Monday, December 16, 2013

December 9, 2013, Kearney, Missouri


Dear Family,

Wow, sounds like it has been a little chilly up in Canada....what is the average temperature there in the winter? Well, we survived our no car week, woohoo! Here in Kearney this last week it was an average 18F late afternoon, and -4F at night....so between -8C during the day and then drops to about -20C at night......Brrrr!

 Last week we relied on the Lord a lot for miracles. We only had two scheduled dinner appointments for the whole week and it was also our week without the car. On Tuesday we spent about 4 hours tracting, because we couldn't get rides out to our areas where all of our people are, but we prayed that we would have miracles and we managed to find 3 new investigators, so that was exciting. On Thursday we weren't able to get a ride out of our tiny suburb, luckily we had weekly planning to do and then spontaneously we got a call from a member who lived 30 minutes away invited us for dinner. We explained to her our car situation and she said she would be more than happy to drive into town to pick us up and then after dinner take us back home. She was ridiculously nice, and then it turned out she was actually taking us out to a nice little restaurant to eat!

Another day we were walking trying to find a street on our map that showed it connected to a suburb we wanted to tract...turned out the map was wrong and we were walking on the side of a busy highway. As we were standing there a member happened to see us and pulled over and told us that the street actually didn't exist and drove us where we needed to go. Miracle! We also didn't have a dinner that night and we decided to stop in at a members house to warm up after we had tracted in their area for an hour. After finding out that we would be eating at home, they told us to sit down and fed us. It was like an Alma and Amulek kind of experience, where we were like Alma,  wandering starving and cold and the Macinkowitz's were Amulek letting us come in and feeding us and then asking if there was anything else they could do for us. We have some great members in the Ward who would honestly do anything for us, they are amazing!!

On Saturday we had a community service activity we were able to help out with in Plattsburg. We manned the gingerbread house making station for the kids that piled in from the community Christmas parade. It was fun and the elders came too and they managed to find a new investigator during the cleanup.

Also, on Saturday Sister Morris felt inspired to call one of our investigators we haven't been able to get a hold of for a few weeks. She ended up answering and we talked to her for an hour about coming to church and how much that will help her. She promised to come to church. We even called her Sunday morning and she said she was going to come...I guess she hadn't seen what the weather conditions were like outside. Unfortunately it snowed and it was a 30 minute drive and she was worried about the driving conditions, so she ended up not coming.....I was sooooo sad!! Plus, it was only about a half an inch of snow.

The Elders found a miracle investigator who they were able to teach the restoration to on her doorstep and then set her on baptismal date in that same encounter. Her name is M, She is 18 years old and our recent convert Kate hit it off really well with her at the Ward Christmas party, and then M. came to Church on Sunday and to the Christmas Devotional at Bishop's house. The whole time Kate and Melanie were glued to each other’s sides - it was great, and before the Christmas devotional a member invited M. and Kate both over for dinner. Kate is such solid fellowship for M. and it is exciting to see how fast they have already become best friends. On the way home from the devotional I asked M.  what she wants to do after she graduates, she said she wants to go into education and be a missionary. She asked us some questions about missionary service and then she said she had already talked about it a bit with the elders. She is so cool!!

Anyways, I'm really excited to go back and teach some of the investigators we found last week and I'm SUPER excited for the Missionary Christmas Conference happening on Wednesday J I'm kind of freaking out because it is transfers next week and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get a training call on Friday. But I really want to stay with Sister Morris one more transfer. Can't wait to get my package and have Sister Morris open it for me to dive in and get my Christmas music for me! Then I'll seal it back up until Christmas time! I'm glad to hear from you all and that things have been going well. Can't wait to Skype with you on Christmas. Can you send me Auntie Kirsten's number just in case we have technical difficulties and the Skype account username you will be using so I can add you when we go to Skype. If we Skype in the morning what time is best for you and if we Skype in the evening what time is best for you? You are 2 hours behind us. Just let me know if there is a specific time that works best for you. Also can you have Jeremy set up a Skype username and password for me.

Thanks!! Let me know about the times to Skype and I can't wait to Skype soon!

Love,


Sister Luening

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