Another week gone.

Dearest family,

It's been a slow week but nonetheless, it's been pretty good!

For about a month now we have been volunteering at this recycle place. It is actually quite fun. Sometimes we sort through things that they receive and sometimes we load up a machine that puts all the stuff in a big package like thing that they send off somewhere and they get money for recycling. One time we unscrewed lids off of bottles so they don't blow up when they are being compacted together. It's really fun. I think I might like to volunteer at a place like this when I come home.

We had a pretty good lesson with James. We were thinking that we were going to drop him because he wasn't progressing a whole lot. It seems like every time we teach him, he says, "I already knew that." It is kind of frustrating because he told us to reteach him the lessons but now he is not super serious. So we were talking to the Bishop about it and he said to teach him a lesson on humility. So that was our plan and it was alright. He started crying. I'm not sure if he was crying because he was feeling the spirit or if it's because we were talking about his fiancee that passed away from cancer in August. Either way, he shed a few tears. He even had a different attitude about him. So we aren't exactly sure what we are going to do. I guess we will just continue to teach him for now.

On Friday we had a Zone Training that was pretty good! At the end, we talked about finding and then they had us do an activity: they gave us a few supplies and we had to go hand out the supplies in a half hour. It was pretty interesting! Sister Reeves and I ended up just going tracting at some houses around the Stake Center (I think most of us did that) and we were able to give a Book of Mormon to a guy named Randy. He has lived in his house since 1977 and they had to completely redo the inside of his house due to the tornado. He seemed pretty nice. The downside of this activity was it wasn't people in our own areas, it was all in one of the Joplin Ward's areas. So they got all the potential investigators. But it was still good. Hopefully they'll find some success from that activity. It was still fun! :)

On Saturday to Sunday, we did a mission wide fast for all the new missionaries that are coming out in the next few transfers. It was cool because our Mission President instructed all of us to pray at exactly 5 pm on Saturday night. So all of the missionaries in the OTM were praying at the same time to start their fast. That's pretty cool to think about all of us 200 missionaries praying at the same time for the same things, even though we are miles and miles apart from each other. I think it will allow our mission to be more united and hopefully it will bring tons of miracles as we have a TON more missionaries coming out to the OTM! This transfer we have 7 new sisters and next transfer we have 12 new sisters coming out! It is so awesome that so many sisters are taking the effort to go out on missions to serve our Father in Heaven. I'm excited to see what happens in the next few months!

Saturday night was pretty crazy. I experienced my first ice storm. It wasn't a super bad storm, but it still was crazy to wake up the next morning and have ice covering everything. We drove to Granby, MO to start our fast with our district and when we got home, the antenna on our truck had like an inch thick covering of ice on it! It was quite cold!

Well, I hope you all are going great! The work continues to go forward here in the OTM. It might be pretty slow moving right now, but it is still moving.

I love you all and hope Heavenly Father blesses all who read this!

See you soon then!

Love, Sister Pahl