Interesting People

Hey ya'll!

Great Time-a Day! Sounds like y’all just keep getting busier and busier and have a full summer already! What happened to my laid-back family? But, no, I don't really have any plans for the summer - I don't really know what to do with my life, to be honest. But I really like your idea of training to teach those classes. That Pyramid Project class sounds like something I'd really love. Maybe I can teach that class for you next year :) And something I've learned on my mission is that I really do love to teach, especially about the scriptures. Only it really frustrates me when people don't want to learn.... It's so exciting, why doesn't everyone want to know the things I've learned! Something really interesting, that I learned through looking up words in the concordance and Hebrew & Greek dictionary that you sent me, almost every time the Bible mentions the word 'hell', the original Hebrew and Greek words really mean a world of spirits, a place of the departed, but not a final state. Man, if people could just read the Bible in the original languages, I think people would have a lot better understanding of true doctrine, not that there's still not a lot that's missing, but what is left would be a lot clearer.... so many people get so tripped up because of misunderstandings in the wording. No wonder the Bible is the stumbling block of the gentiles.

But, that is hilarious about Hugo! Dad is just so awesome, I can understand why Hugo wants to talk to him so much, but I wonder why it took him 20 or so years to figure it out. Neighbors really do make life interesting. On the mission, it's your investigators :) Well, actually the ward members, too. Here in Gretna, we have some really great ones. They keep us rolling all the time. Sometimes we can't restrain ourselves and just start laughing, but most of the time we try to hold it in, in case it might offend someone. For example, there's a lady in the ward who it seems, whenever we are at a dinner and she's there too, we end up on the subject of moonshine. I also never realized how big Virginia was in the tobacco industry. There are so many old ladies here that chew, it's disgusting!

So this week I got to visit someone in jail, it was a fun experience - talking on the little phone through the plexi-glass. A less-active member of the ward who wants to start changing his life, he was pretty cool. He wants us to try to get him a Book of Mormon. But the problem is getting anything to him in the jail is a process, and apparently the people at the jail don't like Mormons, so I don't know if it will ever make it to him. How sad.

We had Zone Conference and Stake Conference this week, which we had to be up in Buena Vista for, so we've been missing out on a lot of sleep and study....which is hard, but those conferences are always great. At Stake Conference I got to see a lot of people from when I served in Buena Vista. A lot of people still recognized me and said, “Hi”. I even saw ReNay! I don't know if you remember me talking about him, but he is defiantly one that always kept me laughing. I saw my old ward mission leader and all kinds of people; it was really fun. And not to mention the talks were really great. It never ceases to amaze me how, even though people prepare their talks independently, they all seem to go together. This time it was all about how we need to give our whole hearts to following our Savior. After the conference, we stopped at a park by the river that I'd been to when I served there, and had lunch with the members who gave us a ride. It was so nice and sunny, I loved it.

At Zone Conference, they talked a lot about being more bold and meek and how they can be the same thing when we use them and balance them correctly. They talked about bringing up baptism early and letting people know our purpose. Then that night we had a meeting with, Debbie, the wife of a recent convert, who we just recently started teaching, and after teaching her the plan of salvation, asked her to be baptized, and she said she would, so in the next month we should be having another baptism! We are so excited!

Did I already tell you I have to speak on Easter Sunday? Originally they were going to ask us to speak on the 26th, but I said, well, I'll have to accept for the next missionary, because I won't be there, so they just changed and had us do it on Easter.

Well, I'm running out of time, things are going great here in Gretna. I'll talk to you all later. Love you!

~Melissa