This week has been an amazing one. It started our a little rough trying to get everything taken care of, but is on it's way to be great. Since last email, I survived my first transfer day switching companions. We all go to the Cleveland bus stop with about 70 other missionaries and their luggage. I found Sister Rios and we instantly reunited talking about all the things that have happened in our areas. We all mingled and talked to the other people in the station and made our way down to Tower City in Cleveland for lunch. It's always funny to see everyone watching us as they see so many people dressed up in nametags walking down the street and through the mall (we eat in the food court). It's a great opportunity to tell them what we're up to and share the gospel :) Afterward, I drove home from Cleveland for my first time ever and didn't even get lost. I even knew where I was going most of the time.
We had a rough few days, as far as working goes because we had to get a bunch of lose ends tied up. It's been really good now though, and both Sister Rios and I have things that we wanted to apply from the MTC that we never really did with our other companions. We've gone back to basics and done a lot of things differently and it's going to be great.
Both Monday and Tuesday were amazing working days. We did everything we could to achieve our goals, because that's supposed to be what they're for, right? We never really pressed the importance of living everyday to achieve your goals. We noticed even for just those two days how much more amazing the days are when you do. For reference to how good Monday was, our goals were 1 Lesson with a Member Present, 3 Lessons, and 1 New Investigator. After 5.5 hours of tracting we had 1 Lesson with a Member, 11 Lessons!, and 2 New Investigators. Yeah, we surpassed and even more than that, we had really cool experiences. Here's a few.
One New Investigator we found in Barb. We knocked on her door and introduced the Book of Mormon and the spirit was unexpectedly strong. We offered to give her one and she said she's love to have one but didn't have anything to give us. We talked a little more and she stopped us and said, "I don't want to interrupt you, but I have a son that's grown now, but when he was younger two Mormon missionaries knocked on my door. They gave me a pamphlet about the family and I used to read it a lot. I was really grateful for that. Many times when I was raising my son I used it to help me know what to do to when I needed help. I thought you'd like to know that." She was almost at the point of tears. That was so good to hear, and I hope I can even plant a seed like that sometime. Help someone have something to turn to during the tough times. She was busy so we couldn't come in, but we gave her the Book of Mormon and told her we'd come back and teach her more. I'm excited for that.
Another cool story when we stopped by the house to put our leftovers from dinner away. We were walking out to the car and a man I had never seen was sitting on a step by the garage. I'd never seen him before so we introduced ourselves and he said he lived upstairs but is never home because of work. He said he was atheist because he moved from Europe where they wouldn't let you exercise religion. He still had an accent and not the best English so you could tell it was recent. I asked where he was from and he said Hungary. Sis. Rios was talking to him and I remember how a few weeks ago we met a lady on the street. We taught her one day, and she spoke English well, but her dad was 95 and didn't. We offered to bring him a book in Hungarian, but when we went back he wouldn't accept it. I had thought about giving it back to the office, but we had already marked it and wrote our phone number in it so we left it in the car. I remembered that, and I told the man that we had a copy of the book in Hungarian that I'd like to give him. We went and got it and he said too that he didn't have money to pay for it. (don't you love that:)) He actually knew a lot about Brigham Young and acted out the "This is the place" story. It kindof ended there because his phone rang and he had to answer it and then had to leave. But he has the book now, and it was amazing that I even had it.
There's a lot of other ones, but I'm running out of time. One thing though, that day we also found 2 other Albanian families a few streets away. I told one of them that we had members who were Albanian and she got really excited. I swear, an Albanian branch is in the future of Rocky River.
Oh, there was a big fire one street away from my apt. An 85 year old man left a cigarette burning...Killed him and one other and ruined hundreds of apartments...
I think that's going to be it for now. Thanks for listening.
Love you all,
Sister Ruthie Salisbury
PS. There's this store named Ruthie's Bloomers (a flower shop) that's by the office. It was For Sale for awhile and I always wanted to take a picture. A month or so ago they took the sign down, and I kept not taking a picture, but last week I took one out the window driving by. Good thing. Yesterday I saw that they took it down and opened a cleaners there. So I have a pic, not the best, but still. .for all those that wanted to know..
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