Week 5

Hi Ya'll!

I've officially been out a month! Sister Condie and I celebrated by getting Cold Stone on Saturday. This week has been pretty good. We've been able to teach more people now that we've got a foundation going here. There's this one guy who's super solid and when we taught him the Restoration he had a lot of questions but said he already believes it's true! I'm excited to see his journey in the gospel. We had Zone Conference on Wednesday in Charleston. I love when we can gather together as missionaries and learn from each other and President Lindhardt. It's like a jolt of spirituality. We were also supposed to have a district meeting this week but since our district leader lives like an hour and a half away we just had a district conference call with everyone. We'll only be able to meet in person once this transfer which is unfortunate.

My Cute Companion & I

This week I got to meet a lot of members in the Teay's Valley Ward. Most of them are awesome and help us out by coming to lessons, some are .... interesting.... to say the least. There's this one sister who is from Hungry and has a really strong Hungarian accent. I'm not really sure how to describe her, In the words of Sister Condie: "She's NUTS! She's Crazy!" Let's just say she has no filter and has a kinda sideways take on a lot of things. She always calls us darling and gives us lot's of kisses. She had us over for dinner on Saturday and made this really good Hungarian dish that was a lot like the Mexican dish albondigas.

Every Friday we help a sister who has cerebral palsy with getting ready for bed and have dinner with her. She is hilarious. Last Friday she was helping us train and we were practicing teaching her the restoration when she said "Show me where it says that in the Bible!" and so we were like okay, and Sister Condie went into her back room and brought out one of her old Bibles and we showed her. Then we flipped to the back of her bible and found $500! "The Church is True! God answers prayers!" she yelled. She had no idea that that money was there. She said she hadn't opened that Bible since she joined the church over 20 years ago. We were dying for a good 10 minutes.

There's an old couple, Bill and Louis, who live below us and love the missionaries. They aren't members but are super supportive of everything we do. Bill is almost 90 years old and was a engineer. Every time he sees us he has to show us his really old "calculator" that he used when he was in college. It's a ruler like thing that you slide around to do calculations. It's actually pretty cool. They are really nice and have asked to take us out to lunch soon.

Every Wednesday we have dinner and meet with our ward mission leader Bro Haupt. Him and his wife are so much fun and they have two adorable kids, Amelia who is 4 and Stevie who is 2. There's never a dull moment when we're at their house.

Our truck that won us cleanest car at Zone conference and got us cookies

One thing I love about West Virginia is that almost everyone here has a dog. In one day we met 3 puppies. There was this one family that has a 3 month old Great Dane and I fell in love with it. We were out tracting and I saw a guy on his porch so we decided to go talk to him. We introduced ourselves and he said that he was so glad we stopped by because he's been having a hard time lately. His mom and grandma are both in the hospital and his dad can no longer work and is on disability. They've had a really hard life and if anyone has room to complain it's them. However, this is the most optimistic and hopeful family I have ever met. It was so inspiring to hear them talk about how they always try to see the blessings in everything and see how God is working in their lives. We shared the Book of Mormon with them and the Dad said that it could only add more to what they know and invited us to come back and share our message with their whole family. I know the gospel can bless their lives even more and can't wait to meet with them again.

I know Jesus Christ is our Savior and can help us with every single thing in our lives. I know this because I have seen it in my own life. I love teaching people our message because I know it can only bring them even more happiness. I can't wait for another 17 months of bringing others to Christ!

Have a great week! Love you! Send me some letters!

Sister de la Cruz