She Runs!!!

Dearest Family,

Sometimes I hate looking at a blank e-mail and not knowing what to say. I would much prefer to use my two-hour e-mail time to read all of your e-mails and be able to talk to you. But, alas, earwax!! (Name the book)We're off.

Life is great here in East Kilbride. Sister Jackson is lovely. She is wee, only about 5'4. She loves to run, which makes me so happy, because we wake up at 6:20 and go on a 30 minute run every morning. What a blessing! She hasn't had any companions yet who have gone running with her, so we are both very excited about that. In fact, we are using our P-day to go on a long run up to our one and only castle in EK. I am so excited. Hope the weather cooperates.

Saying good-bye to Sister Jones was really sad. I was very sad to see her go. On Monday and Tuesday, we went to all the people that she wanted to see. It was weird and didn't feel like we were missionaries, but it was still jolly good. We got to see some of the less-actives that generally don't see us because they are sick, but they wanted to see her because it was her last few days. That was nice. I'm sure some great things happened, but I forgot to bring my last journal (I am already finished with it. :( ) and so I am just going to leave it. It was good. It was sad. I didn't like that she was leaving me.

Picking up Sister Jackson went smoothly, luckily. We had to walk through Glasgow with her luggage, but we got to EK just fine and are doing well. I've been getting us lost and we've been talking to people. So there you go. Missionary work at its finest.

Brother S-- drank again this week. He still met us and we had a wonderful lesson where he committed to go to the Addiction Recovery Group, but then church came and he didn't show up. We had a great joint teach scheduled with one of his friends who stopped drinking. I called him and he said he wasn't in the mood to go to church and didn't want to go to our lesson. I am so sad about it and won't continue to dwell on it because it totally bums me out.

S-- is our friend who is the Family History one. She is really nice but doesn't really know what we are doing here. Sister Jackson asked her if she was interested in learning about our beliefs and she isn't even a little bit. But she always wants us to visit her and loves to feed and take care of us. So...we're not really sure what to do about that. We don't want to offend her, but also want to fulfill our purpose. Her son came to yesterday's end-of-dinner and the sharing of the spiritual thought though. The spirit was definitely there and you never know, there could be a seed that is planted!

Sister Jackson is very bold in her lessons and street finding. I can definitely learn a lot from her! She has never really done much finding/chapping before, because they had loads of investigators in Irvine. Since we only have Brother S-- as a progressing investigator, and he isn't exactly progressing, we are doing lots of finding. I accidentally took her for three hours chapping because our try-bys weren't in. Luckily she had a great attitude about it.

None of the less-actives that we are working with, nor our investigators, came to church. That was a bit discouraging.

Miracle: We were walking up the road and were approaching this teenage girl. We usually don't stop teenagers (I'm not sure why, but nobody ever does, maybe because they can be mean) and this girl was especially scary looking. She had skulls on her bag, severely colored hair, etc. Sister Jackson stopped her and gave her a card.  She said she'd look at it and seemed interested and said she'd give us a call. WHAT? That was the power of God reminding me that it isn't my place to judge, and that it's lucky that ultimately He is the only one who can judge.

I'm looking back and realizing that this letter sounds a bit depressing, but that was not my intention. I really am doing so well! The work is moving forward and we have some potential investigators that will hopefully turn into real investigators. One of our incredible less actives, Sister P--, prayed that this week we would speak with at least three people that would be nice to us, even if they weren't interested. That was such a sweet prayer and I feel the Spirit strongly when I hear people pray and you know they are talking very specifically to Heavenly Father. They know He is there and that He will answer them.

I have a favorite quote of the week: "Don't give up. Don't you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come." --Jeffrey R. Holland

Do it! Trust in good things to come, because there are miracles around us every day if we open our spiritual eyes and see them! God is good and the gospel is true.

Love you all.

Sister Ricks

All Scotland Zone Conference