Hello family!

     OK- so first of all,  I want to tell you about the people we live with.  They are cute and old and tell us to call them grandma and grandpa.  So the other night I was having some extra strong sugar cravings and I remembered we had ice cream so I went to the fridge to get some and Im walking back to our room with a bowl of it and grandpa goes, "ya know, that will make you fat!" hahah i laughed and agreed and went back to our room.  So then like 10 minutes later I go back to the kitchen to clean the bowl and Grandpa is eating ice cream!!! What a stinker.  I think that if we were both born in the same period we would have been best friends in high school.

     Anyways- let me tell you 2 experiences and reasons why the spirit is so cool.  We planned to teach one of our investigators, Teena, about tithing and fast offering.  So the first thing she says when we go to teach her is that she decided that every time she used the Lords name in vain she was going to put a dollar in a jar, and then when she finally got out of the habit she would find a way to give it to the church aka fast offering!!  The next day we had planned to teach an investigator Ashley about the word of wisdom and when we got there she said that that morning she woke up and decided that she needed to stop smoking and so she was wearing a nicotine patch and everything when we were teaching her and she had no idea about the word of wisdom beforehand!! It was the coolest thing.

     We started talking to this girl on the street and she had the cutest little girl.  The little girls name was Kylie but it was short for a longer Samoan name and then her boyfriend was a Samoan guy named Paul.. weird or what?

     I was so so sad one day this week.  A lady had stopped the elders and said that she needed to meet with missionaries because all of her friends were members, she had 25 students who gave her a Book of Mormon as a graduation present, she recently had lost 2 sons and she knew Heavenly Father was leading her to the mormon church.  So, we go to teach her and she is SO awesome. holy cow.  She had so many questions and the spirit was so strong and she was just eating everything that we shared all up.  Before we left she asked what we wanted her to read and she was so excited to read out of the Book of Mormon.  So we're basically on a spiritual high the rest of the night and then around 9 o clock we get a text from her saying that she was grateful for us but didnt want to meet again because she did some research and she had enough.  It was heartbreaking.  We prayed and prayed and tried to figure out what to do and how to reply and we have had no success since.  So i was super bummed and I usually read the Book of Mormon before I go to sleep but I was just laying on the floor staring at the ceiling feeling sad and then I realized ok what am i doing how is this going to help the situation so I opened up the Book of Mormon and it opened up to Mosiah 14 where it talks all about Christ and all that he went through with the atonement.  As I was reading it I was thinking about how Heavenly Father must have felt seeing his son go through that, and then I thought of how he must feel seeing thousands of his sons and daughters around the world get rejected and heartbroken while sharing his gospel, and THEN I thought of the fact that it is our Heavenly Fathers other sons and daughters who are the ones doing the rejecting and how hard that would be to watch that happen and to know that there was a better path for them of peace and happiness.  At that moment,  I was very grateful for the knowledge of our Savior and the wonderful opportunity it is to get a little taste of what He went through as He shared the gospel.  Being a missionary has been the best thing I have ever done in my life.  I am so grateful to be here and I LOVE this gospel.  Have a wonderful week and let me know if theres anything I can do for you :)

Love,

Sister Paul