Continuing the Work: Great Food and Five New

привет! (Russian) ສະບາຍດີ (Lao)

That means hello! Those are the two languages I am currently learning.  There are so many Russian people here, we should have a set of Russian
missionaries that cover the whole mission. That'd be nice. There
aren't many Lao people here, just this one lady in our ward named Sam
Bassas who is from Laous and always makes the best food for us! She
introduced Rambutan's to me yesterday, and I'm in love. They're more
of a Hawaiian fruit, but you can only get them from the Asian market
in Portland. Phooey. But Sam said she'd continue to get me some. I'll
just pay her for them because they are a Celestial fruit.

They're funny looking, but oh so good!

Another Lao dessert: kao-nam nab. It's delicious and straight from Sister Bassas' aunt in Laous!

This week was really good. Except for one thing... On Tuesday, we got
a text from a recent new investigator (Karen) saying she was no longer
interested in investigating the church. We were sad, but we know that
she is at least doing better now that she has a Book of Mormon. She
was SO interested when we visited her, but as soon as her husband knew
we were teaching her, she mysteriously had no interest anymore... A
little suspicious, but what can ya do? Hopefully she will find a way
back to it eventually.

Other than that, everything was wonderful! We had some good tracting
experiences this week! We always do. :) Sister Major and I REALLY like
tracting and finding. We met a very nice and very chatty old man named
Dick who "wasn't interested," but said we could come back anytime to
talk about history. Perfect! There's always a way to talk about the
Gospel in a way that will catch people's individual interests. We
won't count him as a new investigator until he allows us to teach him,
but still. It was a wonderful visit. We also met a woman named Tracy,
who is very Lutheran but so so nice! We told her that she is very
nice, and even though she's not interested in the Gospel, we would
like to practice teaching the lessons and she would be the perfect
person to "practice" on because she is so kind. She said she would be
more than happy to help us out. :P So there's one new investigator! A
second new investigator is named Nancy. She is the sister in law of a
sweet sister from Taiwan in the ward who we had dinner with. We
weren't sure if she was religious, but by the end of dinner we were
made aware that she is Buddhist but looking around. We taught her a
brief lesson, gave her a Book of Mormon, and planned to meet with her
again. She was so sweet! On Thursday, only two doors opened, and those
two doors resulted in three new investigators!!! Three! The first was
a man named Kevin who was very receptive of a brief doorstep lesson,
accepted a Book of Mormon, and made a return appointment with us.

We could tell that he has a very gentle soul. We look forward to teaching
him. The second door was a woman named Peggy who invited us right into her home and startingtalking about our mission. She knew so much,   we were genuinely worried that she was a memberof the ward that we     didn't recognize...

Sister Major finally said to her, "You seem to
know a lot about LDS Missions..." And then paused, and Peggy went on
to tell us that she had a lot of LDS friends who had kids on missions
and she knew a lot, but that she herself didn't believe in God. We had
been talking to her for about 15 minutes when someone knocked on the
door. It was a 20 year old boy named Zach who was there to fix Peggy's
car. He was very sweet, and he sat there while we talked about the
Gospel. As we stood up to leave, they both gave us their phone numbers
and asked if we could come back and talk to the both of them again.
Turns out Zach lives in our ward boundaries too! That means this week
we got a grand total of 5 New Investigators! It's amazing to see the
blessings that Heavenly Father gives for working hard and working
faithfully, knowing that if we do our best, He will take care of the
rest. I've probably said that a lot... That phrase has sort of become
my motto:


"Do your best and The Lord will do the rest!"

I live by it because I know that my best might be less than somebody
else's best, but MY best is all The Lord asks of me. He promises that
I will be blessed and that I will be successful if I do my best. I
LOVE being able to see the ways that The Lord is keeping His side of
that promise, as I constantly am trying to do my part.

On Wednesday we got to go the ward Young Women's activity about
Missionary work and talk to the girls for a minute about serving
missions. The activity was cool. They gave everyone a mission call,
companion, and picture with the MTC map, and had them go learn about
the place they were being sent. It was clever.

On Saturday we did service by washing Marjorie's cars, including her
dusty old 1969 Chevy Camaro. It was beautiful. We took it for a spin
to get some milkshakes after it was all cleaned up and boy did that
engine sound amazing! Dad is probably super jealous. That's okay
because he has his own new car. ;)

I am so grateful for being able to stay in this area with my wonderful
companion. We really truly are teaching each other new things every
day, and we have really been able to teach very well together. There
are many different ways that we communicate with our investigators and
are able to portray God's message, and there are definitely people
that I can't touch that she can, and vise versa. It has been extremely
beneficial for the two of us to learn from each other and help guide
each other when it comes to how people receive our message and will
actually listen. Does that make sense? I'm not always very good with
words... But yeah. I'm grateful for her and for the Lacamas Creek
ward. :)

This week was terrific, and we are planning on next week being even
better! As long as we continue to put in the effort, The Lord will
continue to provide ways for us to find and teach. I'm grateful for
this great and marvelous latter day work, and I couldn't be happier to
be a part of it! I love you all and pray for you daily!