Week 101 - Miami, Oklahoma

 Hey all!

This week we found a new friend who's going to join the Church! We were out visiting people in our records who used to be taught because I couldn't walk around knocking doors all day on my ankle (it's a lot better now thanks to prayers and an ankle brace) and we decided to knock the three closest doors to one of them who didn't answer when Rhonda came to the door. She said she used to go to a ward in Minnesota and would love to try church again here. We were able to introduce her to a member just four hours later and they hit it off right off the bat, with that member offering a ride and inviting her to do family history after church the next day. Rhonda said she planned to be baptized in Minnesota but wasn't able to because her husband didn't want her to, but now they're not together anymore. Our member told her she might need to be a member to make a full familysearch account but she said, "No worries, I'm planning on joining anyway." You love to hear it 

This was a huge tender mercy for Elder Eilander and I because we'd just lost one of our closest, and coolest friends the night before. We'd been meeting with him for months and his work schedule was finally cooling down enough that he was able to come to church, plus he had gotten an answer about the Book of Mormon and decided that if he was going to make a covenant with God and join the Church, he wanted to be prepared to keep it for his whole life. We decided to go over the questions we interview our friends with when they decide to be baptized and confirmed, and unfortunately one of them triggered some bad PTSD from his law enforcement career and he ended up giving us his Book of Mormon back and asking us to leave. We were pretty torn up about it, especially since I'd been meeting with him for months, but being able to meet Ronda showed us yet again that the Lord will always compensate us for the unfairness of life when we are faithful to Him.

We had tons of other cool stuff happen this week like a church tour with a mom and her son miraculously working out way better than we could have planned it (and we totally forgot to plan it whatsoever whoops, God just made it happen) and an awesome exchange where I got to serve with my good friend Elder Hammer in Pittsburg, Kansas for the day, but I'm kinda wiped out. Three weeks to the finish!

Love, Elder Rigby