November 8, 2006

Greetings,
Haha, that either sounds like a christmas card or an alien encounter. I don't know which is better. Actually i do, probably Christmas.

I can't believe it's been another week. Everything goes so quickly. I remember last year at this time I was just deciding to go on a mission. That feels like yesterday. Sometimes I think about how everyone else in the world is doing stuff in their lives that I know nothing about, and it seems weird to me. I feel like everyone else will be in the same place in their life and doing the same things. I'm anticipating culture shock in my future.

We had a crazy week. The ending is a lot different than the beginning. Each day was a new adventure. On Thursday we taught the Stop Smoking program to Krissy. That was going to be a life changing event for her. She did really good until all her friends kept giving her cigarettes. Her fiance would leave them around the house with little notes telling her to take it. Lame. She was making a lot of progress and really excited about her baptism. She had to do a lot to live the commandments but she already knew that's what she should be doing. She had told her fiance that she didn't want to live with him anymore until they were married (although she also said she didn't even want to marry him at all). She said she'd prayed about it and felt they were wrong for each other too. Anyway, everything was going really well until yesterday. We called her and she said she didn't want to be baptised and she didn't want to kick out her fiance and she didn't want to be alone. As of now, we really won't have contact with her unless she calls. It's really scary to tell people they need to change their lives, but it's surprising (but shouldn't be) how people already know they need to change. The commandments are not made up just to make us be boring or keep ourselves busy. They are given to us because God knows that we need them to be happy. Eternally happy. Although we can't always make people change and obey them, it is our opportunity to share them so others can know what they can do to gain happiness. We all have that opportunity by being an example.

Yesterday we had two really good lessons. First we taught John & Kathy (the wolves people...) at the Bishops house. John had told us prior to that that for him, the question wasn't really if he would join "the group" (as he says), but when. He is planning on going out of town for work at the end of the month for a bit so i asked if he was thinking about joining before or after he left. He said he didn't know but would think about it. He is very impressed with all of the things about the church that we never really teach about. How the people interact, the setup of the priesthood, what calling he might receive, the Relief Society enrichment programs... This weekend is Stake Conference and he got really excited about coming to the "migration of all the Mormons in the area." He's a different one...but very smart. Anyway, they talked with the bishop and his wife and we did our best to insert our principles we were teaching as comments in the conversation. It worked. And then at the end, he said he had thought about my question and "didn't see anything wrong" with getting baptized before he left. Kathy said she wanted to too, so they are being baptized on November 25th. I am very excited.

We also taught this man Dave and his 7 year old daughter Hannah. We met him tracting last week. He is a single dad, grew up Catholic but hasn't really attended lately. The whole time we talked to him he talked about his daughter. We asked if we could come back and share a lesson about Jesus Christ with him and his daughter. He said she'd really like that, so we set it up and had a member family come with their kids. The night before I had called to see if it was still okay and Hannah answered. I ended up just talking to her with her dad in the background. She is a fire cracker! She was so excited for us to come and I just laughed the whole time. When we got to her house she ran up to us and showed us everything around the house--and gave us one of her school pictures too :). Her dad said she'd been asking all day when we were going to be there. I've never really gotten to teach kids, other than members, so it was fun. The lesson turned out really well. We geared it for the kids, but her dad was intently listening too. I don't know what he thinks about it, but i know he felt the spirit. We asked if it was okay to give Hannah a children's Book of Mormon so she has one and says she's going to read it. We are teaching them again on Thursday.

Well, I'm out of time on the computer. Hope all is going well and that you are getting excited for thanksgiving. I am. And I'm still waiting for someone in the ward to sign us up for thanksgiving dinner.... They will though. I have faith :)

Thanks for being great.
With love,
Sister Ruthie Salisbury