WONDER OF WONDERS MIRACLE OF MIRACLES

Email dated January 11, 2016 Guess what I forgot today? My planner. No surprises there right? haha I forget that thing a lot on preparation days! haha That's ok, I will just kind of go from memory and tell you about some or our cool experiences that we have had this week! First of all I just want to say thank you so much for your prayers! We were able to see some pretty awesome miracles! First miracle that I will tell you about is that we got 20 lessons! That hasn't happened in what seems like forever! So that in and of itself was a miracle that I needed in my life! haha I was so grateful to Heavenly Father! Now I will also tell you that we didn't quite hit the standard, but we got darn close! We received a ton of referrals (they just seemed to be coming at us all the time from Salt Lake!) and we were able to contact three of the referrals that we had. One of two of them seem pretty golden so we are super excited to get with them and actually start teaching them hopefully! I will tell you about contacting one of them because it was pretty funny. Her name is Larissa and we have been trying to contact her for quite a while. So during weekly planning I had just about had it. I wanted to contact her already! So I dialed up her number and put it on speaker phone. The phone rang and rang. ...and rang and rang and rang. ...and rang. .............................and RANG. 10 MINUTES I WAS ON THE PHONE WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO PICK UP OR AN ANSWERING MACHINE TO SAVE ME FROM MY MISERY! As the ringing went on and on I started begging the phone to just put me to the answering machine PLEASE. No one is possibly going to pick up this phone. IT'S BEEN 10 MINUTES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Well then what do you think the shock of my life was when I suddenly heard a voice on the other end of the line say "hello?" WHAT?! Family, I was so shocked that I started cracking up and I couldn't talk! NO! I had been waiting for half of eternity to talk to someone and now that there was someone on the other end to talk to, I couldn't say anything! I tried to hand the phone off to Sister Millett but she was laughing just as hard as I was! Great. Who thought of putting the two of us together anyway? Try as I might I could NOT get myself together! So what did I do? I hung up! I pretended that we got disconnected and I hung up! I couldn't believe my life! How aweful is that?! Any way, I got myself under control and then I called her back. She was super cool after demanding to know why I had hung up the phone and my explaining that something had happened and we had gotten disconnected... any way, she was super cool and she is super excited to meet with us :D We are hoping to meet with her sometime this week I think. There was another referral that we tried contacting but she was on a bus and no matter how loudly I shouted at the phone who we were she kept saying, "Who is this?!" So finally we just gave up and texted her. She doesn't want to talk to us though. haha Any way, so we were blessed with a lot of referrals :) We have also been blessed with some pretty awesome potential investigators. One of them her name is Esther. She is in her 80's and she is the cutest little fiesty lady with a Boston accent that you ever met! She always wears a fuzzy pink night gown, she can't keep on a track of conversation for more than about 30 seconds, and she loves dolls. She took us around to see them all and told us there names and a little about them. haha It was pretty fun. The potential that we are most excited about though is Brian. We found him on Friday. We were out on exchanges with Sister Proffitt all day on Friday and to start out the day we went out to Colcord OK to try and find an investigator that we STILL haven't met. So we decided to get lost because that's such a great idea and ended up in a podunk gas station asking everyone and their dog to help us find the address of this investigator. We eventually ended up talking to and policeman named Brian. He, after some struggles, managed to help us get some very confusing directions to where we were going. When I had written down everything he said, I laughed and said "Well, be expecting a call to ask for help again! haha" He smiled and then pulled out a card and said, "If you get lost, just call that number. That's my number." We thanked him and then went on our way. Well, we never did find the stupid place and non of our other ideas for what we were going to do or who we were going to see were working out. We literally spend half the day in the car I think. We both felt pretty lame about the day when we got back to the apartment. Then at the the end of out daily planning I found Brian's business card that he had given me. "...what if we texted Brian? (I mean, everything happens for a reason.) ...And maybe just said thanks for helping us...?" I said. It took us a few minutes of deliberation, but we finally decided to do it. We sent him a short text just thanking him again, and then we did our nightly routine and went to bed. Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles in the morning we had a text from Brian! He said, "You're welcome" and then asked us what church we were from! We told him and asked if had ever heard of it before. He said that he had heard of it and that he actually had questions about it! WHAT?! Me and Sister Millett were on top of the world! We told him that we would love to talk to him more about it and he said that he would really like to do that! We don't have a time set up yet but we are totally going to see him this week and then baptize him and take him to the temple before I go home and he'll probably be a Bishop or something. :) Any way, so that was a HUGE miracle that made us feel so much better about Friday! Saturday we worked our little tails off to make up for our dud of a day Friday. And we felt good about the day when we were done :) Even though we didn't hit the standard exactly, we got so close to it, and I know that we wouldn't have been near that successful if Heavenly Father had not been blessing us and helping us. We saw SO many miracles :) I wish I had time to tell you about them all! But I think I told you about the main ones :) Ok, now before I sign off I just have to tell you a little bit about today. We got to spend our afternoon at the Pattersons (Nate and Mary). I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. The Pattersons have got to be one of my favorite families that I have met on my mission. Any way, so Nate and Mary fed us lunch and then Nate had to go to work and Mary had some things to do on the computer, so guess what I got to do as an act of service while Sister Millett took a nap on the couch? I got to play with Hayes and keep him distracted so that his mom could work! Hayes is about 1 I think... and he is SO cute and very easily entertained! haha One thing that my mission has done for me at least a little bit is taught me to love children! haha I know, it's a shock! Any way, I taught him how to open his water bottle so that he can get a drink by himself (that alone kept us busy for about 45 minutes!) and then we put Nerf bullets in a space ship, opening and closing the door over and over again and then we discovered how to shoot a little plastic missile out of the space ship! It was so much fun! He is just learning how to talk too, so there was a lot of high and low pitched "da da da DA DA DA DA DA! HAHAHA" It was so funny! Any way, I think that's all the news that I have time for right now! I am doing great. I am so happy to be staying in Siloam Springs for my last transfer. I have been thanking Heavenly Father for that. I really want to prayerfully set some goals for this transfer as it is my last one. I really want to go out strong so that I can start out stronger back home. I hope you all have a good week! Love you! Sister Cryer