"This is better than food....It's the food you don't never get full of...."

Quote from Lavern in reference to the word of God. :)

I’M A REAL MISSIONARY!
So I’m happy to announce that within a matter of 24 hours I arrived at my ½-way mark and also got bit by a dog!!!! :) Yes! I’m legit now! :) It was the funniest thing. We went to drop by this house to meet this family in the ward nobody knew. The doormat said—in this cutesy font—“The dog don’t take kindly to strangers.” We laughed at the cute little doormat and proceeded to knock on the door. Have I mentioned that EVERYONE owns dogs in GA? No joke. Typically multiple dogs. So we think little of it. We were invited in by a fairly incapacitated elderly couple. There were 3 yippy dogs and I squatted down to help them get to know me and to calm them down, just as the older lady was slowly saying, “now that one bites…” Haha! Too late. He totally got me in the wrist and the leg. Blood, bruising, and everything. He even made a hole in Sis. B’s skirt I was borrowing. It was amazing. He had these creepy little fangs. Anyway, so that couple wasn’t quite coherent enough to make them worry about it so we just waited until we got to the next house we were going to so I could let the mom there nurse me back to health and tell me how to tell if the dog gives me some weird disease. It was hilarious.

FRIGHT OR FLIGHT
So two stories:We were tracting this sketchy curvy road with no sidewalk (sidewalks are exceptionally rare here) and just as we were crossing, Sis. B thought a car was coming and started scampering across the road. I then thought a car was coming too but decided it was quicker to turn back so I started running the other way. We did this crazy little do-see-do type thing in the middle of the road and would’ve been in big trouble if there actually had been a car cause we were running into each other more than away from anything. Resulted in hysterical, doubled-over laughter in the middle of the street. Good times.

Story 2: The winter has been very mild and of course we’re still in great need of rain. One night there were warnings of severe storms and we were supposed to be making our way to a house that was really far and up windy, steep roads (like more of GA). It was Sundays and on Sundays we have “Spartan Sundays” which means we don’t go back to the apt for meals or anything. We stay out all day and everywhere we go is based around teaching and finding so we also don’t go to member’s houses. It’s really neat. So the rain started POURING down just as we were heading to the appt. and it was the same night there were tornado warnings. We could’ve gone back home to hide out until the weather got better but we really didn’t feel like that was what we were supposed to do. It was really imp to us that we get to the appt so we said a prayer that the rain would let up just enough for us to be able to see and drive there safely or that we would know through the Spirit if we weren’t supposed to drive up there. Before the prayer was over the rain lightened just enough and for the rest of the night, the roads were safe. Just a little example of how the Lord looks over us. :) (Of course, that was the same night as the dog bite, but I’ll take the blame for that one!)

MELANIE
Another story about her just cause she’s amazing. We’ve been playing phone tag lately and the last thing we heard from her was a message saying she had some pretty big concerns so call her back. We were worried, naturally, because more often than not the people we teach here come into contact with very false information that leads them away from the Church. So we were praying hard that we’d get the opportunity to resolve her concern. We finally got a hold of her last night and she just had a concern about something that can so easily be explained through understanding the Atonement of Jesus Christ and that it’s meant to provide salvation to ALL men. She asked us for scriptures she could look up that would help her understand what she was worried about and she told us she wanted to meet with us two nights in a row so she could make sure she understood and would have time to ask us all her questions. What a blessing! She’s so dang cool! I was so impressed she knew to go to the scriptures and to us. She’s making leaps and bounds! I’m so excited for her.

VALENTINE’S DAY—MISSIONARY STYLE
So this V-day Melanie invited us to some fancy-schmancy dinner at the place she worked. We went cause we were hoping to be able to get to know her husband more. Turns out she and John didn’t intend on sitting with us and we were almost eating by ourselves (a big waste of time from a missionary perspective) but we invited this other random couple at a table next to us to join us. So we ended up eating with complete strangers and discussing missions and the gospel of Jesus Christ over fine dining. It was so random and cool. I was grateful that the Lord provided us with an awesome teaching experience.

SMALL MIRACLES
All-in-all it’s going great. I love to see the amazing miracles the Lord puts in our path every day. There’s always something where it times out just perfectly so we can catch someone for the 5 minutes that they’re home all day or that we can find them in the first place. Our friend who we’ve been teaching is going through a divorce and moved out of her house. All we knew was she moved somewhere in this subdivision of 1000 houses. No joke. It’s huge. So a few days later we decided to look up some old investigators and see if they were interested in resuming the discussions. We went to this house to see if they still lived there and we ended up talking to this way cool guy who had just moved in with his girlfriend and her best friend. And guess who the best friend was!!! That’s right! Our friend April who we’d lost contact with. What are the odds? I love it!Yeah, so things are going great. Only 2 months left here. Crazy. Transfers and March 5 and then I’ll know if I’ll spend my full 6 months in Canton or if I’ll go somewhere new for 6 weeks. Crazy.

Alrighty, thanks for everything, once again. Always keep making goals and striving to be better. Any time we are striving to improve, we are drawing closer to the Lord.

--sis c