December 9, 2013

Dear Family,

My first transfer is pretty much up! I can't believe that time has gone by so fast! I feel like I have learned a lot and have grown so much in the last 6 weeks. I will be staying here in Madison, FL! I am excited! I love my companion and the area. :) The Elders in the area are being transferred out though so we will be having two new elders in Madison. I am excited! The last Elders weren't putting their all into the work and it got a little frustrating sometimes because we would have to pick up on their slack sometimes. We are excited for the new change!

Well I hear that it is very cold in all of the areas ya'll live in!! It feels so nice here. :) I am very grateful! I love not having to turn on the heater in our apartment. It's great. I don't think that Florida knows that it is December already! So how are ya'll doing?

I am doing great! I have had some neat experiences this week that I'd like to share. The first is that the Lord answers prays. We have been struggling to get members to come with us to our lessons and so we have been praying really hard for us to be able to start making that happen. Well on Tuesday we had a member in the branch take us out to dinner. Her name is Kim and she is a solid woman. She rides her bike from her house to the church every Sunday which takes about 45 -60 minutes! She is great. Well she met us in Madison (which again is about an hour to drive to from where she lives) to feed us. We offered to drive her home since we were going that way to see one of our investigators, Tammy. We asked, thinking that she would say no, if she would be willing to just make a stop with us and teach her. Kim was so willing and came with us. It ended up that they got along really well and became friends. So not only did the Lord provide us with a member to come to the lesson with us but he provided a member present lesson that had a purpose to it. It was such a neat experience to see that the Lord is watching out for us and hearing our prayers. He wants us to be successful. The lesson with Tammy was great! Especially because we had a member there to bear testimony as well. The second experience was last night. We had planned to go visit the Carters, a less-active couple. When we got to their house they weren't home and so we walked slowly to our car and just waited awhile for some weird reason and then as we decided to drive away very slowly they drove up! So we stopped and went into their house and started talking. Well then their friend, Darlene, showed up. They introduced us to her and we started talking about the church and she said that her son was starting to look into the Mormon church. (He is in a correctional facility) She said that he had been trying to get her to look into it for a while but that she was never really interested but that now she would like to learn more and see what we believe. We gave her a Book of Mormon and we got her phone number. Right as we were talking with her, her son called and so we got to talk to him for a bit and he brought up the Christmas Devotional that was going to be on and so Sister Carter turned the TV to the BYU channel. It was still only about 645 and so we watched a devotional that was on right then. It was Elder Holland and he was talking about Alma 32:21. It was a miracle because her son had just told her to look up that scripture and said that Elder Holland gave a talk on it on time. Little miracles like that happened at that house last night. Darlene had to leave before the devotional but we are going to call her this week and meet up with her.

We stayed and watched the devotional which was so good! I loved it. I felt the spirit very strongly. Thomas S. Monson is a prophet. I know that he is. I know that Christ was born and that he lived and died for us. I love my Savior and am grateful for his example. I love teaching people about Christ and being able to bring them closer to him. I have the best job right now, serving the Lord!

I hope you all have a great week! I have to go but I love you all!

Love,

Sister Jenni Merrill