"Spiritual Power"

Do you ever feel like everything important in the world tends to just happen all at once, instead of spacing itself reasonably so you can work on one thing at a time? This week was the week that a bunch of things just happened out of nowhere, and we were like, SO MUCH STUFFFFFF! But it's great :)

Truth: awesome district leaders=awesome work. When I've had really great district leaders, it has done so much for our work. We love ours!

The mission has a goal to give out a BoM a day...which is great, except that we are down to about three. We only gave out two or three last week because we're saving them for the REALLY golden people, until we get more, hopefully at interviews this Friday.

Speaking of which, interviews are this Friday! This will probably be my last. Weird, right?  Interviews are fantastic. I am sad :(

We had a great week this week. We have been putting a big emphasis on getting to know the members and working with them more, which means 1) more missionary work, yay, and 2) better food for dinner, since they have us over :) People in SB know how to cook!

We taught the Plan of Salvation to one of our investigators who was BLOWN AWAY. She loved it. She has a lot of changes to make in her life, but a lot of potential, considering she's so willing to read the BoM and believe what we tell her. Love it! I absolutely love to teach the Plan of Salvation. It's got spiritual power like nothing else. This is the PLAN. FOR YOU. It changes lives.

There is great sadness coming to Sturgeon Bay, but they don't know it yet and we're not allowed to tell anyone. So...I'll tell you in a few weeks. But the night we found out was pretty epic. But this change might also be TOTALLY AWESOME, depending on how things actually end up happening. Yay for change. When did I grow to love change so much?

Then Sister Karlsson and I got a serious work out moving giant old TVs onto a moving van. Like 12 of them. The creativity of necessity involved in such work is part of what makes it so much fun. Chaos is great. Sometimes.

I'm still stunned as I notice the change that has come in the way people see me. Maybe it's just cause I'm a missionary so people automatically think I'm worth confiding in. But either way there are a whole lot of people that think I'm just the greatest person ever and I'm just like, When did that change? Normally I tell people how it is and they  stop trying to tell me things. But not recently. It seems like everyone comes to me to talk about their problems. Whaa? I'm horrible at this. I don't even have any sorta-good advice. Why they keep coming back...

The smaller the branch the bigger the drama.

It's incredible how little thoughts turn out to be intense inspiration. We didn't feel like tracting, so we decided to take a trip out of town to go see Shiela, one of our kinda-sorta investigators. Ended up being a super powerful experience. She has grown SO much since the last time I saw her, like a month ago. She has a friend who is falling into all of Satan's traps, and she turned to us to get help to know what to say. We gave her some scripture references at her request, and testified of the power of the Atonement. I couldn't believe the change in her. Spiritual power!

In the background, the TV was playing something about the popularity of plastic surgery. I'm a little bit appalled at the world I'm about to walk back into. Is that what the real world really is? UGH, I don't wanna go back!

Then church. Judy's super-shy husband David came again, which was great!! And he was clearly enjoying it. He's so close! It's hard to work with shy people...(and also jealous wives' husbands. long story)

Plus, one of our recent converts Krystal brought a friend from school, who was awesome, who loved church, ate lunch with us, had like a two hour lesson, and agreed to learn more if his parents allowed it. It sounds like he comes from a really good family. I SO hope they get involved. This would be the best thing ever for him!  MEMBER MISSIONARY WORK ROCKS

Funny story: Recently, a newly baptized 12-yr-old moved into the branch. Some of the kids asked him what the church back in Virginia was like. He said, "It's pretty big. We have hallways." I just about died laughing. I've forgotten what a real church looks like.

Other weird story: We were sitting in Relief Socety when a member tells us that there are some nonmembers outside that want to talk to someone. So we go out and meet Robert and his friend Rob (yeah) and they say they have a BoM and want to learn more about the church. They were acting kinda weird and being twerpy boys, but they gave us their info and later called us and set up and appt. So we'll fly with it. Bring some priesthood holders with us, of course. They might be crazy. But Robert might be golden. Who knows.

That was this week! Words to the wise: Don't hold grudges. It destroys people. And by people, I mean the one holding the grudge, not the one it's held against. People just don't seem to get how Satanic that stuff is. It's SO sad to see people drift away frmo the church or from people who care about them just because they're mad at them. What a dumb reason to pull away from salvation.

Stay strong! I love you all :) Serve the Lord first.
Sister Neal