Best Week in Alpine So Far

This has been a busy and fun week here at home as well as in Alpine. Carla, Taryn and Brett came to visit and we have been having family fun time. Imagine the surprise when on Saturday Carla brought her phone out to the pool where we were all swimming and said, "You need to see this." She lowered the phone to our eye level and there on the screen was a picture of Elder Winters and John. I was excited at first but then went a little crazy. Why was he not in missionary clothes? Why did John go see him and how did he find him? Eyeyeye!! Turned out the missionaries were doing service for someone by doing yard work. Here is a picture of the mission cars all lined up and ready to head to the service project. They were hot and tired and John treated the eight of them to ice cream. Joe asked me where my faith was and I appreciate that. In the end it was a good feeling to know that the two family members that were not able to be with us were in fact together in Utah. The picture made us complete. What made it even better was receiving the letter this week and reading the first paragraph. As the mom you can not even really wish he were home when you see the dedication he has to the work he has been called to do. Knowing how dedicated he is is all the comfort I could ask for.

Hey, Hey,

So yeah this has probably been one of our best weeks in Alpine so far! We set some personal transfer records with lessons last week and we found 3 new investigators! It was also pretty cool to see John on Saturday! We got some pretty massive milkshakes and yeah it was just funny to see him really. That’s why Provo is the Best mission in the world! There are not many other places in the world where I would just run into family like that... No other mission could compare in uniqueness to Provo! And it was surprising how normal I felt after the visit. It didn’t distract me from the work at all. I guess serving in Provo feels enough like serving in AZ that I kind of just expect to run into people I know, and continue with the work afterwards. My mind is in missionary mode and will be stuck that way until I am released, so you don’t have to worry about me being distracted by homesickness or any of that stuff. Not that I don’t miss you guys... but my calling is more important than myself, and there is just no need to focus on the things I am missing.

Anyways, we have had a really cool experience with one of our new investigators. They are this family in Bishop Sumner’s ward and they come from a born again Christian background. We could tell in our first meetings with them that their pastor has fed them a lot of bull about the Mormon Church, and they knew of references that their pastor gave them to bash the Mormon Church but they really had not studied it out for themselves. So we go over there and talk about prophets and Jesus Christ and both Elder Brannock and I just bear powerful testimony about the divinity of the Book of Mormon and of prophets and we have just been able to recognize a very powerful spirit when we are in their house. There have been many times in other lessons where I struggle for words or struggle to think of scriptures, but in this family's house I feel like every single thing I tell them is given to me by the spirit, and while we teach, scriptures just pop into my head! Both my companion and I can tell that they are really thinking about the things we are telling them and that the spirit is touching them. We are confounding their spirits and planting that seed of the true gospel in their minds. We both know that they are a very important family because we both have come to the knowledge that the adversary does not want us there. So we have been praying extra hard for them. And yeah I just thought I would share the experience because it is so cool going over there and just allowing the spirit to take over and guide the conversations we have.

If you were planning experiences to help your child grow, it would be hard to think of something to top this one. I am so thankful for missions, for the gospel, for the Holy Ghost and for the change the atonement can bring to a life and heart that is ready.