Snow!

Well, We finally have snow!! People were pretty shocked it took so long this year. It was over a month late compared to last years snowfall. It started snowing last night around 8:30 and this morning there were about 3-6 inches. Still not very much, but it's freaking cold, and the skies will open soon I'm sure. All the lakes and rivers are frozen over.

What an awesome week it's been! We've had some pretty sweet experiences. On Monday we played dodgeball as a zone and it was really fun. It was a pretty good P-day. Today we are going to play volleyball as a zone. Elder Vailea is really good so as long as I'm on his team that's cool. I don't want to be on the wrong side of the net when he spikes it. When we play volleyball people are always afraid when he throws it at them because he throws so hard and leaves big welts haha. Well something awesome happened this week. On Wednesday our appointments and plans fell through right before dinner, and so we had about 10 minutes to kill before our dinner appointment, and we had no idea what to do. I knew there were a couple houses in this random spot, so I was just like, let's just tract these really quick and then go to dinner. There was a house and an apartment. When we were tracting the apartments, we ran into an inactive member that hadn't been to church in 10 years. He was excited to see us, and told us to come in. We told him we couldn't stay because of our dinner appointment, so we gave him our number and told him we would come back at a different time. He called us about 30 minutes later and asked if he could meet with the Bishop, so we set up an appointment for him. This is the cool part of the story--the day before he had been on the phone with his sister who is in Juneau. He told her that he had been praying and wanted to start getting back into the church, and asked her if she knew how he could get in touch with the missionaries. She said she only knew the Juneau missionaries so she didn't know how to get in contact with us. The next day we tracted into him at that apartment complex. He said that after we contacted him, he realized that was a sign and an answer to his prayer, so he said another prayer, and then called us to meet with the bishop. The bishop was out of town so he met with the 1st Counselor. His records have been in Colorado for years and no one in this area knew about him. I was amazed to have that experience of the spirit working through us and leading us to him at the exact moment he needed it. He sincerely wants to start coming back to church, and I know it's because of his sincerity that we were led to find him.

We also had a lesson with Shawn on Tuesday, and at the end of the lesson, we committed her to be baptized. She said that she would be baptized, but she won't know when she will be ready. She said she knows she needs to get baptized and that she knows she will be baptized, but she doesn't know when. We will be focusing on helping her with that the next couple weeks, and I really hope she chooses to be baptized while I am here so I can be here for it. Well, as you can see I've had an awesome week. I love this work and I'm excited to see what happens here in the near future. I love you all!! Until next week.

Love Mat