March 22, 2010

It sounds like everything is going well for you guys! Hurray for your new ward missionary calling! :) We love our ward misionary leaders here in Cookeville, they do sooooo much for all of the missionaries. And there are 8 of us in one ward! We requested to have a ride coordinator for our investigators because so much of our time lately have been calling people to give rides to the investigators to church and activities, which is stressful! Kewandra is still set on getting baptized on the 27th! She has a hard time with having friends her age in the ward, but they are all really nice to her. She has lived a hard life. She lives with her grandpa, who is a member but hasn't been for a loooooong time, and her mother is in jail, her father is who knows where.. It is really sad to see how much she needs parents. But she still wants to get baptized and church makes her happy! So we are trying to find more women in the church who can take her in more.


Jana is wonderful, we decided to let her progress on her own more now. My companion felt like she was starting to rely on us too much for company, so we turned her over mostly to the ward missionaries. She is the Gladys Knight of the Burgess Falls ward, haha! We will still be visiting her about once a week though.

There is another woman we met this last week named Wanda. She is about 60 years old and is caring for her husband who is in the 7th stage of alzheimers. She is so awesome! She has had all the missionary discussions and knows with all her heart the church is true, and is working real hard toward baptism. The problem is her mother, who belongs to the Church of Christ (they don't like the mormons AT ALL), and told her the family would quit helping her take care of her husband if she pursued the church any longer. It is really sad because she loves her family and wants them to understand and support her decision. She said she is willing to be baptized even if her mother continues to reject her, but she wants to do all she can to soften her mom first. Then last night the elders came over to give her and her husband a blessing, which was really cool because even though her husband doesn't comprehend what is going on most of the time, he knew exactly what was happening as the elders gave him a blessing. She told us she wants him to be baptized as well so that they can be sealed together in the temple! She set a date for the end of may... but we want to try and make that earlier because we feel like she is more than ready, and she needs to just take that step of faith. One of the problems too is that since she can't really take her husband out, it is really really hard for her to make it to church. She has already given out book of mormons to several people though and loves to share the gospel.

This last week has been kinda hard, we have done a lot of tracting and street contacting but people out here just don't want to hear about our church. Alot of the missionary work is done through referrals, I didn't realize how important referrals were! We need to find more new invetigators. We are pretty good at finding potentials, but then keeping in contact with them is the hardest thing. Keep that in your prayers, we need to find more people to teach!

The people out here eat the craziest things. They really do fry everything! Oreos, crackers, vegetables, basically anything you can put in your mouth, they love to fry. We ate dinner at a family's house the other night and the guy was telling us how much he likes, check this out, chocolate covered....BACON. Haha, I would have never thought of putting that together but he swears it is heaven on earth. Luckily I haven't eaten too much southern food because I think people try to feed us other things thinking we are sick of southern food. I have actually lost a few pounds, well atleast I think I have. I have been trying hard to eat healthy all the other meals so that when we do eat at members houses, I have room to spare.

I keep forgetting to bring my camera cords when we do e-mails.. I was going to send some pictures. Oh well, I guess I'll save that for next time!

I am doing well! I am really tired and when night comes around I hit the bed and I am out within seconds, and the mornings come way too quick. But according to President Hutchings, that means we are true, faithful missionaries. He told us if we don't go home bone tired, we haven't done enough. Haha, wow!

Cody is doing really well too, he told me he got his first baptism and his new companion is awesome. He works hard, and says they work real hard to be obedient to all of the mission rules. Much better than his last companion! He sent me a tape recorder with a tape, it was really good to hear his voice! So, that will be fun to tell stories of the mission to each other on!

I love you guys, and I miss you all! I hope everything is going well in Utah!

Love always,

Sister Turner

Here is a picture Crystal sent.  She says "the picture of the sign at the church i just thought was funny!  there are like 63 different churches just here in cookeville, its crazy!"