Persistance

July 22, 2013

Dear family & friends,

First, I am staying here in Shepherdsville for another six weeks with Sister S! 

Sister S and I being goofy :)

A lot of changes are happening in our district-our new district leader is a greenie, he has only been out in the field for six weeks! Gah! But we know he will be great. :) Also, we are getting a new set of missionaries in our district-we will now have two other sisters, yay! We won't be the only sister missionaries in our district anymore, and we're excited about that. 

I am happy. :) Sister S and I have a lot of plans for this area, and this transfer we are planning to really step it up in everything that we are doing.

Yesterday, we had a pretty cool experience. It was around 7:40ish, close to the time to come in for the night, and we decided that we needed to go and see another less-active member. So we looked at the list and decided to go see somebody named Sister M. So we drove...and it took way longer to get there than we had originally thought. Finally we got to the house and knocked on the door (half-expecting her not to be there) and this man opens the door. And we were thinking - okay maybe this is her husband. 

Come to find out, it's actually her father. So we decided  to talk to him because we had never met him before. He ended up telling us his conversion story. He said he had gotten on his knees for the first time and prayed. In the prayer he said that he couldn't do it anymore. And then the next morning, he got a knock on the door. It was the sister missionaries. He said that he told them he wasn't too interested, but they were welcome to come back anytime and talk. 

So they did come back. And long story short, he was baptized and confirmed. Then Brother M told us that we are going to be faced with people rejecting us all the time, but he said that each rejection gets you that much closer to finding the person who is ready. He said that basically because three sisters decided one morning to stop and tract a street, his prayer was answered. So he told us that we need to keep being persistent. 

Anyway, this is a long letter, but I just wanted to tell you that story because it really touched me that this man who didn't even know us, said the right thing at the right time. Hearing his story really strengthened my testimony of how the Lord works through us. 

I know that there is so much potential in this area. And my love for the people here has grown so much. 

I realized that I forgot to tell you about how Sister S and I spent out 4th of July! 

M - the lady in the picture is so sweet. She lives by herself and so we asked her what she was going to do for the 4th of July and she said that she didn't know. So we decided to spend it with her! It was so fun. We watched a church movie, "Finding Faith in Christ". and ate some chocolate bars. 

President W gave everyone in the mission permission to go watch the fireworks shows if there were any going on nearby. Sister S and I heard that the one in Bullitt county got cancelled (we found out the next day that it still went on), so we didn't go. But that's okay, it was still fun :)

So I got the cutest card yesterday from Sister Hillman and her family. James and Hope wrote notes of their own on it and it made me so happy. I smiled so big when I read it. 

I love you all so much! Thank you for your prayers. 

Love, Sister Lewis