Weekly planning is hard. For those of you who haven't been on a mission, once a week we sit down and go through all of our investigators and potential investigators and basically everyone we've ever met and make plans for how to get in touch with them and what to teach them in the coming week. The process has been expedited slightly since we have fewer key indicators now, but it still takes forever. We've been so busy that we just didn't have time to get it done until the very end of the week and neither of us was all that excited at the prospect, but we figured that everything's better in a blanket fort. So we hunkered down and got it done :)
This week has been good, but we've had some hard things happen. Had to take a break with Beatrice because she just plain won't read the Book of Mormon. She's not convinced that this church is the only church on the earth and she got pretty defensive when she realized that's what we were trying to tell her. Giving her a break this week and then we'll see what happens.
Sam and Swankan are doing pretty good. They (and everyone else who was present in their house when we stopped by) now have the gospel library app on their phones, which Swankan is very excited about. They missed church, though, even though they promised they would be there (Sam even said he'd fast!). Turns out Sam went to Bismarck. Not sure why. But we'll get there with them! Had a cool lesson where Sam told us his intention was to get baptized and join the church, so we'll keep working with them.
We went on exchanges, which was fun! I got to spend the day in Moorhead with Sister Dillon, so that was a good time. And Sister Davidson took over the day like a champ. Drove in the snow and everything :)
Had a lesson with Thierry and a member who speaks French, which was an interesting time. It was mostly in French, so now I know what it's like to be a greenie in Paris. But Thierry has come to church before and knows some members in the ward. He's switching jobs right now, so hopefully he'll be able to come to church again soon. He's really nice and had lots of really good questions about why there are so many churches on the earth today.
We have a new investigator named Atheer. He's from Iraq and has been here about 3 years, and he is the nicest person ever. He was reading about the Book of Mormon in Arabic and he's really excited to learn more about Joseph Smith and the Mormons. He's Muslim, so it's going to be interesting to teach him from a Christian perspective, but he loves hearing about Jesus Christ and his miracles. He's really great, though! Excited about him.
We had an amazing lesson with June about temples and sealing, which was something she didn't really understand or agree with last time we taught it. We had the perfect member with us, though, and she just laid it out for June. It finally hit home that she could live with her deceased husband forever. (He sounds amazing and June misses him a ton.) That was really comforting because I've been really worried about her transition into membership, but she's going to come to the temple with us on March 25th, and that'll be pretty amazing. Once the ward gets to know her a little better and puts their arms around her, I think she's going to be just fine.
That's about it for this week! Lots of good things, lots of good work! Hope you all have had a stellar week and that this next one treats you well, too!
