Winter Is Here‏

So just a heads up, if I come home without a nose, we can blame it on winter. I didn't know that it was possible for winter to be so cold... It doesn't even matter how many layers I wear, I'm going to freeze! Haha But bring it on... I'm ready (I have to tell myself that to convince myself it's true.)

Now onto the important things!:) Miracles happened last week!

Miracle #1: We met Alfredo!!! We were trying to find one of the former investigators in our area book and Alfredo was out raking his leaves. As we started walking over to talk to him, he looks up, points at us and gets a big smile on his face and says "MORMONS!" Haha.... I've never had that happen to me before. I've had plenty of people think we're jehovah's witnesses and I've had plenty of people recognize who we are (but they usually hide, not get a big smile). So we went over and talked to him. He has a couple friends that are members of the church. He's from Puerto Rico and is very Christian and was very willing to allow us to come back and talk to him about the restoration. We left him with a pamphlet and he was pretty excited to read it. He also kept saying "Lots of people around here don't like to talk about Christ but they need it! They need you!" haha I just thought to myself: "You have no idea..." haha

Miracle #2:Joe. Joe is a miracle!:) We went to lunch at this pizza place and we were looking over our lesson for someone and this man came in and sat down at a table close to ours so I said hi and started talking with him. He asked about our name tags (I LOVE NAME TAGS! THEY BRING UP SO MANY CONVERSATIONS!!) He asked if we were nuns since our name said "sister" so we talked to him more about the church and we gave him a pamphlet on the restoration as well and we talked about prophets. We asked the waitress for the check and she said "Oh Joe already covered it for you" so we were able to tell him thank you before he left and the waitress was telling us that he's a regular, he's ALWAYS there and that she's NEVER seen him do that for someone before so we must've really made a good impression on him! It's so neat to see how nice people are because they can recognize us as servants of the Lord.

Miracle #3: At first it's not going to sound like a miracle, but it has a happy ending I promise!:) So we had just left a lesson and were trying to talk to some people in the neighborhood (which is kind of hard now that it's FREEZING and SNOWY and everyone wants to stay inside). But we ran into this mailman. He's from Wyoming and we started talking about his religious beliefs. Out of nowhere he goes off on how we're wrong and we're going to hell because we don't believe in Christ and how we are trying to take people away from the truth. I have not once, up until this point, experienced a rude person, but this made me sick to my stomach. it didn't matter how much we tried to bear testimony, it didn't matter what we said, he didn't want anything to do with it. I was baffled. And it made me so sad that this man's heart was so hardened that nothing could change his mind. He had said some things that really upset me and I was literally sick to my stomach. The spirit was completely gone. I have never felt so uncomfortable in all my life. The spirit has been something that I've gotten so used to that once it was gone, I felt so distraught. So sister Rogers and I went back to the car and right outside my door was a penny. :) For those of you who don't know, pennies come from heaven and I've got some pretty great people in heaven. I knew that Grandpa and Uncle Kevin were there looking out for me. Sister Rogers and I said a prayer and started reading from the Book of Mormon and almost instantly the spirit started coming back! That strengthened my testimony on the power of the word of God! I KNOW that the Book of Mormon really is the word of God! We all need to read it more! Take advantage of it!

Miracle #4: Our sweet family!:) I love them so much! They had to cancel our appointment on saturday and weren't able to make it to church on Sunday, but I made muffins on Sunday to take to them. Then last night we were able to go over and teach them the plan of salvation. Oh my goodness! The spirit was so strong! It was so cool to see the change in Steve when he realized the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ covers him on such a personal and individual level. And it was so cool to talk to Veronica about the spirit world since she had lost her mother a couple years ago. This plan that God has for us is perfect! He knows us better than we know ourselves and He knows what's best for us!

I am so grateful for the decision I made to come out here!

Love you!

Love Sister Nield