Louisiana Week 2

Things are going well here, Louisiana is a really cool state. It is suuuper hot and humid, and actually really green, I am shocked at how many trees there are. It is swampy too, we were visiting an old man in the ward and he lives by a beautiful but shallow river and said that there's a 20 ft gator in it! So yeah I want to visit him as much as possible so we can see it! Luckily we actually are going to be having appointments over there because his neighbor living on that land is our new investigator! This old man invited him to church in October when he moved there, and he has only missed church once since then. He listened to General Conference, traveled to Monroe for Stake Conference and everything. The thing is he is really smart, an engineer, and he's trying to understand and figure out everything on his own, instead of actually reading and praying. Missionaries have sort of met with him before but they didn't seem to know very much and would take offense to his questions, and not be able to answer them. But we love his questions and he agreed to let us come meet with him this week! He knows, and trusts us as teachers from gospel principles class on Sundays. So we are really excited about that, reeeaally excited.

Our other investigators are doing alright as well, but we literally invited like 20-30 people to church this Sunday and guess how many showed up... yeah, none. But there were some less actives and stuff like that.
This was a really crazy week though, on Thursday morning Sister Johnson, our trainer, left us! She was supposed to get back Friday night but didn't get back until Saturday night. So it was Sister Brimley and I, missionaries in the field for less than 2 weeks, on our own, without a car, for 3 days. I don't really know how our Mission President trusts us that much but it happened. We live about 3 miles outside of town so we had to call the members a lot for rides and did our best to get to all our appointments, and do the best we could with the area we got dropped at. Everyday there are miracles and everyday there are stumbling blocks. Everyone here goes to church.  People will ask us to open to a scripture right on their front porch that they think proves our entire religion wrong. One man I just told we had to go, and he got real mad and told me I wasn't a real Christian because Christians are willing to learn and Christ always listens. I read in D&C the next morning the part where it says we are on missions to teach and not to be taught, and felt a lot better.
It is so cool how if you actually read and know the scriptures for yourself everything that is taught in the Bible is 100% in support of everything we teach, and everything the Book of Mormon teaches. There is just too much to study lately! Too much good stuff in the scriptures! I just finished the book of Matthew, I'm trying to read the whole New Testament before July ends, but it is hard to move quickly because of the references and connections and topics it gets me searching.

Well it was Jejum Domingo-- Fast Sunday and it was way cool because at least half the branch has to get up because it is so small, and of course the missionaries are expected to get up. The members gave great testimonies about missionary work, it was so cool to see, that branch is so small and only getting smaller but now they have like 5 missionaries working for them and they are ready to see some growth and more willing to help everyday. So since Mom is always so sad that she misses out on my testimonies I'll share a small part of mine. We got into a discussion on temples during companionship study this week and our bodies being temples is an awesome comparison because  are they beautiful and sacred and to be kept pure. So not only are they outwardly similar the purpose is the same, simply- the purpose of temples is to do the work of the Lord, and that is the purpose of our bodies as well. It was really random but we were talking about missionary work and it connected somehow.

Well anyways I'm doing well, and hope that everyone else is doing well and having a good summer! Haven't gotten any mail since getting in the field, so please change that!

Love you guys a lot. kbye.

ps bad news I sometimes fall into a Southern accent.