Friends and family-

     T'was another good week in Renooo!  I am really starting to love this area and the people here so much- its no Ely but let me tell ya, theres a couple spots in our area where at night we can see downtown all lit up and it is soooo pretty!  Never thought i'd enjoy the view of a bunch of casinos but it is beautiful. I'll have to take a picture someday (I'm the worst at taking pictures so sorry).  We started teaching this guy Tris a while ago and then he disappeared off the planet but he came back and now we are teaching him again- he's struggling with seeing the need for the Book of Mormon.  He lovvveess the bible and really wants to strengthen his faith in Jesus Christ and is not super open to the idea of another book..BUT he is slowly softening and the spirit is working on him so high hopes!

     We went on exchanges this last week with the Keystone sisters and I got to go with Sister Landgrave who I trained and it was soo fun!  It's cool to see how both of us have changed since 2 transfers ago and she is seriously such an awesome missionary.  They have downtown Reno in their area and so it was cool to work in that environment- probably one of the best parts of missionary work is getting to meet so many different type of people and hearing their stories.. it has really opened my eyes and helped to realize that I never have any reason to complain! haha.

     One of the things that our mission encourages is blessing contacts- which is basically tracting where we introduce ourselves as representatives of Jesus Christ and then offer blessings in the form of a prayer on peoples homes!  Honestly I have not really done it much on my mission because I keep making excuses that it won't be effective in our area but really just because I'm scared.. haha so last week I was reading in our practical application guide for preach my gospel and the spirit kept telling me that it is in their for a reason and that I need to get over myself and focus on the people so Sister Beh and I decided that we were going to make it a priority to blessing contact for at least an hour every day to help us gain a testimony of it!  Heavenly Father is so kind and helped us out- we we blessing contacting this house and the lady answered the door and agreed to allow us leave a blessing, after talking to her a little bit to get to know her and what we should include in the prayer, she opened up to us and said that her mother had just passed away and she was really not sure if she would ever see her again.. So sad but the coolest thing ever because after we prayed she was in tears and was so grateful for the comfort that she felt and now we will hopefully be teaching her!! 

     Probably the coolest miracle of the week though was yesterday- we were walking on this street and started talking to this guy, he was pretty quick to let us know that he was not interested but we asked if he knew anyone else who would be and he told us to go visit his neighbor.  So we did and it was first this old guy who answered and said 'oh boy what are you selling' hahah but then when we assured him that we weren't selling him anything (just offering eternal salvation) his wife came up behind him and told us that she was actually looking for a church!! She was super sweet and eager to learn and we are going to start teaching her family this week :) 

     I love this work.  If any of you have any tips on helping someone quit smoking who thinks theres no hope pleeeaaseee let me know :)  Have a wonderful week!!

Love, 

Sister Paul