Defender of the Dakotas: 65 - Miracles in Montana and Williston

An hour is not enough time!

We had an incredible week this week!!! 18 lessons! We were hoping to achieve the standard of excellence by getting 20 lessons, but we didn't quite make it. But still, awesome week!

On Monday after emailing, I went to a members house and played the trombone!

It was super awesome!

Though it was spooky weird because the case is the same as the one we have at home (from 1978!) and it's the same OLDS make!
What!? Except it is silver. Crazy. It was so awesome to play for a bit.

So this is a family that we teach home primary to.

We thought of this cool lesson that we wanted to teach, acting out Nephi and the broken bow.

Our bunk bed has bars that are not very pleasing on the feet. (This connects, I promise.)

So I decided to be resourceful by buying a pool noodle.

Now we can climb up the ladder in our bare feet/stockings. :-)

My Dad would be so proud.

But funny thing, inside that pool noodle there was totally a weird blue bendy thing!

Tender mercy!

A little dental floss goes a long way.

Hooray!

Family home evening tonight!

We were going to have a super legit lesson at the park this week. A less active who is Cambodian (!) who we'd never met, who our Philapino recent convert found at work (why is she such an awesome missionary?!), but her daughter was sick. :(

But Korwa still came, as well as a member.

We read the second chapter of the Book of Mormon with her.

She so wants kids.

But her husband is never home.

She's so cute.

We found lots of new investigators this week, all of them are African. Two of them have crazy real intent and they are on date for baptism on the 15th then the 22nd of August! We also made contact with I think four or five less actives that we have never met before, and had lessons with three of them. And one of them came to church! We had three investigators at church as well! The two Africans who are on date for baptism, and Korwa. The one couple who we've been teaching because of that one dinner appointment didn't come. We are going to find out why. They need to come!

We are low on miles, so we've been conserving by walking more than usual and getting rides from members. It's been hot, well into the 90's (I know that you Arizona people are laughing, but it's really hot to me right now! Plus it's humid. lol). But! It's been super good.

Oh, and we had a very successful exchange with the Sidney sisters! I went with Sister Park to Sidney, Montana!

This is the house that they stay at. They have basically the whole basement hall that they stay in. They acutally live with a part member family. They live on a farm!

It's crazy.

And what else is crazy is this is the room that used to be super scary and used to not have the spirit there at all. This is the room that caused the sisters to drive over to Williston and stay the night with us. But it's all better and dedicated and stuff. YAY!

The Sisters in Montana basically started from scratch. The elders before basically weren't teaching at all. (Big surprise, right?) But man, they seem to have taken off! They've been doing a lot of tracting, Sister Miles and Sister Park have, but when I was there we only knocked on like, ten doors, all in the morning! And in this funny little town.

Welcome to Fairview!

haha.

We went to Sidney after lunch and we taught five lessons, a great amount of lessons!

And a huge miracle has happened.

A girl who has been active in the church and converted in her heart for two years has received permission to get baptized!!! And her parents are softening and taking the discussions now! This is two years before she would have been baptized (at 18). And I got to meet her! And I feel so privileged to be there to hear about this miracle from her! It's going to be the craziest attendance of a baptism ever! The elders that first taught her are flying up from different parts of the west coast and everything. This is a national event!

So cool!

And I met a lot of other cool people, but that was the coolest.

Meanwhile, on the West side of Williston...

Sister Miles and Sister Barrett taught SIX lessons! So cool! And that's when a lot of the less active lessons happened with people who we had never met. And they had a sweet lesson where Sister Miles was really able to connect with one of our investigators and offer special words of guidance because of her our family's experience. Exchanges are SO inspired! They had great success!

Meanwhile, on the East side of Williston...

The Third Ward Elders had a sweet lesson with nine Africans at once! They were all full of questions, but they went over the baptismal interview questions to get them pumped and then talked about the temple and this one guy stood up and was like, "we are all going to go to church! I will pick you up! and you! and you!" and so on! Soooo cool. Only two of them came. But still, sweet lesson!

Friday was good, BLAH, then AWESOME!
It was cool.

And then Saturday was just way up on the awesome level!

We taught lots of lessons! We put our other African investigator on date that morning! And this one member gave us a ton of rides. AND we, as of that day, have officially knocked on every single door that we could find on the ward list that wasn't in a locked apartment building. (There are a lot of those.)

And we met this one family that has was a valuable family to contact. They were living in their one company house for this two weeks, so we got his number, so we always know who is living in the house, and they are members, and the people who are going to be having the house next is a part member family who has been so prepared, they need to be active in the church! YEAH!

We met then with this one member at the church and there was a miscommunication and she brought all her kids with her thinking we were meeting someone at the church and she could just let her kids play. Soooooo we just bought them all to Kossi and Valorie's, because they have crazy kids, so they wouldn't mind.

And, guess what!? Kossi got a job! He has been looking for a new job since before he was baptized in April! He finally got one! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! And this one Sister is pretty much the most awesome fellowshipper ever. Her husband is actually African, an they are new in the ward, and they are one of the most awesome families ever, and they are totally going to develop the best friendship ever, which Kossi and Valorie so need!