1/2 WAY THERE

Dear Fam

Can you hardly believe it, today is actually 9 months to the day that I entered the doors of the MTC. Crazy it was great to have some family there. But little Sammers didn’t give me a hug; I better get a huge hug in 9 months. 9 month that’s like waiting for a baby to be born I’m sure the pain is a little different but we both get huge blessing after wards. I'm still finding it hard to believe that I have been serving the Lord as a full-time missionary for 9 months. My comp and I are actually in the same boat so we are definitely planning on celebrating today! There is a missionary tradition of burning something at certain month marks...And I burned some nylons for my 6-month. Tonight it’s going to be a little bigger than some dud nylons.

P.s. Nylons do not burn as well as I would have liked them to. We actually sprayed them with hair spray to make it look cooler for the picture. In real life it was not that exciting. So bigger and better hopefully for the half-wayers tonight. So-just think of a nice big bonfire for this evening!! :P I'm very excited!We had an appointment with Sylvia but unfortunately she was not home. So we are going to try and stop by another day this week. We are still excited and positive that we'll be able to continue teaching her. One thing that is hard to remember sometimes that our time is not the same as everyone else's time. We feel that things go rather slowly when to someone else, major changes in a matter of months is very hard to adjust to! You'd think we would remember that from when we go to the MTC and from there to the mission field, but we don't.

They cram everything well everything that we think we should know into three weeks. We just sometimes want our investigators to learn that fast. But we don’t get everything we what. It a good thing though.We taught Stephanie about The Gospel of Jesus Christ and invited her to pray about being baptized. We saw her briefly yesterday-unfortunately she was not able to come to Church on Sunday on account of a VERY grumpy rebellious baby (Eli decided to not go to sleep until 5 am Sunday morning). You won’t believe where we went, you guess it Maggie Moo's yes indeed, and we might have had it the day before as well. But I will have to tell you that a got a wonderful gift card there from Bryce and Marica and we of course were craving it. Oh and for dad’s sake we have talked to people there and handed out some pass along cards. So its like the two best things sharing the gospel and Maggie Moo’s ice-cream. It’s quite sad that my companion doesn’t get to enjoy this glorious ice-cream because she is lactose intolerant. But she loves the Zoomer drink so it’s all good.
Saturday went to Erica Pender's baptism, she's an eight-year-old in the ward. It was great to see Trisha our investigator there making sure they wouldn’t drown Erica.Our Sunday evening ended with a phone call from our investigator, Sister Hart at 10:30pm...And we talked or rathered listened on the phone until sister Glad fell asleep around 2am. She's having some financial/emotional struggles and she needed to call us and have a little bit of a break down. So sister Glad listened for hours but only because I have listened the night before. It was crazy we just listen...and listen some more. The crazy thing is I don’t know how I stayed up on the phone so late before. Absolutely crazy!

Our referrals in the Office have been doing really well lately. A lot of people are ordering Book of Mormons or Bibles. Can\'t have one without the other, right?! Well, at least that\'s what we\'re trying to show people who are willing to listen.

Sister Glad and I actually received a referral for Teresa Casto. She ordered a Finding Faith in Christ DVD and we had a bit of an adventure getting to her home. The directions to her house were hilarious! It took us a while to find her...In true West Virginia sense we took "Davis Creek Rd, past the fast check, turned left down the one lane rd, over the bridge, past the stop sign, right at the fork, right past the concert pile, past the private property and go to the last trailer on..."I kid you not!

Sister Glad and I eventually found it with some help from some people! It was a neat experience, and we ended up teaching Teresa and her boyfriend, Gary Jr. They have two children, Gary III (2) and Jeremiah (7 months). I got really excited on this visit about sharing why we come out here and serve the lord. She mentioned wanted to raise their kids up in a good environment. It makes me really happy when I see people trying to do the right thing, some of us don’t realize oh lucky we are to be born in a stable oh wait that was Jesus… some of us don’t realize how lucky we are to be born in a stable home. I’m really grateful for the stability and effort that you all did to make a home a better place. I’m also glad you taught me to brush my teeth, every one of them!!! This is a shocker but I will tell you something I didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own two eyes, that someone in their 20’s could have NO upper teeth at all. Well it was proven that day. Crazy, but I think they look better gums and all with no teeth at all rather than some rotten stranglers.

Today we went up to my last area (Parkersburg) for another zone’s p-day. We drove up last night so we could spend the day with Sisters Ryder and Schmidt, as well as joining the rest of the St Albans Zone for the day. We played a little b- ball and Phase 10. (That game reminds me of the time we all played it and everyone hated because they couldn’t move a head except for Danica.)