Weaving Threads

Hi everybodeee!

You all crack me up. I'm glad you enjoyed reading about my week. It was definitely an experience. Every week we are supposed to write our mission president letters and just tell him about how the areas are and how we're doing and what not, but I get tired of writing them, so every so often I'll make it fun and write him riddles and jokes (which he'll call me and try to answer), or tell my week in story form about the princesses that live in Gretna, etc. So you can be sure he got a funny rendition of the events. Sis. Bell was telling me she actually wrote about it to her family in verse. She said she'll try to remember it so I can have a copy.

But yes, I got better from being a newt. And no, I didn’t know that GWC is now GWU! I didn’t even know they were holding classes over in Monticello. Have they done any real building over there yet? That’s exciting. I’d like to be involved with it all again, it’s a great work that is going on, but I don’t know how…

But of course, this is the greatest work of all that I’m doing now – missionary work! I actually had a really amazing day of tracting (which still is not my favorite thing to do). It was raining (Still is, in fact, it’s been raining for 5 days straight now, and I’m really getting tired of it – sometimes I think I’m solar powered), but anyway, we had our umbrellas and our boots and we decided to go for it.

Rewinding a little bit first, it all started with a completely bogus media referral. We got a referral from church headquarters that a “Mrs. Howard” ordered a copy of the Book of Mormon. So we went to the address, but nobody knew anything about the mysterious Mrs. Howard – the people that lived there were the Jeffersons. They already had a copy of the Book of Mormon that they’d ordered awhile before, but weren’t really interested. So we decided we needed to tract down that street but didn’t get to it for a couple days – until the day it was raining. For the first time my whole mission, people actually let us in then and there and were able to teach short lessons – and not just one of two people, but six or seven! Not everyone was all that interested, but we got several return appointments. It was crazy. But what was even crazier was that a lot of the people down that street that we talked to were actually relatives of one of our investigators! And then as we were walking back to the car, our investigators passed us in their car and stopped to talk to us and said they were on their way to visit his relatives. Coincidence?

And another strange “coincidence” for you – I don’t know what’s with me and foreigners but over a month ago, we ran into an Egyptian lady and gave her a Book of Mormon, but never knew what came of it. Then out of the blue yesterday a member that was coming with us to an appointment tells us about this friend of hers who knows an Egyptian woman who was given a Book of Mormon, but she had a really hard time understanding it and so she gave it to this friend. So we figured it must be the same lady that we had run into – I mean, really how many Egyptians can there be in Gretna, Virginia? Then a few hours later we go to the post office, and who happens to be sitting in the car next to us when we pull up? The Egyptian lady. We go over and talk to her and she tells us in her broken English that she is glad to see us again and how she gave away our book because she had a hard time understanding it but was still very interested in our religion and asked us a couple of question about things she’d heard and told us a little about Islam. We asked her if she’d like us to get her a copy in her language (Arabic) and she was really excited about that idea and told us where she lived so we could come give it to her when we got it. Crazy.

Isn’t it so amazing when we can start to see God’s hand in all things and how he can weave the threads of everyone’s life into one big, beautiful picture? I love being able to have the opportunity to see those things. For example, I got a card in the mail the other day from the sisters that are serving in Buena Vista right now. They sent me a picture from the baptism of a girl I’d taught while I was there a year ago. I don’t know if you remember me talking about Tabitha, but she was finally baptized! It was so cool to see that! And then I get a letter from Sister Hill, telling me about this less active, part member family that we had started visiting while we were in Christiansburg, and how the husband was getting baptized. I had never even met him because he really didn’t want much to do with the church – and look what happened!

Everything has to start somewhere, and you really just never know what seeds you are planting and what becomes of them. So it’s really fun to be able to see the fruits of some of the seeds you’ve planted every now and then. We are also teaching a part member family here in Gretna now that we are really excited about. The husband joined the church last summer I think, and the wife really didn’t want anything to do with it, but now she’s meeting with us and reading from the Book of Mormon. She’s told us that she thinks we were sent here just for her. Neat, huh? It’s been a great week.

And this next week will be awesome too. We’re having Zone Conference (my last one! I can hardly believe it!), and then Stake Conference that we have to go up to Buena Vista for, so I can see everyone from there! Anyway, I better get going! Love you all!

~Melissa

P.S. I can't send pictures until Sis. Bell finds her camera cord! I guess I could try to remember to take pictures with my camera, but it's been acting funny, so I usually just depend on hers.