The Peace Cactus

Dear Family,

Hope you all have had a fantastic week! It has been an amazing one here __! Lots of miracles for sure.

Gabriel came to church!! Gabriel came to church!! And he liked it! I probably shouldn't be so excited and surprised by such things, because the church is true and the Spirit is powerful, but I still am, a little bit. I feel at least somewhat justified in those feelings though because it was fast and testimony meeting this week. I used to think that they were the most boring of our meetings, but now that I'm a missionary, they are far too entertaining and eventful in all the wrong ways when you have investigators.

We were also able to make some progress with Gabriel's parents as well! Although it did not appear that way at first... Lots of stuff happened,and we thought we weren't going to be able to teach him anymore. But we decided to delay ending our fast and go talk with his parents. At the last second, we remembered we had a potted flower that the Relief Society had given us, and that his mother liked gardening, so we brought it as a peace offering. So we walked up to the front door, and she came out and was so touched by us giving her the flower that she gave us a little cactus and is going to let us keep teaching Gabriel! Apparently it's a sign of friendship to trade plants in __!! Then we took artsy pictures with the cactus. I was so so grateful, though, that her heart was softened as we'd been praying for. I hope that soon, she and the rest of the family will be prepared to receive the fulness of the gospel as well!

So these last few weeks we have been having a little bit of a hard time filling up our 8 o clock hour with good activities, because it's getting dark earlier. And everyone seems to go to bed around 7 o clock here. But this week, I totally learned that you just have to have faith and rely on Spirit and that you will be led to the place you need to be. Sister C. had this prompting that we needed to be on a certain street, and lo and behold, we meet this awesome man who was enjoying the beautiful stars. We taught him a brief Restoration lesson, and he said that he would love to read the Book of Mormon. His name is Mauro, and he is Sicilian. (Never compete with a Sicilian, when death is on the line!)

We also got to give lots of service to members this week. We helped our Ward Mission Leader's wife inventory, clean, and sort her food storage. It was an overwhelming job, and we didn't even get close to finishing. But hopefully it will give her a good head start! We also helped a less active sister move into her aparment. 

I love you all! Have a great week!

Sister Ward