Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places: Week 47 - West Columbia, SC

Dear Family and Friends!

I'm alive! I promise I'm ok. We've just been having an extremely busy P-Day today. We've tried to use the computers at our library in West Cola twice but both times the reservations were for like an hour... Then we got our hair cut by a less-active which took a long time because there was one of her, three of us Sisters getting our hair cut and then one of her friends getting a straight perm. We were in the salon for forever! And now we're out of our area using some other computers. Lots of stress today. Hahah.

This week has been pretty good! We start out with our less active from last week, Sister S. We followed up on her not smoking but she bought a pack Monday night... We did all we could to help her out but she was just not willing and ready to give it up yet. Then Wednesday night, we got a call from her. She said "I'm done smoking. I want to be able to go to the temple within two months!" So there you have it. As far as I know, she hasn't smoked since! That was a blessing from the Lord for sure!

I've been contacting a lot of Hispanics lately. I'm really straining myself to remember any Spanish from school but somehow I remember it. We were talking to T (recent convert) this week and she said that she was going to start reading The Book of Mormon in Spanish to help her Spanish get better and I was like "That's a great idea!" So T, Sister Johnson and I are reading a verse a day in El Libro de Mormon! It's going to be fun!

So our investigator W is doing great! He invited his friend, M to come listen to the lessons with us. The first lesson we taught with the both of them was "The Gospel of Jesus Christ." That lesson went extremely well like it's probably the best I've ever taught it on my mission! At the end, we asked Willie a great inspired question. We asked him if he knew that Christ's one true church was on the earth today. He said "You know... I'm still searching. But because I'm searching, I know that it's out there somewhere." He's going to be baptized one day. And M has been very intrigued by our religion. I guess he has a friend who's Mormon and she gave him a Book of Mormon a while back and he liked it! It's been really interesting meeting with them.

Then there's S (recent convert). He has been on fire ever since he committed to be baptized on May 10th. We saw him briefly this last week and he said that he's prepared 4 names to take to the temple! Wut. He's golden. The home teacher went over there to do the new member lessons with him and S's wife, A was saying that seeing this change in him makes her want to become a better person! I'm very happy for their family!

Well that's it for this week! I'm sorry again for the delay but I hope y'all know that I love you! I'm praying for you! Go out and find missionary opportunities! Have a blessed week :)

- Sister Amy Christensen