64 - Tickled Pink

We really racked up the miles in the middle of this week! We drove at least 600 miles this week, what with our normal driving around Williston, then driving to Minot then to Bismarck for our meeting the new mission president meeting, driving back Minot then to Williston, then driving halfway to Minot again, and back to Williston. WOW! Lots of car time. But still a super productive week!

This is Minot

We saw some cool things on our drive. Things are looking really green. 



I got a good shot of the City of Minot!

Drove by a familiar looking factory on the way to Bismarck.

Saw a pretty rainbow that we saw fade out of existence.

And a pretty sunset! 


With the sun against the horizon.

It was so good to finally meet President and Sister Hess! 

President Hess is a lot like President Anderson which is good, and Sister Hess is just haha, cute. 

She's just adorable.

It was cool to have all the Sisters that Sister Barrett is over in one place! 

From left to right, you have: 

the Williston, ND, 

the Minot, ND, 

and the Sydney, MO Sisters. 

Woo!

Here are a couple of pictures of our zone

After zone conference in Bismarck, we went to Texas Roadhouse to eat before going back to Minot, the same Texas Roadhouse that we ate at for Sister Easter's birthday almost exactly a year prior, so that was kind of cool.








And then we went on exchanges. 

Sister Andrus has been out in the mission field for less then a month, and she got to drive, because by black dot has not quite faded yet from the incident in late January of the snow covered curb! 

haha. 

(I will be able to drive next transfer though!)

And that night. Holy cow. I don't think I've ever in my life driven in rain that came down this hard. It was INSANE! I would have tried to take a picture if I wasn't so preoccupied straining my eyes to try to help see the lines on the road! Seriously, it takes a lot of rain to do that. There were a lot of people pulled over on the side of the road. But the road was straight and wide and it was a divided highway, so we felt pretty safe. It was an adventure!

We got home late that night, needless to say.

In the morning, me and sister Andrus totally decided to match.

We almost died like five times in Williston driving. 



But that's nothing new at all. 


People are crazy drivers here, it keeps you on your toes. 


Again, it's an adventure!

We did some awesome work on trying to contact people on the ward list during our exchange! It was awesome. And we taught some great lessons, always focusing on the temple, because that's a lot of what zone conference was about. It was super great!

We exchanged back that night and it was back to being a regular week pretty much.

Some more about the missionary work that happened this week. We found some new investigators this week. We don't know how solid some really are. We had a solid lesson with one of them, though he is Muslim and when we explained very precisely the priesthood and the importance of being baptized by priesthood authority and that if the Book of Mormon is true it creates this chain effect of truth and so when he finds out it is true he should be baptized, he didn't seem to grasp that fully. And the other two that we found, or more the one found bishop and bishop found us, they met with us just looking for financial help, and we referred them to a person in the ward who deals with those issues, and so we need to establish expectations with them still.

BUT! There is a new investigator that we started teaching this week that is, as we say, golden! He his from Africa and his sister, who is in Philadelphia, is a member, and has been trying to get him to go to the Mormon church. And when he moved here on the 4th of July, he finally decided to check it out and he found that we worshiped the same God, same doctrine, just a few more extra good things and he bore his testimony in gospel principles explaining all this and said he wants to join this church, he wants to be baptized! We had our first lesson with him that night and now he is on date for being baptized on the 15th of August! It's never been so easy to put someone on date!

We had a busy day on Saturday too.

We made a game plan of seeing all the people in this area and traveling on foot to save on miles. 

We made so many good contacts, it was pretty cool. 

There was one lady that her husband is a member, and we met both of them, and she's totally not interested in coming to church, but she's totally so nice. 

It was cool.

Korwa is back from Utah! We brought a member with us to a lesson with her and we gave her the Book of Mormon in her language! It was soooo cool. We just took turns reading, and she read her verses in her own language and it was very evident that she understood it much better in her own language! We hope she reads it on her own.

We also strengthened the members this week. There is a member who is a single male, he is divorced, and he's a convert, so he's not endowed and we knocked on his door, found out he was actually active, and he just feels like a fly on the wall at church, but he just keeps on going. We told him he could feed us dinner, we would just have to bring an extra female. So we went that Saturday to dinner at his house with our ward mission leader and his wife.

We walk in, there is already a salad set out for each of us. We just felt bad because we actually just told him we had one extra person instead of two, so he didn't prepare for all who were present, so he just didn't eat, which we felt super bad about. But he was 'tickled pink' to have us, and also, turns out he's a chief! So that was a surprise. Our eyes grew wider and wider with the steak, then the mashed potatoes, then the sauce! And the dinner message, which was a re-commitment to read, pray, and attend church, was more what they all needed than we thought. It brought him to tears. He needed this company, and to make best friends with this couple. It was truly amazing.

P.S. I cooked and consumed the triforce for lunch...