Monday, May 5, 2014

Happy Cinco de Mayo

​Family Dear,
How'r ya'll?
How is the beautiful Utah weather?
I love this time of year in Texas because all the magnolia trees are blooming and the bluebells are out!
It's been another crazy but great week.
Things are finally starting to settle and I think we're about back to normal missionary life!
We saw a lot of wonderful miracles this week!
On Monday night we took Rosa on a church tour and she loved it! Sister Howard and Esther were able to be there too and they helped us a lot! Rosa thought it was so facinating. She got especially excited when we showed her the family search center! We're already planning on taking her in there to get started on her family history. We were able to take her from room to room and tell her about our meetings . The best part was when we took her into the sacrament meeting room. It's amazing to do church tours because when you walk into the sacrament meeting room immediately you feel the spirit. It's like this giant wave of the spirit just washes over. It is so tangible in that room. I know that Rosa felt it too. It's always a good reminder to me of how sacred the sacrament is. Sometimes it's hard to feel that when there's all these kids screaming or your anxious to see if your investigator will show up but the sacrament meeting truly is one of the most sacred meetings in our church.
It was so good to take her on a tour because now I think she will feel more comfortable coming. Something that really hit me as we told her about our church is how we truly try to emulate the savior by focusing on the "one". It's amazing to think that the Bishop and other presidency leaders know all the names of the people they serve. They try to help and love people on such and individual level and that's how it should be. That's how the Savior served and that's how we serve.
Kaylee is doing great as usual! She's made it to 2 nephi chapter 9 now. We're getting into the Isaiah chapters but she is determined to continue to read on. She's not letting that slow her down. Her thirst for truth and her diligence is so inspiring to me.
I had two exchanges for this past week. Normally I like to spread them out but with Sister Hardy being to sick they all got pushed back to the last week in the transfer. The exchange was awesome though! I got to serve with my old companion Sister Davis for 24 hours and it was so good to be with her again! We saw so many miracles. Sometimes Heavenly Father likes to reserve the best miracles for exchanges. We were doing some tracting and we knocked into a woman named Camille! She is amazing! She is christian and has strong faith in God. We were able to talk to her about the Book of Mormon and we invited her to read it. She was actually really excited. She has a good friend from Puerto Rico that is a member of the church and she really admires him. She said she would start reading the Book of Mormon that night. Unfortunately she and her family are about to move to Florida in the next week or so but hopefully we'll get some missionaries to her over there!
We had a lesson with Dorisette. She wasn't able to read in the Book of Mormon this week. It was pretty disappointing. Well we decided to read with her instead of teach the lesson we had planned so we began to talk to her a little about the background of the chapter we were going to read and we got on the topic of why the Book of Mormon is necessary. She told us it is hard for her to understand why we need it because from reading the Bible she already knows without a doubt that Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. She doesn't feel as though she needs "more". It made me so sad because I know there IS so much more that she could learn, feel, and know. We shared our testimonies of the Book of Mormon with her and she could see the sincerity and because of that she recognizes that the Book of Mormon is more important that she is now able to comprehend. I knew we were kind of at a stand still with Dorisette and that now was the time the Lord wanted us to drop her. It's what we have been praying and fasting about for the last 2 weeks and it didn't feel right until that very moment.  I asked her the question "what more can we do for you Dorisette?" her response was that she needed us to "continue to pray that I will be able to read the book and that I will recieve a witness that it is true." She said she would continue to pray and to read. She told us that for her it will take time and that answers have never been immediate for her. It was a good reminder to me that testimony and conversion is not and event or and instant outcome, it is a process and it's different for everybody. Dorisette believes that she will one day know about the truth of the Book of Mormon and she truly is trying, but we all recognized that it would take her some time. At the end of our discussion she said that closing prayer and it was so beautiful. I know someday she will be able to find her answer. At the end she gave me a big hug it was hard knowing that we weren't going to see her much anymore. I don't think either one of us really wanted to stop our lessons but we both knew for some reason that it is what was necesary and what is best for her progression. I just hope I did everything for her that the Lord needed me to do.
One of the great tender mercies of this week is that we had dinner with the laurel class and they made us homemade cafe rio! haha I can't tell you how many times in a week (as ridiculous as it is to admit) i think "boy i wish i could eat some cafe rio right now."
We also got to teach a lesson in Young Womens about missionary work which was really fun! We have some incredible young women and they are some of the best missionaries I've ever seen! For the month of May they are going to be "missionaries" They get a companion and they will be assigned to a family in our ward who they will teach the discussions to as if they were investigators! I am so excited for them to do this! It will be a really neat experience for them and for the ward members too!
So they just barely changed the Tomball ward boundaries and sadly Patricia is no longer in our area so we had to give her to other missionaries but the Lord knows best. I hope she'll be able to find the truth she's looking for.
Here's an entertaining story for ya. After church yesterday we were talking to the Bishop in his office and at one point my purse fell on the floor and just about everything fell out... doofus. Well i thought I got everything back in it so we then went to mission prep. Every sunday we go to mission prep and help the youth with their teaching. Well after mission prep we walk out to the car and I'm fishing through my bag for the keys and they are nowhere to be found. As we walk up to the car I notice that our phone is sitting on the arm rest in the center of the car. Ah man. So we go back into the church building to knock on the Bishops door and there's no answer and it's locked. We left our car keys in the locked office and our phone is sitting in the locked car. Luckily we had a member there with a phone and to make a long story short a few hours later we got our keys back. I can't help but laugh because I feel like it was the perfect and only appropriate way to end this crazy transfer. I'm certain a few people in heaven were laughing at us.
Anyways the transfer is over and as far as we know it looks like Sister Quist will be staying here! It's crazy to think that I'm probably going to end my mission in Tomball but I'm just trying not to think about those things.
As far as an update on Sister Hardy she is doing well. She got home on Monday of last week and she has her procedure scheduled for the 7th of May!
Thank you for all your love, support, and prayers!
The Kingdom of God or nothing!
Love, Sister Gregson

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