WEEK O' GORGING
last week was sis thomas's bday so we've been eating junk food for about one straight week. aah! pretty sure i put on 5 lbs just in that week. and i wish that was a joke. my future comp (more on that later) is having a bday shortly after we become comps and then mine so i don't think the gorge-fest will stop any time too soon.

MY STREET MINISTER FRIEND
so i met this man doug who calls himself a "street minister" or "prophet-in-training." very interesting. he joined my tour late and before i knew anything about him i felt like there was definately a reason he was there. i was looking at him quite a bit throughout my tour and while bearing testimony. at the end of the tour he came down to the bottom of the stairs as asks "where are mormons going after they die?" i knew that wasn't something i could answer with just one word or anything so i told him to hang on until the rest of the tour left and that i wanted to talk to him. he said good, he wanted to talk to me too. we ended up talking for well over an hour and he was telling me a lot about his religious views. it's interesting because he doesn't have a "religion" in that sense but declares that he's simply a child of God. i asked him a lot of questions like what makes someone a child of God and if he believes are existed before living on the earth. i asked him what he thought it meant to be a prophet. in his own set of beliefs he made up i was amazed how many things seemed to coincide with the gospel. there were a lot of things that were different, however, but i could tell this man is a sincere seeker of truth and that once he finds it in its fullness, he'll have so much to add. he goes around on his own free will trying to talk to people about coming to Christ. like a self-declared missionary. he told me when he drove past the jail (he just happened into carthage) that he felt very strongly that he needed to stop and see what it was all about. he had no idea that it had any religious connections to anything. i'm positive he was supposed to be there that day. he also talked about when he drove past an LDS temple in AL and how he felt something very powerful about it and that he needed to find out what it was all about. he went inside and when the man told him that he was welcome in the foyer but couldn't come all the way in he said he immediately understood and could feel that it was sacred inside and that he wasn't prepared to go in. so cool! who has that humble attitude? i'm excited for him to learn more about the precious blessings of the temple and about this life and why exactly we're here and where exactly we're going. he was relieved to hear in answer to his question about where mormons will go that i didn't claim to know or have a definate answer but rather said that Christ will judge us all individually based on our hearts and our works. i knwo that that's true and that Christ is the only one who can judge us because He is the only one who truly has felt all of our griefs and borne our trials. i'm so thankful for that and for my knowledge of what will happen after this life and the peace that brings.

UPCOMING TRANSFERS
we just got news for transfers next week. my new comp will be sister alfaro and i'll be staying in carthage. i'm glad to stay and become closer with the seniors serving there. i'm losing clothes-sharing buddies but gaining sis south back who is my smoothie/hard-core running buddy. sis alfaro is from costa rica so i can brush up on my espanol. she's pretty quite, and by that i mean REALLY quiet, which is unusual for a VC sis so we'll see how that goes. :) when she does speak up though she's hysterical.anyway, that's about it for today. this is short, i know, but probably a nice break from all the novels i send. :)

love you all and thanks for the support! may i leave you with a scripture? Alma 26:27 it's a good one.

-sis c