This has been a great week! We gained a new investigator and a new less active! They are married and they just moved into our ward boundaries. Thankfully they asked for help moving and the missionaries they asked referred us to them and they are golden! She is looking for a church to join and grew up Catholic and Baptist and didn’t feel that either of those were right. She’s attended other churches but once again, didn’t feel like they were right. She’s golden! Now, if we can only answer her husband’s many, many questions in a way that makes him comfortable with the church again. He has a lot of questions about Joseph Smith and the temple. Luckily our new institute director is literally an expert on Joseph Smith and we’re going to get him to come with us to a lesson since he’s in our ward. Woot! They are so amazing and we loved being over at their house. We have big hopes for them!

We’ve been having good lessons with R---. He has to work two jobs on Sunday which means he can only stay for an hour and a half, but we’ve been having a lot of lessons on the importance of the Sabbath day and he’s been working to get the day off. He has really been wanting to go to Priesthood though so this week he got up early and went to 3^rd ward (where he knows no one) just to be able to attend Priesthood meeting. We were so proud of him! Especially because he decided to do it all on his own.

K--- *sigh*, oh K---… Well, she asked for permission to get baptized finally and her mom said yes! But now she’s not sure if she wants to do it. It’s like the light has gone out of her eyes. We’re not sure if it was something her mom said or if it was because we hadn’t been able to have a real, quality lesson in a week and a half, but now we have to help her get it back! Luckily Girl’s Camp is this week and she’s going to go so we let the leaders know about the situation and hopefully she will get the spark back.

V--- two great granddaughters are staying at her house for a month because their dad lives there (4 generations in 1 house! Crazy!) They absolutely love us and when they heard we were there again they came running up the stairs and gave us the biggest hugs! They love it when we sing to them and one of them Calay (pronounced cah-lay; I think it’s so pretty!) decided she’s going to make us bracelets with our names on them. They are so sweet! Neither of them are members so they don’t recognize a lot of the hymns. I wish we could work with them but they live with their mom in Washington and she’s a devout member of another church.

I got to see Butte this week. I now know why they call it the butt of Montana! It was probably the ugliest place I’ve ever been. The houses were so old and really cool-looking but it was kind of ghetto-ish. I wouldn’t want to go walking around there and the huge mine is like a scar on the face of the land. The coolest thing I saw there was a massive statue of Jesus up on the mountain side. Oh, wait, I thought it was Jesus, apparently it’s actually Our Lady of the Rockies. Oops, my bad. I can still pretend it’s Jesus, right? ;)

We had a great dinner with the L---. They made us bacon and onion filled burgers. It was seriously the best thing I’ve had or dinner in such a long time! They even have air conditioning! But only in the living room, so we ate our dinner in front of it on the carpet. It was really fun and we had a good chance to talk to her about why she hasn’t been to church and how we can help them return. They are such an amazing family, they just need the blessings of the Gospel!

Speaking of food, I didn’t know it was possible to be tired of eating, but I am. People keep asking us what we want for dinner and I want to be like, “I don’t care, if you know of a way to fill me up without me needing to eat, I’d like to take that option”. I love people’s food but nothing sounds exciting to eat anymore. It’s really weird.

Oh, and speaking of food again, we went to the ?---- house for dinner last week and me (thinking fast at a previous appointment) offered to bring pizza so that we didn’t get food poisoning again. I was so glad we did! And it was a nice break for them to have someone else bring dinner. It was funny because I warned Sister Session about the smell of their house before we got there but I don’t think she anticipated how bad it was going to be. We walked in the door and she had to put her hand over her mouth because it looked like she was going to toss our last meal. Me on the other hand, I’m tough. Stomach of steel. I told her quietly to just breathe through her mouth and it would pass. We both survived dinner which was a plus. J

One of our less active families, the J---, moved and actually told us where they went! This is a first for us because usually when people move they’re trying to hide, but when we pulled up to her house and saw that she was gone we emailed her and she actually told us where she moved to! I was so happy because I love that family! I’m going to start teaching her little girl the piano because our mission president has encouraged us to use our talents to foster friendly relationships and actually listed this as one of the suggestions. I’m way excited and Sister Session will be able to teach the mom while I teach piano! I’m very excited!

I had a horse get it’s snot all over one of my white shirts this week while we were out visiting a woman in the ward. Luckily it was time to go home after her appointment so I could get it washed out, but it makes me think a little more carefully about my clothing choices when I know I’ll be around people’s horses.

This week we’re going hymn caroling. It’s a lot like Christmas caroling…only with hymns. Yeah, pretty self-explanatory. We’re excited because we love singing together and we actually sound pretty good. We’ve had a lot of compliments on how well we sing together which is a plus. It always brightens people’s days when you sing to them.

We had a massive rainstorm this week in the middle of the night! The streets were full of water and it was moving so fast! I have no idea where it all went because in the morning it had all evaporated, but it was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to an Arizona monsoon. It was so fun to watch that I actually sat on my bed and just looked at it for a while (which is big for me because I love my sleep!).

Well, that’s about it for this week. Please write!

Love,

Sister Draney