June 15, 2015

Hello everyone! I hope you're having a wonderful summer, and that it's not too hot wherever you are :) Things are going pretty well down here in little ol' Lake Wales. Sister Rudd and I have been here for 5 months now, it's kind of hard to believe.

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but W. and G., two of our most solid investigators, are moving back to New York City soon.  Their parents stopped meeting with us awhile back since they don't speak a lot of English (and obviously, we don't speak a lot of Spanish), so we're really hoping they'll all go to a Spanish branch up there.

People think my height is hilarious, as always. We have an investigator who calls me lil' bit. Hysterical.

Okay, I admit, it actually is kind of funny :)

We got to go to a dance recital this week, that was pretty fun. One of the men in our ward did a dance with his daughters. He wore a tutu and everything, it was hilarious :)

We have a lot of new investigators, but I don't know how solid any of them actually are... so we'll see. Three random ladies did come to church on Sunday, we were not expecting that. That seems to happen almost every week, so we're definitely blessed there.

I've been realizing more and more how sad it is that there are so many bad things out there about the church. We've had so many investigators not want to learn anymore because they hear things that aren't true. We met this Haitian lady and she seemed fairly interested. At the end she said "yes, you can come back! Unless you're Mormon. I do not like Mormons." When we told her that's what we were she said "Oh. I did not know that. I'm really busy." That was pretty surprising to us, I don't even know how she heard about the church, much less what she heard about it, she wouldn't tell us. And one lady told us that she read online that Mormons have multiple wives, and that they'll tell you they don't, but they really do. Haha what is that all about? :) But people do say good things too, usually that they knew a Mormon that was so nice. So I know that we can have a powerful influence, more than we realize.

We had a neat experience that reassured me that none of our efforts our wasted. As long as we're doing all we can, we are planting seeds, even if we don't always get to reap a lot of results. We met a teenage boy named Jeremiah who asked us if we were Mormon. We asked how he knew and he told us we had talked to his friend a few months ago at a gas station and that he was in the car. Afterwards he asked his friend what we'd talked to him about and he was interested and started researching the church online (good stuff, thankfully). And after talking to him for awhile, we also realized that we had met his mom a few days ago, and we actually have an appointment to see her tonight. They don't want to leave their home church though, so we'll see what happens. But I know that the Lord's timing is perfect.