D&C 106:4

Hello!!

We had quite a week!!! Lots of exciting but sad stuff going on!

Monday - For our preparation day, we went with Sister Parkes and Grandma to Honor Heights Park and fed the geese! It was so much fun but our arms definitely were sore for the next couple of days! :)

Tuesday - We volunteered at P.A.W.S. - the local animal shelter. It is a lot of fun playing with the cute little dogs. We mainly give them water, scoop the poop (fun ;)), and play with them. I love doing it!  It reminds me of my childhood when that was my chore. :) They have a dog that looks exactly like Lexi! It is so cute! This time, we gave a dog a bath because it was being adopted! It was so exciting! :)

We also had a pretty good lesson with the O'neal family. We did the cup display and they really liked it and understood the purpose of it.  Their dog had puppies on Monday and so we were also able to see them!  They were so little!! :)

Wednesday - We had District Meeting in Sallisaw. It was pretty good.  We talked about following up with commitments we have left with our investigators. It is super important to follow up so they know that what we ask them to do is important.

We played Bingo at the nursing home. The residents there just love us coming and playing Bingo with them. There are a few that we have to help do their cards because they can't do them or sometimes they forget to cover up the number. I enjoy it so much!!

We also saw Wyneeka again!!!! It was only for a couple of minutes but it was pretty great!!! :) We always drive past the park that we found her at hoping to see her, but we usually don't. This day was different! We did see her walking down the street so we turned around and pulled up next to her and she was so excited to see us! Her and her friend were going somewhere though so we only talked for like 5 minutes or so, it was still good to see her!

Thursday - We had a realy good lesson with Ian. He's 11 and lives with his grandma who is a member. We talked about keeping the Sabbath Day Holy. I made little cutouts when I was with Sister Boone and so we did that with him so we could hopefully keep his attention for a little longer. It was also a good refresher for his grandma.

Friday - We were supposed to have lunch with David at noon but he postponed it until later that day which was good because we were able to go see another lady. She said it was a miracle because it was the only free time she had that day and she just so happened to be right close to where we were at. It was cool. She is a less active lady trying to come back to church. She's super nice and is an amazing person. She has a huge testimony but just doesn't get out to church all the time. But she's come two weeks in a row, making it a total of

3 times in the last month and a half or two months.

Then we did Bingo again and then we me with David. It was a really good lesson but we are still having trouble knowing how to answer his questions. He says that he doesn't believe in the priesthood because he believes that we don't need it anymore because of Christ. It's confusing and he is really deep and sometimes I just really don't understand what he is saying heheh but he is a good person and still wants to know the truth. He loves us and thinks we are amazing for deciding to serve a mission at our age. I think that's why he's willing to listen to us - because at 20 and 22 we are trying to share this with people when other 20 and 22 year olds are not making good choices.

We also got a phone call from a less active member. It was actually her friend calling from her phone to inform us that she was in the hospital up in Tulsa with a stroke or a heart attack. We were pretty sad!!

Saturday - We drove ourselves up to Wagoner. Speaking of Wagoner, we found out this week that Wagoner is getting it's own set of missionaries on July 4th!!! We are so excited and it will take a huge burden off of our shoulders! There is so much potential up there and we just don't have enough time or miles to spend much time up there.  So, we're glad that they're getting their own missionaries!

We had a lesson with Winnter and she is still all set for getting baptized on June 22nd! We're pretty excited! :) She wants us to give the talks and Bro. Mobley (our Ward Mission Leader) is going to baptize her. We might have to move the date to the 29th though because the 22nd is the ward's day to help clean the temple and there is also a wedding. So it's a full day and we might have to move the baptism to the following week. That will be okay though.

Sunday - Before Ward Council, we heard that the lady that went to the hospital, Sis. Dougherty, passed away on Saturday night. We were pretty bummed but not surprised. We've been visiting her almost weekly!!! She has been getting really sick and staying sick so that's why we were not very surprised that she didn't make it, but we're still bummed, but she's in a better place and is with her husband now!  :)

We had fast and testimony meeting this week because of ward conference last week. One of our investigators, Thaiwanna, bore her testimony! It was so amazing! We also found out later from someone else that she had paid a little bit of a fast offering! We were so proud we almost started crying! She doesn't even have any money but she wanted to pay an offering. She had her uncle help her fill out the slip. It was really cool!

We had 6 more lessons on Sunday, making a total of 20 lessons for the week! We were happy with the efforts that we've made this week. It is amazing how the Lord blesses you when you are trying to do things His way! We've been staying out as much as possible and trying to see a lot of people and in the process, we are finding lots of people that are being prepared to hear the gospel! I love being a missionary and am so glad that I've been given the opportunity to serve in the OTM - the Only True Misson! :) It's truly amazing!!!! I can't even describe my feelings that I have for my mission. I will forever be thankful for my decision to serve! :)

I love you all! Thanks for everything!

See you soon then!

Love, Sister Ashley Pahl