Another special week!

August 13, 2009

Dear Family,

Interesting week. Dad put on Craig’s list 5 mission cars and sold 3of them yesterday. I know we didn’t come all this way to sale cars but the Lord is sure using it as a way to make contacts. We met a wonderful family. The father is a preacher for a local community church. They were buying one of our cars for their daughter who is going to be going to a college here in Cincinnati. We had lots of things in common with them. Your dad told them we hadn’t come all this way to just sale cars we had a gospel message and would like to send a couple of elders to their home to share the message with their family. Dad told them he didn’t want to take anything away from their beliefs we just wanted to add to them. The father looked at us and said, “Sure!” he would like that. It was way exciting. We want to drive out to their acreage and visit them one of these weekends also. They are good people.

Dad and I did a shuttle of cars out to Kentucky this morning. Dad had the GPS in his car and I just stuck to him with my car like a tick to a dog’s back, which was going some with all the morning commuters. We drove across the great Ohio River going and coming. You could see large rafts of barges being pushed by tugs. The large rafts are 3 barges wide X 3 barges long. Combined, the 9 barges are about the size of a football field. The propellers on the tugs are 3 feet wide. They are very powerful.

Last night we invited a resent convert, a young married sister, in our ward to dinner. Well, we invited her family but they couldn’t come at the last minute, but she did. At first we were disappointed but then we saw a little miracle happen. She stayed one and half-hours and talked and talked. It basically ended up being a marriage & family counseling session. She was so teachable and we talked about how hard it must be to be the only member in her little family. We covered supporting her husband and allowing him to lead the family, how to run a family counsel, how to have her kids wash walls instead of grounding them, how to invite but not force family members to go to church with her, choices and consequences, putting her family’s conversation into the Lord’s hands and time schedule, etc. . .

The best part was when she said her scripture reading had gone from just reading words to prayerful study with expectation of finding answers to specific problems. She was so excited to go home and do her scripture study for the night.

Our trainers are now moved out of the office and we are on our own. Pretty scary thought! I get a lot of random phone calls and you have to really think on your feet. I am making quite a few friends in Salt Lake home office and dad has made several friends with the owners of the oil change shop, the auto body shop, and the tire store. When you service 44 cars they see you coming.

Sunday we picked up an investigator for Church. Kathleen is in her 40s and is planning on quitting smoking this Saturday so she can be baptized in September. We are praying for her.

When her mother criticized the Book of Mormon, Kathleen defended it by telling her about the people in the book and how it was another witness of Christ. She said to her mom, “It is the word of God so how can that be bad?” It was way cool to see her tender little testimony grow leaps and bounds. Since she has started investigating the church her spiritual eyes have opened. When asked what caused her to look into our church she said her car broke down and she couldn’t get her other church members to give her a ride to church. She felt lonely and unimportant in their eyes. Sunday was her first time attending church. Afterwards she said she liked how she could learn things in all three meetings. What a sweet heart!

We are doing well. Thank you for all your wonderful emails and phone calls. We love you all.