Havin' Fun in the Hot Sun!

Hey Y'all!

It's for sure warming up here in good ol' Georgia! :D This next week is suppose to stay in the high 80's to low 90's! Wooh! Humid, sticky, hot, and so much fun! :P But anyway, we had a great week non-the-less. :) If y'all haven't noticed, most of our top progressing investigators here in Flatcreek have for one reason or another been dropped. Suffice it to say, we were pretty disappointed at the beginning of this week, however, we went forth with faith and great miracles happened because of it! :D

Georgia is so beautiful and green this time of year.

We have now picked back up a long-time investigator named "K". She has apparently been investigating the church on and off for over a year, going through several sets of missionaries. Just a couple weeks ago, we  got back in contact with her, and saw her. This past week we had a return appointment to see if she had been reading the chapter in the Book of Mormon we committed her to read. She had! :D We brought a great member with us that connected well with her. We then committed her to come to church. However, "K" is kind of a hard investigator if you didn't notice from how long she has been investigating. She has researched a lot of anti information and made up her mind about a lot of church history. She enjoys the Book of Mormon, however, and likes the members of the church that she has met. Hopefully, she will one day see past all the lies that have been planted on the internet and actually seek the truth about the church. :) 

So like I said, this week has been filled with miracles! Two that stand out to me right now, came while I was on exchanges and another hot day out tracting. So on Wednesday we went on exchanges with some sisters in our Zone. I went out with Sister Hunter, and we started off all excited and pumped! We had a lesson first thing in the morning with an investigator to teach her the restoration. She had kept her appointments before, so I wasn't too worried about it, however, she didn't answer her door when we got there. I was like okay, that's okay. I have a good list of backups! We visited about 6 other potentials and members, blowing through my list of backups for that area, which was bad because we would be there later on that day... Now I'm a little nervous, but I was all It's all good! We will visit this one last family then maybe go back for lunch. Thankfully the member family we saw was home, however they were out doing yard work with the elders. :P We shared a scripture and left them with a prayer. After lunch a very similar situation happened in another area. We saw two people from 2-4pm. 2 people answered their door. -.- I'll admit, I was getting a little frustrated, but I knew we had an appointment in that area with a dependable member at 4 so we stayed. 5 minutes to 4 our member called and canceled the lesson, but said to meet her and a group of members at a dinner place an hour later. I was all, okay then!

The magnolia flowers are about 12" across!
So beautiful and fragrant.

In a last hope effort, I went to contact three more people with sister Hunter. NONE of them were home. -.- Finally, in my stubborn way I got it set in my mind that SOMEONE would answer their door and we WOULD share a message! If it was the last thing I did! So after the last potential didn't answer their door, I marched over to their neighbors house saying "We are tracting! SOMEONE will answer their door!" It's funny how the Lord works, I think he is a funny person to be honest, because as soon as I said that the guy answered his door. YAY! He didn't want a prayer or to take a pass-along card, but he referred us to a neighbor. We quickly marched to that neighbor's house and knocked. WHAT AN AMAZING BLESSING! The man who opened the door was WAY interested! He had a lot of questions and really wanted to learn more about the gospel. Woah! He even invited his friend over and we talked for a good long while, sharing our testimonies and answering questions. About half way through the lesson we discovered that he had met the biking elders in our area who gave him and his wife a Book of Mormon and said they would return in a couple weeks. Sadly, they are the elders investigators that we had tracted into, HOWEVER, that was just the miracle we needed to have! :D it made us SO late to our dinner appointment, but we had a great story to tell when we got there!

The other great miracle that comes to mind happened this past Friday. Since a good portion of our investigators were dropped, we decided that we needed to go out and find some more! We went tracting on a certain street first. Before getting out our nice, air-conditioned car, we said a quick prayer to find the people who need to hear our message on this street. With faith, we stepped out of the car and walked right into a gentleman ready for a full-out bible bash! We didn't get into one, because of my amazing companion who testified of the gospel and left, leaving the man to think and hopefully ponder what we had to say. After that we knocked out the whole street and found no one except for one man who said to come back when his mother was home. Disappointed, hot, and sweaty, we turned around and started toward our car. Just as we were about to reach it, we notice a person pull into their driveway. It was the mother of that man who told us to come back! At first, I didn't want to run all the way over there and try to see if they were even interested, but sister K pushed us forward. We talked to the woman, and she was extremely interested! Her name is "P", and her and her son "M" have been looking to have God and Jesus more in their lives. She kept saying that we were an answer to her prayers and that all she wanted to was to feel the same spirit she felt when she was baptized into her church. We gave a short restoration lesson and promised that as she continues taking lessons, she will feel the spirit and have a desire to be baptized by proper authority. HOW COOL! the next morning we get a call from "P", telling us that she had read the pamphlet we gave her and that she is ready to have God in her life. HOW COOL IS THAT! :D The Lord really answered our prayers and hers!

Looking back on this week, I have seen the Lords hand more apparent in my life. He guides me, and leads us to the people who are prepared. Sometimes it takes a frustrating day of empty homes and no contacts to realize that he knows what he is doing. As long as we are diligent, the Lord will bless us and answers our prayers in HIS TIME. It took me all week to really understand and learn that, but I am glad that I didn't give up. That my companion didn't give up. Even though it was hot, even though it would have been easier to just get in the car and go home, we DIDN'T. And prayers were answered, lives were blessed because of it. :)

Y'all's Southern Bell,

Sister Welch