Ohio Cleveland Mission: Freezing Tundra That is Ohio

This week has been so GREAT! But weird weather! Some days it's sunny and in the 40's and beautiful, one day it was DUMPING snow all day long, last night it was raining, and today it's supposed to drop so low below zero that our mission president is actually not allowing us to leave our apartments at all for the next two days starting at noon. Holy Moly.

There are so many good things about this week I don't even know where to start! First, with some funny anecdotes.

First one is that when Sister Beaudoin and I were tracting earlier this week, we go and knock on this door. A guy opens it who can't be more than like 17, right? So I'm like "is your mom or dad here?" and he's like "Nope." So I start into our "Well we're missionaries..." Shpeal. He's pretty abrupt about how not interested he is, but as he reaches for the Mormon.org card I notice he has a ring on his left hand ring finger...Haha yep, the guy was married and the owner of the house. Hahahahaha. I swear he looked like he couldn't have been older than Marcus! He actually looked a little like Nick Barton. Maybe that's where my judgement was off.

Second funny anecdote was that we went to Brother Clapper's house again Saturday night. This guy is seriously the best. He made us dinner! Slaved over it like all day long, we called him at two to make sure he was still wanting to do it and he was like "Yep, Turkey's in the oven!" So he made us like a mini thanksgiving dinner. He said something about how the Potatoes were a little lumpy and he hoped the stuffing was good, so I made a big deal over "Well, I'm from Idaho so I'll be the potato judge!" I didn't know you could goof up cooking potatoes. They were seriously the nastiest things I had ever eaten in my life! Hahaha oh my gosh I just had to like choke them down because we didn't want to hurt Brother Clappers feelings! As soon as we were in the car, Sister Beaudoin looked at me and was like "So... Those potatoes..." We both wolfed them down as fast as we could so we would be able to just get it over with hahaha. On top of that, we were cramped in his tiny apartment eating in his living room, watching him feed his little Mini Dachshund half the turkey. Oh my gosh! He is the best.

Tuesday we found this really sweet couple named Kay and Kathy. Kay is this hilarious guy who was really interested in temples and Mormon.org, and Kathy, his wife, let us in because she could tell we were freezing and she's a sweet little grandma. We're going to do service with them and hopefully get to teach them eventually!

Wednesday was nasty. It was so crazy! The night before it had snowed for a little bit, and then all of a sudden it just DUMPED on us on Wednesday. Like, it was constantly snowing hard all day Wednesday. So we tried to go shovel tracting, basically offer a message about the gospel and then when they said they weren't interested we would be like "Well, we have some shovels with us and we would love to shovel your driveway today! Just looking for service opportunities!" And they either had a son/grandson coming to do it or they paid for it to be done. I guess people didn't want to see girls in skirts to shoveling their driveways, or maybe they didn't think we could... Anyways. Shovel tracting is a no-go. So we just ditched our shovels at our car and tried to regular tract but everyone was like "Go home, it's too cold for you to be out in this weather!! We will talk about this later, you need to be somewhere warm!" SO LET US IN DANGIT.

So wednesday was pretty... Eh. Haha. BUT we did get to teach the Hill's again! They are so awesome! They need to get back to church! Brother Hill, before we left, said "Well, do you like home made bread? Cause I baked some today and I made an extra one cause I knew you were coming over!" Isn't he the best??

Wednesday night we were supposed to have dinner with some members, but their son was in the ER because of a kidney stone so they had to cancel. They're an older couple and they have a couple kids living with them for medical/temporary purposes so we decided Thursday morning that we would shovel their driveway. Sister Schultz came out in a robe and told us to come in and drink hot chocolate when we were done. She is seriously so sweet. I guess she posted some big thing about it on facebook, one of her kids told us about it haha.

Thursday we had dinner with the Hansens. They did pork with sauerkraut on it?? At first I was concerned but it was actually really good! Try it! We were also able to make a lot of really exciting appointments for this week.

FRIDAY WAS THE BOMB. We hardly did any tracting. Why? Cause we were so busy teaching! We taught three less-actives, finally taught Charlotte again, and taught a recent convert. We also got a couple more appointments for this week, one with a former investigator! Which, he was great. His name is Dave. He lives in Vermilion, and the Elders stopped by him a couple times and then I guess just stopped? But he was in the former investigators section? Anyways, he was genuinely happy to see a set of missionaries standing on his porch. He almost seemed hurt that they had stopped coming to see him. And he had just been laid off that day so I think he kind of recognizes that what we have will help him out a lot. We were supposed to teach him tomorrow but that probably won't happen anymore because of the weather haha! Hopefully we will be able to reschedule though. Teaching Charlotte... I was like in tears the entire time. She is so heartbroken about her husband passing away. She keeps a picture of him on the kitchen table and sits and talks to him. When she turned the picture around to show it to us, I had to try with all my strength to not bawl my eyes out. It's a picture of her husband that they took at a restaurant, so it looks like he's sitting across from her at the table. And it really captured his personality! Anyways. She has a lot of concerns with getting baptized, mostly that she doesn't feel like she's a good enough person to be. Which we can see otherwise but we are all our own harshest judge or however the heck that saying goes. We were exhausted after Friday. A LOT of energy went into those we met with. Which was good! I felt good about it.

Remember Pinky and Bill? They didn't come to church. I was so sad. We called them later that night to make sure everything was good and they said they just couldn't come because they were both really not feeling well. Darn it :( We are going to try and meet with them this week and hopefully (HOPEFULLY) commit them to a baptismal date! We really feel like that's the way to go. Speaking of baptismal date, we committed someone to baptism this week too! We were tracting and we walked past this girl. As we talked to her she seemed really interested in the church, told us which house was her moms, and said to go talk to her about it. So we did. She let us in and we taught her the restoration. At the end, we started talking about the Book of Mormon. We had her read the second to last paragraph of the introduction, and then I bore my testimony of it and had her read the last one. When she read the last paragraph, she was dead quiet but kind of had a smile on her face... She was like "You guys will think I'm crazy, but when I read that last paragraph... I dunno. I just got this warm fuzzy feeling. Right in my heart." YAAAYYYYY!!! So we jumped on it. We told her it was the spirit bearing witness of truth and asked her to be baptized (after she's taken lessons and come to find out the truth for herself that is) and she said she would! Her name is Tinettie. She is awesome. Just trying to find the truth. My one main goal here is to find an investigator from the Catholic church. St. Josephs in particular. Everyone we've met from there is pretty set in their ways... I want to [be the means to] convert one. Haha.

Welp, this week was so good. This coming week will be even better. I am so excited for the people we're teaching!

Love you all sooo so so so much!

Sister Perrenoud