hitting halfway & transferssss

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Transfers are this week!!! I had a feeling that I would stay and I was right! Sister Vest and I are here to stay for another transfer! By the end of this transfer, I will have been in this area for six months. Time FLIES.

Speaking of time, I hit my NINE MONTH MARK on Wednesday and i am PANICKING how does time go by so fast, i feel like i just got here??? So weird. I love being on a mission though. LOVE IT.

This week was the fourth of july!!! :D we ran a family history booth with the APs (mom, one of them is Elder Richter!) and it was AWESOME, I seriously love talking to people about family history lately. Also the guy in charge of the booths said that normally we would have to pay, but he waived the fee for us! Miracle! So we got to have a family history booth for freeeeeee. Will include pics. Later that day we had dinner with the Dixons which was loooovellyyyyyyy. A bunch of other missionaries were there too because a lot of us didn't have dinners with members scheduled. So the Dixon's were all, "if you don't have a dinner, come to our house!" So we all did hahaha. It was so great. Later that night we had a meeting with all the missionaries in the Redlands zone and watched a talk by Elder Bednar that he gave to the MTC couple weeks ago. Super inspiring.

Oh yeah, also with transfers this week, the elders in the Smiley ward are getting taken out! So basically we are taking over all of their investigators and everyone they are working with. Its going to be an adventure! We are going to be the only missionaries in the Smiley ward for at least a transfer! Crazy!

Okay what else happened........... we helped Sister Dixon make enchiladas one day. So that was way cool. She needed help, so we helped.

Ummmmmm we got in contact with Neil and Kim (have i EVEN mentioned them?? probably not, oh no, i don't even talk about our investigators sorry y'all i'll be better)

Neil and Kim are basically this suuuuuper prepared couple that we met through street contacting. They are both retired (i think?) and they loooove the Mormon values and are actually planning on moving to utah in a couple years because they love the values so much. So yeah, they are GREAT. They recently had some family members pass away so its been hard to get in contact with them, but we saw them twice in the past few days and Kim said she was reading the BOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They'll be baptized for sure, its only a matter of time.

I came across a scripture this week in Matthew 10:8 which is when the Savior says, "freely ye have received, freely give". And i LOVE that, its just so true! We have all freely received the glorious gift of the gospel, and we need to freely give it to everyone who doesn't have it. I invite you all to keep that in mind this week as you come in contact with different people. FREELY GIVE! The Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored!

tips:

send me pics of your lives

read the BOM every single day

be good

Ok love you all so MUCH!!! Have a great week!!!

Love,

Sister Carina Brown