Hello everyone! We'll I'm happy to say I'm thriving in my new area! I love it here and I find my self drained at the end of each day! I can't remember being this tired at the beginning of my mission! We've been working through our area book weeding out all the prepared people, we've also been tracking on a few streets and have found a few people who've accepted for us to come back! How exciting!
I've got a story of an awkward experience I had this week with my companion! We tracted into a woman who was seriously misinformed about the LDS faith so we set her straight on a few concepts. She was probably in her late 40's and over all seemed like a very gregarious woman. I liked her a lot, and liked her even more when she said we could come back after accepting a copy of the book of Mormon! A few days later we knocked on her door and she invited us in. I noticed in one of the back rooms her husband sitting by their computer. She sat us down and just as we were finishing our small talk, about to crack open the book of Mormon, her husband appeared at the door and basically dismissed us! He informed us that in the Bible it states there would be no more prophets to arise until the coming of Christ, which to him means Joseph Smith is a false prophet. He explained we could not convince him that he was a real prophet and he could not persuade us that he wasn't a prophet so he once again invited us to leave. Feeling a bit shocked and stunned we stood and headed to the door. Walking back to our car I felt pretty sad while on the other hand my companion felt fired up! As I talked to my companion about it I figured I was so sad because I really liked that lady! I might have been her only chance to hear the Gospel! Just goes to show not everyone is prepared. How sad.
On a lighter note we have this AMAZING recent convert who was baptized in December. He's from Iran and was a Muslim growing up. When the Government found out he was Christian he had to flee the country (with his daughter) where he lived as a refugee in Turkey for a year. Once he came to America he found a job working in a Persian restaurant where he's worked ever since. He's learning English and loves to meet with us so he can practice. I just think he has incredible amounts of faith to leave his life behind and come to a new country to learn a new language, start a new job (that's not as good as the job he left behind) and basically just start over, all becase he loves the Lord!! Since he can't completely understand everything the missionaries have taught him we know he accepted the gospel because of "the feelings in my heart". Luckily we found a sister missionary in the LA mission who speaks Farsi so we'll be able to Skype with her so he can continue learning the Gospel! What an amazing example!
I love you all and miss you too! Have a great week!
Sister LeStarge
