Cane Gully

September 16, 2013

It's been an interesting week. I think I can count on one hand the number of times Sister Bell and I have actually been able to go in and sit down in someone's house. We haven't been having a lot of luck catching people at home lately. We've been trying a lot of leads and less active members, but so far haven't been very successful. We were able to talk with a couple of less active members we've been trying to contact for forever, but not much progress there yet. 

We're still really trying to get one sister to come back to church. We went over there last Sunday with another member and it went really well and the sister was so sure she was going to make it this week. But then we went by on Saturday night, because I knew she would be wavering, and sure enough she told us she couldn't do it. We talked with her for a long time, and she said she felt better, but it wasn't enough to get her to church yesterday. She just can't take that first step back. She knows she'll be fine as soon as she gets in the building, but she can't bring herself to come. We don't know what else we can do for her, except pray and continue to encourage her and support her. She just needs to realize that the longer she puts this off, the harder it's going to get. 

We didn't have a very successful week, but our elders sure did. They had three investigators come to sacrament meeting and two of them stayed for the rest of church. They seem really awesome. One of them is on date to be baptized September 28. He seems really prepared and he really liked church. We're really happy for the elders. It was an exciting Sunday. Along with the elders' investigators, we had a new family that just moved in, as  well as several less active members show up, which was really great. Now we just have to keep all those people coming. 

Sister Bell and I taught a really interesting lesson to a man who's a Muslim. We had a very interesting discussion with him. He's very well studied in lots of religions, so he already knew a lot about what we believe, but we were able to answer some of his questions, and at the end of the lesson he said he had a greater respect for our church because of what we shared with him, and that he was particularly impressed with how much we, as young girls, knew about our religion. He gave us both a Qu'ran, and we offered him a Book of Mormon, but he already had one. He said he'd read it some more though. 

Sister Bell and I had a very adventurous evening last Monday. We felt that we should go visit this woman I had taught when I first got here, but hadn't expressed much interest in changing churches. We tried to find her, but we couldn't figure out where she lived. There are three roads that are very similar to each other- Cane Gully, Cane Gulley, and Cane Gully A. And we couldn't figure out which one she lived on. So finally I just turned down Cane Gulley. That was a big mistake. It's a forest road, which means it's basically a large trail in the middle of the woods. It was pretty scary to drive down, and it was so narrow we couldn't turn around. There were potholes everywhere so it was a very bumpy ride. When we finally managed to get off it, Sister Bell was walked around the car to make sure it was ok, and when she got to the front of the car she said "You killed a dragonfly!" Somehow, a huge dragonfly had gotten its head stuck in the grill of our car. It wasn't dead and we were able to get it out eventually. That was the perfect ending to that adventure. I think we're going to avoid all the Cane Gully roads for a while. 

Thank you for all the letters and emails, I love getting them. I miss you all. I love you all. 

New Companionship: Sister Bell and Sister Rudy