January 1st 2014

     This past Sunday we had several momentous things happen simultaneously. First, our less active and his wife came to church for the fourth time which means they are no longer less active!! Not only that, but we spotted another less active couple we had just visited a few days earlier sitting at the back! The wife had come to church here and there, but it'd been 8 years since the husband (who's Lao, which is why we can visit them because he's Asian) came to church, so that was good to see!

Second, there is a missionary who just returned from his mission from Cambodia. We'd heard about him, but had no idea when he would be here, and this past week he just contacted us! We're excited to have someone who might help us with some language study or with some member lessons, though we're still working on the less-active Cambodian pool to help fellowship some investigators we have. So Elder Hamblin who's an English speaking Elder in our ward brought over this Asian looking guy saying he wanted to meet us. Although I did not exercise good social skills by blurting out "Are you Cambodian?" (mind you we were still overjoyed by the fact we had two less-actives there and a surprise investigator who I'll get to in a second), he responded that he was actually Korean, but that he was the elder just returning from Cambodia and I learned he knows two of the elders from my MTC district! He doesn't go to our ward, so he didn't stay past Sacrament meeting, but he just wanted to meet us and let us know he's willing to help with any lessons or investigators who don't speak any English.

Third of all, in the midst of visiting a less active, we had a man show up (I'll call him S) that we'd only talked to a couple times since he works for the less active we were visiting and happened to be there when we stopped by. What a surprise! We totally expected him to leave right after Sacrament meeting, but he went into Gospel Doctrine even before we got there, and went to Priesthood after that. I wouldn't jump on any conclusions and say he's a Golden Investigator by any means. One of his friends was a previous investigator of ours, but we had to drop him because he was doing some... sketchy business in an area close by, and we were pretty sure S was on something which would explain his obnoxious behavior. We worked really hard at suppressing any laughter since we were talking about prayer in the lesson, and at Sister McQuivey's insistence he apologized to our teacher after class for his irreverent behavior. What really got us was that fact that he knew where to go at what time. As we found out, the Elders had invited him to come to church as they walked to church, so he probably got the information from them, but I would be shocked if he showed up again next week. But it definitely made it a momentous Sunday!

New Years was interesting as we had to go home by 8pm, so we planned on playing games, watching the Restoration video and having sparkling cider with crackers and cheese, but Sister McQuivey got caught on the phone for awhile, so Sister Walker and I ended up catching up a bit on our journals. Since each of us got to do something traditional for New Years, Sister McQuivey insisted hers be what she does with "her boys" (her brothers) every year and drag our mattresses to the livingroom by the Christmas tree. Although it was very different not being up for the turn of the New Year, it was still a little different from any other night.

Love you!

Sister Dunster