Hit 4 months this week! This transfer has flown by so far it feels like I just picked up Sister Tieman & we are already halfway through the transfer

My new obsession is crocheting I am making a blanket & it is sooo satisfying I can't put it down! Every night this week I was in bed by 9pm crocheting I felt like such an old lady

Tuesday we wanted to go tracting in a new area that we think missionaries haven't touched before. Most of the houses were gated but there was this one gate that was open with a long driveway. We decided to see if there was a house back there that we could knock on. We walked down the driveway for probably a mile then it opened to this huge field with a pond and there was this huge house on the other side in the trees. There was workers mowing the lawn and we were just in awe of how beautiful the land was. All of a sudden we see a car on the other side of the lake so we decided to turn around and we noticed it was following us. When we turned around to look at it the car would back behind trees so we wouldn't see it. We kept walking and I kept looking back & it was slowly following us hiding behind trees. We thought that if someone didn't want us on their property they would just come tell us we shouldn't be here but it was weird the car was just following us while trying to hide behind trees. We started to walk really fast and everytime I looked back it was still there slowly trying to hide. Anywaysss it followed us all the way out and we were pretty scared cuz if something happened to us we were out in the middle of no where haha. Anyways we told a member what happened and we pulled out a map & found out the owner of Auto Zone lives there!! He's like a billionaire and we just wandered onto his land haha.

We had a lesson with Brandon & invited a member last minute and she was able to come! Turns out that member was a mission president a couple of years ago in Mexico with her husband & was a convert to the church! Brandon asked questions and she said she had the exact same questions when she was investigating the church! It's kind of nice we have former mission presidents in our ward but they can be superrr intimidating. Brandon also invited us to his food truck event & we went! He gave us free food and it was so sweet. At the event there was free face painting so my comp & I got our faces painted. Little did we know the face painting booth was members of the Penicostal church.. they saw our name tags and tried to convert us. They were telling us that they dress like "the holy apostles" and how they "catch" the holy ghost. Soooooo interesting. 

There is this lady named Susan that we've been trying to teach for forever. The missionaries have taught her in the past & said the lessons were so good and the spirit was so strong. She came to church last Sunday & I introduced myself to her but she seemed so scared of me. I asked the member that brought her what was going on and she said she's having a really stressful time right now. Susan texted us a night this week and told us she needed us to come over to pray for her and do service. We went over and her house was a mess. We helped her put things away and organize stuff. She is a horderrrrr. Apparently her sister (who's a member and lives in Utah) flew into town and stole her mom who Susan was taking care of who has dementia. Susan and her sister are going to court against each other and absolutely hate one another. She told us she doesn't know how she could be apart of a church that the person she hates the most is apart of. We decided to hold off on lessons and just do service for her, we didn't want to be pushy at all. Sunday night she asked us if we would come over & that she really really needs a lesson from us. We rushed right over & taught her the Plan of Salvation & she loved it!! It was such a good lesson and she asked us if we could teach all the lessons to her. If we can just work out the drama with her sister I think she would love to join the church

We had a lesson with our neighbor Amy last week & we gave her our number and hoped she would call us. We waited a couple days & got pretty discouraged we didn't think she was interested. A couple days later she called us and asked if we would come over the next day! We were so excited because we felt like she was so elect & prepared. She was so sweet and gave us bags of makeup/hairproduct that she didn't use anymore & made some lunch. We had a lesson with her and taught the Gospel. Throughout the lesson I felt the energy in the room shift. As we were teaching, she was trying to find things to disagree with. We told her our missions are 18 months and she told us that we are wasting the best years of our lives. She loves the Bible & so I was teaching alot from it and she made me show her where each verse was she was very skeptical. She then pulled out a notepad full of questions she had about our church. She had looked up our church online which sucks so much Anti is such a battle. Nowadays people just research things for a quick answer and it is SO hard. She asked us why we believe we will turn into Nephi after we die. She asked us why Lorenzo Snow left the church... we ended up having a 3 hour lesson. We kept telling her that everything she was reading was false but she kept reading off her questions. She told us she was trying to have an open heart but her mind was closed off. At the end of the lesson she told us she wasn't going to call us last night but that she prayed if she should have us over and God told her to let us in. Anti is soo hard

Missionary work can be so hard but I read this quote by Elder Holland that Iove

Elder Holland:

Anyone who does any kind of missionary work will have occasion to ask, Why is this so hard? Why can’t our success be more rapid? Why aren’t there more people joining the Church? Why isn’t the only risk in missionary work that of pneumonia from being soaking wet all day and all night in the baptismal font? I have thought about this a great deal. I offer this as my personal feeling. I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? It seems to me that missionaries and mission leaders have to spend at least a few moments in Gethsemane. Missionaries and mission leaders have to take at least a step or two toward the summit of Calvary. Now, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not talking about anything anywhere near what Christ experienced. That would be presumptuous and sacrilegious. But I believe that missionaries and investigators, to come to the truth, to come to salvation, to know something of this price that has been paid, will have to pay a token of that same price. For that reason I don’t believe missionary work has ever been easy, nor that conversion is, nor that retention is, nor that continued faithfulness is. I believe it is supposed to require some effort, something from the depths of our soul. If He could come forward in the night, kneel down, fall on His face, bleed from every pore, and cry, “Abba, Father (Papa), if this cup can pass, let it pass,” then little wonder that salvation is not an easy thing for us. If you wonder if there isn’t an easier way, you should remember you are not the first one to ask that. Someone a lot greater and a lot grander asked a long time ago if there wasn’t an easier way. When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God knows all about your sorrows and afflictions. The only way to salvation is through Gethsemane and on to Calvary. The only way to eternity is through Him—the Way, the Truth, and the Life.