Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places: Week 50 - West Columbia, SC

Hello Family and Friends!

It's been quite the interesting week! So many things happening, so little time!

So first of all, we had such a cool experience. We were just out working the other day when we saw a guy, Tony lifting some watermelon out of his truck into a shed nearby. We went over to talk to him and see if we could help and he actually let us! That rarely happens because people are like "Oh... I don't want y'all to get dirty..." But he let us! While we were helping, we were telling him a bit about the church. It turns out that he's been traveling to Georgia to attend church! We told him our church was like 15 minutes away and he was excited to hear that! Right before we left, Tony's friend came over and said "Sorry I'm late! Do you still need help getting the watermelon out of your truck?" Tony was like "No! These ladies came over and started getting to work! They didn't even give me the excuse that they didn't want to get dirty! It was an answer to prayers! God is good." I agree. God is good! He placed us right where he needed us. If we wouldn't have been willing to talk to everyone, we wouldn't have been effective tools in the Lord's hands.

Zone Conference was this week. It was rough on my emotions... Mostly because President and Sister Holm called it "Transitional Training." It was basically President preparing us for President and Sister Turner coming in next week. I'm excited to be working with President and Sister Turner but it was hard to say good bye to President and Sister Holm. Ugh. Missionary problems. It was a really good meeting other than that though! It gave Sister Johnson and I the fire in our bellies that we need to keep working :)

Willie's doing good. We went over last week and taught him about tithing and prophets. We basically didn't even need to teach him tithing. We asked him what he knew about it and he said "It's 10% of your gross income, not your net. It goes to help the church." We were like whoa. Then he loved learning about fast offerings because the money goes to help those in need. Then when we taught him about prophets, he was like "I already believe that President Monson is a prophet of God!" Alright! We can work with that! We're hoping to put him back on date to be baptized tomorrow night when we see him!

Get this! Yesterday at church, Sam comes up to us and I guess he's been extended a calling! He has been progressing so well! Sister Johnson and I are very proud of him!

Well... Some of you have already heard the news I guess via Facebook... But yes. The rumors are true. I'm being transferred out of West Columbia. I've had a lot of good memories here and I feel like I've grown a lot since I first got here. I'm excited and ready to move on though. I don't know where I'm going yet. I'll find out on Wednesday at our Transfer meeting! The suspense is killing me! I know that I'm going where the Lord wants me to be at for this point of my mission.

That's all for this week! I'll tell you more details next week! Love y'all! Have a blessed week :)