Working until it's time

Well hey howdy ho family,
 

I am really excited to talk with you all, but I am in a pickle because I am only allowed to call either Monday the 13th or Saturday the 11th.  The Cyber makes you pay to use the computers and none of the members have them.  I think Saturday would be better when nobody is working, but then again I don't know if you will be on your way to Omahaving a baby.  (haha...I couldn't help it)  (Elder Neifert's sister is having a baby in Omaha, NE soon).   I'm going to check my e-mail at 2 PM our time to see when we should Skype.  If you guys are good for two on Sat, I will skype right then and if not I can wait until Monday.
 

This week was fantastic!  Elder Smith and I worked a lot and found some really great investigators.  It rained a lot here, too, and so we trudged through it for a couple of days.  We got the news that they will be dividing our area and putting sisters in the other half.  So we did a lot of looking for an apartment or house for us.  The division of the area isn't until June so we have a little time.  We saw some pretty shabby options though.  One lady showed us her house that had water stains about a foot up the wall and we asked if there was water problems or flooding.  She said "no..."  ...so I guess it would be a good place to live..... Is my name Horacio Poopenheim?!
 So the search continues.....
  

A big lesson I learned this week was how important it is to keep working until it is time to go home - no matter what.  Like I said before, we got drenched this week and it was a lot colder than usual.  It was like 8PM or so and I didn't have my umbrella and it started pouring down really hard.  We needed about 10 more contacts to reach our goal. We had already met our lesson number goal.  We got under a overhang of a dispensa and waited for a little and the rain was letting up. I think we both had thoughts of just calling it a day and going home, but we decided to keep contacting houses in the rain.  We got rejected three or four times and we had to yell at people from outside their gate because the rain was pounding.  We got in a couple houses to invite people to church and give them a short talk about lesson 1, but they didn't want to hear more so we got kicked out in the rain again.  Then at the last house we contacted, there was a big guy, without a shirt on, watching TV right by his door.  We clap and ask him "how's it going" and he waves us to come in. So we walk in, and I reach out to give him a hand shake and he just says, "Hey - go sit over there," pointing at some chairs on their patio.  So we sat down and had no idea what was going on.  That doesn't happen very often. We hadn't even introduced ourselves and we were sitting on his porch.   Suddenly, out popped 14 year old Beatrice Torres with a big smile and a Book of Mormon in her hand.  She talked with missionaries, briefly, 3 months ago and they didn't have any folletos (brochures) with them, so they gave her a Book of Mormon.  She had already started reading it and told us she knew it was true.  I was speechless.   She asked us questions and we introduced the Book of Mormon a little bit better.  She was turning 15 in two days so she couldn't make it to church, but she said she would the next week. She also said that she would be baptized if she learned more and received a witness from God that what we taught was true.  I have never had such a blast of investigator excitement in my whole mission.  It all came about because we felt the need to work until it was time to go home, no matter what, and the Lord guided and blessed us in finding one of his precious daughters who had been prepared to receive us.  It made me think about the scripture that talks about, "there will only be a witness after a trial of your faith." 

That is all for this week!

I hope you guys are doing well and I'm super excited to talk on Sat or Mon!

Love,

Elder Neifert