April 18, 2016

Hey Loved Ones,

As of yesterday, I have been a missionary for two months!

This week my companion and I had the goal of being very diligent about our tracting. Mission President Cleveland requires that we do 12 hours every week. Which is completely turned on its head from what I expected, because I heard it was least effective. But you'd be so surprised that most of the ward members are converts, and most of said converts were tracted into by missionaries.

We started tracting on Tuesday, and felt very impressed to go down a certain street. Not a ton of luck. Then we ran into, the last house on the block, a VERY Irish Catholic man, Mr. O'Mara, who has the IRA's flag flying on his flagpole and only reads the Saint Ignatius Bible. For some reason, even though I knew the Irish hate the English, and he just got finished telling me about how the IRA is totally justified in bombing people because of what the English did to them, I felt impressed to talk about my family history from England. He said he had visited the land of my ancestors, "Pugh's Mire" and told me that "pugh" in Gaelic means "to kiss." Then we felt impressed to give him a Book of Mormon, which he said he would read the whole thing! He then gave us a prayer card for the Patron Saint of purgatory, and told us to read it if we ever wanted to release souls from purgatory, and if I did so those souls in purgatory would do the same thing for me. That explains a lot, because at least three Catholics have given me some relic for the Patron Saint of Purgatory since I've been here. Well, better than Hell.

Later we also tracted into a lady who made it very clear that she was not interested, EXCEPT for learning about the pioneers. She said she reads nonfiuc about the Mormon Pioneers specifically and why they did what they did. It was so cool to share with her the stories of my ancestors, and the knowledge that they did it because they knew it was true and wanted to give me a better life. We are coming back and giving her a copy of 17 Miracles and Legacy to borrow. She gave us some clementines and water bottles for the road! Who knew family history would come in handy tracting?

We are really focusing on that this week before Terri gets baptized. She has been saying that her parents were "already baptized," and we knew that she didn't have a testimony about the Restored Gospel or the Priesthood power, so we knew we needed to work on it. But when we gave a lesson on Family History, she expressed interest in taking their names to the temple the week after she gets baptized! Her testimony is growing so fast!

Love you all, pray for you, and hope you see the hand of the Lord in your life!

<3 Sister "Pugh's Mire"

PS............Any relatives, if you have family history stories, I'd love to read them!