Rain, rain, go away...

What a WET week!!

It has been raining non-stop for the past week! Drenching rain! Today it has finally gotten dry. Yay!!

Last Monday Sister Hansen and I got our hair trimmed by one of the sweet members here! That was fun.

That night while tracting we met SO MANY kind people!! We didn't run into one mean/mad soul! Miracle! We basically went to every house and got compliments! Everyone just kept complimenting our happiness and cheerfulness! :) They all couldn't help but smile. I love my companion! We have a lot of fun!

On Tuesday we had exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders!! I got to go with Sister Davis (I was in the MTC with her!!!) in the Fort Belvoir area!! ...I have never served in such a humble area my entire mission. It was amazing! Everyone was SO open to talking to us and having us come back to share more! Not gonna lie.. I got kinda jealous of those Sisters in that area! They have 5 people on date for baptism.. I got to meet two of them! Their names are Salifu and Mabinty and they're from Sierra Leone! Salifu is going to be a member of the Seventy someday. I'm already calling it! He is so amazing!! Basically he taught US. His testimony is solid!! I LOVE MISSIONARY WORK. There truly are people out there who are searching for the gospel -- and finding it!! I'm so grateful I could go to that area and meet those wonderful people.

We also got to go on the Military base to visit a less-active!! We had to give them our SSN and everything. Wow! That was really cool. It was like being in a movie set! That would be interesting living there.

Exchanges were so much fun! I loved spending time with Sister Davis! We still can't believe that we've been away from home 11 months.. And how much we love being missionaries! :)

Getting back together with Sister Hansen on Wednesday was great!! I just love her! She was wonderful and helped remind me that we ARE successful missionaries even though we may not have 5 people on date for baptism. It is so true. We just have completely different challenges within our area. We are finding the success in sharing our testimonies and joy with so many well-off people! ;)

On Thursday we had a blast helping the cute ladies at Greenspring paint their ceramics. Totally my favorite service opportunity.

That night Sister Hansen and I had quite the cool experience.... So I may or may not have locked our keys in the apartment again.. We were locked out of our apartment with 2 plates of cookies, towels and water-bottles in the cold misty-ish weather. We had gone to our apartment to get the plates of cookies to take to people, and the towels were for protecting our car seats just in case it poured again. Luckily the Office Elders went to get the extra key.

Now this is where the miracles come in.

We had the option to go get the key with the Elders in the warm car, but I had a prompting to stay and go walk to an area to tract. I knew that if we were diligent we would see miracles. I had a distinct feeling that we would see some! I had already tracted most of the area closest to our apartment complex..but we went anyways. After knocking a cul-de-sac, we decided to go back. Then... I saw a house I had previously knocked on that had no answer and knew that we had to try again! And guess who we met!? A woman named Patch who looked super happy to see us!! She was a former investigator!! Miracle! We are hoping to meet with her soon. At the moment she was busy. But hey hey! Diligence pays off! And God will do funny things to make sure you're in the right place at the right time. :)

Last night Sister Hansen and I had another funny thing happen. We totally got carried away after our nightly planning and were just chatting away...and moving our beds into the front room (we have a little bit of flooding in our bedroom--not horrible) that we forgot to send in our key indicators to our District Leader! And our phone was on vibrate in Sis. H's bag.. So basically he and our ZL's were trying to get ahold of us all night... So we got a check-in visit from some Elders in our apartment complex around 10:20pm.. Embarrassing! Well, it's good to know there are people making sure we are alive and well. :) Haha! Sis. H and I couldn't stop laughing!

Anyway... I'll keep the rest of this short.

I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE. I love members who take care of us. I love our beloved Prophet. I love our Apostles. I KNOW that they are men called by God. I know that their words truly are God's words. I'm so grateful for the answers I have received from them!

I love you all and hope you'll take on the challenge of "ponderizing"... ;) haha don't you just love that?

Love,

Sister Winterton