Ohio Cleveland Mission: Holy COW, You've GOT to be KIDDING ME!

The title from this week's email is in honor of the Less-Active that we work with, Brother Hill. He is awesome and he says that (the title) at least once every time we meet with him and his wife. They are such awesome people! We absolutely love them. Now... To get them to church. :D He was ON the high council. It's just silly. Come to church.

So this week has been fantastic. One day in particular stands out this week... WEDNESDAY. So, Tuesday night we're all stoked cause we have 8 appointments scheduled for Wednesday. EIGHT APPOINTMENTS! We woke up the next morning, and it was a frozen TUNDRA outside! The wind was blowing so hard and it had been snowing since the night before. And guess what. People used that dang weather as an excuse and every one of our appointments fell through!! The only on that really didn't was Alexis, but she just asked to move the appointment to later that night.

So at this point, I'm just like "alright. Obviously, the Lord has a different plan for us today." And by golly he did! We tracted in that crazy weather (yes, yes we did) and taught the restoration, found an awesome family that just moved here and is "church shopping", and stopped by a couple people we haven't met with in a while and got to have lessons with them. So, even though they all fell through, we still got to teach 5 lessons that day - but only one with someone we had originally planned on! So that was awesome.

So, our investigators……..Darlene was doing really well for a long time, right? Well, she hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon and she's really hung up on the fact that her baptism wasn't done the correct way or by authority. Which, if she was reading and praying about the Book of Mormon this wouldn't be an issue. So we're going to have to do an intervention, because we only have one more lesson to teach! Ruh-roh! But we talked a lot about baptism and what's holding her back from setting a date and what it comes down to is that she is NOT READING AND PRAYING about the Book of Mormon.

Jay IS doing really well! We had a sweet lesson with them on Thursday, talking about Enduring to the End and a review of the Gospel of Christ. He got a lot of his concerns cleared up, and the awesome part was that we hardly had to say much at all... It was just him and Sister Bryant talking about things. It was so good, the Spirit was so strong. We talked a little bit more about baptism too, and encouraged him to ponder on a date. Speaking of "ruh-roh", they have a dog that looks exactly like Scooby-Doo. We love their family. A lot.

Then there's ALEXIS! She is awesome!! We love her! She is so sassy haha. We taught her the restoration the other day and she said the prayer at the end. After it was done the spirit was CRAZY STRONG!! We didn't say anything and just let her think... And then she just sat staring at the floor and goes "Huh..." and looks up at us and goes "....Hi." Hahaha. She was like "I just feel like this huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders..." Uh, yeah! Prayer will do that for ya! Anyways. She came to church yesterday and got a pretty big answer to her prayers. She said the night before she had said in her prayers "I think it's true but I just want proof..." And then during Sunday School they talked about how the style of writing was so typical Hebrew that there's no way Joseph Smith could have come up with it on his own... We look over at her and she just looks up and says "Okay, I hear you!" Haha she's awesome. Also, she'll just text us randomly all the time and give us updates. The other day she goes "So, you pray about this book, get revelation on it, get baptized, and then what?? I've been reading my little teaching book thing..." Meaning her Restoration Pamphlet haha.

ALSO... EXCITING UPDATE! We finally met with Pinky and Bill again! FINALLY! And when we were talking to them Pinky was like "We have just had bad luck for like 12 years straight and I keep praying and asking Him to give me direction help me through this..." And she said she was just looking for peace and comfort. And so we shared with her that we had prayed and felt very strongly to go see her. We told her that the Gospel has provided support, guidance, direction, and peace to us and the other people we teach. Then we said, "Pinky, this is God answering your prayer." She was quiet for a second and then looked over at Bill and said "Well, I think we should try to make it out to their church sometime, huh Bill?" HAHAAA YES. So we'll keep ya updated on them.

Well, time's gone again... Haha but READ THE SCRIPTURES! In church they were saying that the Scriptures are like letters from home... How? Well, where is our REAL home? Heaven, right? And if the Scriptures are God's words... Then they're just letters of support and encouragement and direction from our Heavenly Father. :D

Also, Pinky quote of the day:

"The sisters aren't going to buy the house ya big DOPE!" To her husband.

Love you ALL!

Sister Perrenoud