Another fantastic week

It was a pretty great week! Still loving my mission, and I can't believe I've almost been out for 4 months. Time is going by way too fast!

Monday after preparation day we had a lesson with Marisol our wonderful spanish lady...we gave her a spanish Book of Mormon and read the Introduction with her and she absolutely loved it! Said it was beautiful. We have another appointment with her tonight and she told us she was going to make some kind of food for us. She is so adorable! 

Tuesday we went and saw Paula. She is currently in the hospital :( She is not doing very well at all. She is sick again and is really struggling. She had some food at the bishop's storehouse that she needed to pick up, but had no money for gas to pick it up so we contacted the Relief Society president and asked if she could find a ride for her and she ended up picking her up herself and got her food and then brought her to the hospital because she obviously needed some medial attention. We had set up a time on Friday with Paula to go help her clean her room because it was really dirty and she couldn't find anything, but since she was in the hospital Sister Turner (RS president) came with us and helped us clean. She's an angel! Members are the KEY in missionary work. You have to have the support from the members or you're doomed. Anyways...so that's what we did on Friday. Cleaned up her whole room. It was disgusting. Mold, vomit, died flies, fruit flies, ash and cigarettes ALL over the place. She hadn't cleaned a thing since she had moved into that place 3 months ago. It's no wonder she's been so sick! 

Wednesday we served at the Trail Center the entire day because of zone conference...it was a very long, tiring day. 

Then Thursday we had zone conference! We traveled with a senior couple to Sioux City which is an hour and a half away so we had to leave by 7 am. Luckily we got to sleep in the car :) Zone conference was incredible! It was all about the Book of Mormon and our mission president gave us the challenge to purchase a new Book of Mormon and have us all start at the begin and focus on the Atonement and having a change of heart. He told us to mark and circle every part that talks about the Atonement and the word heart, and I wanted to encourage you all to do it with me! We're starting today and will be reading 5 pages a day in order to finish by Christmas. I think it will be so cool to be able to share our experiences and insights as we do it! Hope you will join me :) 

Friday we had lunch with a less active member Sister Zahn...haha that was interesting. She made us a "casserole" which consisted of rice, almonds, raw onions, and spam. Then she also made a frozen pizza and put about a pound of raw onions on each piece! Then we also had a fruit salad with chunks of hershey's chocolate, oranges, blueberries, apples, and brown sugar and cinnamon. Quite a feast huh? Haha she's a very funny lady..it was the first time she had ever fed the missionaries before and she doesn't usually cook so it was a different experience for her...and us :) haha Anyways, I thought that was funny so I wanted to share it. After that is when we cleaned Paula's place and then served at the Trail Center. 

Saturday after we had Trail Center Training we had a senior companion meeting with the TC leaders (Sisters Mahlstede and Hanks). We've been having a lot of issues at the TC lately. We've had a lot of contention between companions and lack of communication and things, so we had a short meeting to help us become more unified as sisters. It went very well, and then we went back to our place and weekly planned. Then we went in our area and tried some referrals but had no luck. We've gotten like 4 referrals this week. Awesome! But the ones we tried weren't home. We'll have to try them sometimes this week. We ended up stopping at a lady's garage sale because we felt like we needed to talk to her. She was jewish and wasn't interested, but we bought a little $2 thing from her for a good excuse to talk to her. We're weird haha... :) Cool miracle though! So we were on our way to ward coordination and had about 20 minutes so we decided to stop at the Birchcrest apartment and saw a lady out there pushing a little boy on a swing. We got out and talked to her, gave her a Book of Mormon and such...and then set up a return appointment! She's now a new investigator! And we were even on time to ward coordination. Miracle!! So cool :) When you are doing what you're supposed to be doing and not dilly dalling and wasting time...The Lord will provide miracles and you will have success! Missionary work is so great! I love you all! Gotta get going, so I hope you have a wonderful week! 
Sister Ferrara :)