Beginning Again

I'm glad to hear that y'all had a good 4th of July. Ours was pretty uneventful. We had weekly planning in the morning, and the one appointment we had cancelled, but that turned out to be a good thing because we ended up dropping by an active members’ house. One of their daughters lives with them and is less active, and so we were able to talk to her a little. She wasn't very interested in talking about the gospel and coming back to church, but she did mention that she wanted to quit smoking, and Sister Boyson told her that we could help her do that. There's this really great 15 step method that missionaries over in Ireland came up with back in the 80s, and it works really well. So we offered to teach her about it and help her quit and she agreed! So we're going back over on Thursday to help her get started. We're hoping as she goes through this process it will soften her to hearing about the gospel.

The other big event for the week, of course, was meeting President and Sister Turner. We met with the West Columbia and Columbia zones on Thursday in the West Columbia building. It was kind of fitting that it was there, since that's where my first transfer meeting was held, so it was the first building I ever went to. It was kind of like going back to the beginning all over again. 

We had been asked to get there half an hour early and sit in the chapel and sing hymns till the Turners arrived. I had been praying for the past couple days to receive a confirmation that President Turner had been called by God to be my mission president, not really because I felt like I needed one, but because President Holm had asked us to. I definitely got that confirmation as soon as President Turner walked into the chapel. I didn't even have to turn around; I knew when he entered the room, because the spirit in the room changed. I think the best way for me to describe it would be that it immediately became more reverent. There was just a calmer, more powerful feeling in the room. But I knew that President Turner was the mission president; it was so obvious that he had that responsibility put on him. 

The Turners are wonderful. They are so kind. And they're both very funny as well. At the end of the meeting President Turner let us ask him and Sister Turner questions, and as they were telling about how they met and dated they got pretty funny (they only dated for 8 days before getting engaged!). As of right now, the way things are done is staying the same, and then President Turner will change things as he feels they need to be changed. We're having interviews with him next week, and I'm excited to get to know him better.

Things are going well here. We're still working on finding people to teach, as well as teaching those that we've recently found. No one is showing much progress just, everyone is kind of in the beginning stages. But we have a lot of people with great potential.