Quadruple the Fun Plus One: Holli

Painting Missy's door

Hello Everyone!

This week I have seen so many small miracles and I've felt the Spirit so much! We are working hard but investigators have been thin on the ground lately. Sister Duncan and I are learning so much, especially how to support and encourage each other. Street contact has been a struggle (I'm not sure if it will ever be easy!) but the Lord is teaching us so much each day. I've just felt this increase of love for the people here in Claremont!

We have a less active family in our Ward and two of the kids (Jazyln and Devin) come to church with another member but the parents and the two older kids never come. We try to teach them every Sunday but usually it's just Jazlyn and the dad - everyone else is sleeping because their work schedules are crazy. We stopped by on Wednesday and everyone but the mom showed up! It was a great lesson - we usually just read a chapter of the Book of Mormon (and everyone is half asleep
by then) but this time we felt prompted to teach them the Restoration and we got some pretty good participation. Great lesson we just need to keep building faith!

We had this Relief Society activity on Thursday night - the Spicy Sisters Salsa Social!! It was tons of fun and we got to talk to the amazing sisters in our Ward plus make our own tortillas and have lots of great salsa.

Our recent convert Missy is so sweet. We had an amazing lesson with her and the Hansens (older couple in the ward who are the most amazing people ever). We read Alma 32 and Missy just has the strongest testimony. She comes from a really rough environment and she has to move out of this house she has been in for 30 years. Despite all of
these trials and everything going on she faithfully attends church, reads her scriptures, and pays her tithing. It took her about a year to actually get baptized but the changes in Missy are absolutely amazing - and the blessings she's received, including her positive outlook, is just a testimony to me that the Lord blesses those who keep His commandments. He doesn't want us to be miserable - that's Satan's job. But the Lord wants us to succeed, to learn from our
trials and mistakes, put our trust and faith in Him, and do what He asks of us. Then the blessings come :)

We painted Missy's door the other day - yes Sister Duncan and I have crazy painting skills just in case you were wondering. The painting job looked terrible at first but once it dried it looked much better :)

We ran into two ladies this week who were really interesting. One was named Terry and she had lived next to missionaries for a long time. She was super sweet but told us emphatically that she wasn't interested - yet she talked about Jesus Christ for about ten minutes and how he was her best friend and everything. Kind of made me wonder what she thinks we teach? It's so interesting the misconceptions
people have.

The other lady was named Donna and we met her trying to contact a HQ referral. She was this referrals neighbor and was out watering her plants. We asked if we could help and she was very abrupt with us. She asked us what we were selling. Of course we said, nothing! What we have is free! Then she asked what church we were missionaries for.
When she found out we were LDS she said, "thanks but I am definitely not interested. Your religion is a false religion. I tried going to your church for a few years - I admired the family structure and the members are really nice but then when I really got into it, when I really started researching, I found out that it's false.”

Of course we then asked "Well have you read the Book of Mormon?"

She told us she didn't want to be brainwashed. Heavens to Betsy. If you haven't read the keystone of our religion, with a sincere heart and real intent, how can you claim that our religion is false?

Well that's about what happened during our week. It's been a testimony building week - I just love those! I was reading a few talks from the most recent general conference and they seemed to address my concerns to a T. The talks were by Elder Christofferson and President Uchtdorf and I encourage everyone to read them! They are entitled: Free Forever, to Act for Themselves and Receiving a Testimony of Light and
Truth. So good!

Love you all and hope you have a great week!!

Love, Sister Dunn