Mayo 4, 2011

This past week has been ..... diverse!
On Sunday we travelled to Honduras and Mexico (as usual) and then to Iraq and Cambodia and then back to America.
We taught our Iraqi family and then taught a part-member/less-active Cambodian family... with some help from translaters. :)
hahahaha and people who got foreign-country mission calls thought THEY were getting a cultural experience.... ;)
But it was neat. Yes, the Iraqi family (the Ks) are Muslim. No they do not speak Spanish. Weird, I know. Actually they for some reason speak Arabic instead. BUT here's the hard part. They don't read either Arabic OR English. Eek! Being able to read is basically vital as an investigator. So we're working on getting the BoM on tape in Arabic... yeah... we'll see.... But yesterday we had a convert from another ward come with us to meet them who converted from Islam and speaks Arabic. He helped and is going to bring the dad (and hopefully the whole family) to church this Sunday. So if that does actually pan out, we'll be going to their sacrament meeting as well. T (the member helping us) explained a little bit of the culture to us and the Lord has helped us understand them beyond what we could have otherwise.

We also are teaching J and M and F & L, and SP reappeared and we're teaching her again today! But yesterday we had a really powerful lesson with M. He felt the Holy Ghost. I could see it. And then after the lesson he verbalized it... in the way someone would say who wasn't used to it. He feels a certain way when he meets with us, he says. And he wants to change. He has a little boy, J, who's really funny too and who was there for parts of our lesson yesterday.
Oh! And A! I have VERY high hopes for him. His heart is in the right place. Both M and A we found while trying to contact other people but ended up seeing them and talking to them.

We got to volunteer at the Temple Run on Saturday! They did a big publicity/get-excited-for-the-temple event that the missionaries helped out with. It was super fun! We cut up food and joked around with other missionaries and stood on the side of the road as people ran their race and joked some more and cheered people on and took pictures and cleaned up...

I'm glad to hear how well your study of the scriptures has been going. You're so right about the pondering and searching and praying being what takes our scripture study to the level it needs to be. It's incredibly more meaningful when we search with purpose, when we pray with faith, and when we ponder with both.

You're welcome for sending you a letter. :) It was good to actually have time to THINK about what I was writing lol. A lot of times I feel like these emails are just splatterings of nonsense lol.
And in answer to your weather questions, ha, it has been chilly here lately. Not snowing. No tornados like in St. Louis. Just windy and chilly. But as the day goes on it usually warms up to about 65ish and then it'll be 40s - 50s or so in the mornings.
Welp I gotta go email Pres.
Love you so much!