed it on Friday. It was an amazing discussion, and at the end he said he'd gotten some impressions and answers that he'd been looking for for a long time. On Sunday, his wife came up and told us he'd gotten himself a suit, so hopefully he'll be at church next Sunday.

We had stake conference this weekend. It was really good. On Saturday night we went to the evening session in Columbia, and then Sunday they broadcast it to our building in Camden. About halfway through we lost the signal, and they couldn't get it back. So the young women volunteered to do a musical number, and then both bishoprics bore their testimonies for the rest of the time. It ended up being a good meeting.

Thanks for all the emails and letters; I always appreciate it. I love you, have a wonderful week!