September 7, 2014

Family,

First of all, congratulations to Maddy and Garrett. I truly am so excited for the both of you and will be counting the days for you until December 30! 

Second, Merry Christmas! It's now the "ber" months here, so technically it's officially Christmas season! Although it' weird to think I'll be home when Christmas actually rolls around. And even more exciting to think that Maddy will be married a week later too :)

Anyways, it's been a pretty good week here in the field. We've still been doing a lot of finding, trying to really focus on the members, because referrals really are so much more successful than personal contacting. This past weekend we had stake conference, and President and Sister Lopez attended and spoke. It was so good, and I really think it inspired the members. They mentioned how the Lord is hastening his work, and how we as members need to be moving at the same speed he is. They mentioned how the Lord might be hastening is work, but that means that Satan is hastening his as well, and we need to do all that we can to help in this battle. Sister Lopez mentioned about not being afraid to open our mouths to invite our friends and neighbors to hear about the gospel, invite to church, etc.  She mentioned that fear we have to share the gospel needs to be replaced with faith. And then President Lopez is always so inspiring when he speaks. Listening to the two of them, you can't help but catch the missionary spirit. I truly feel so lucky to have them as my mission president. We visited some members last night and I hope that missionary excitement will stay with the members and we continue to see some progress and positive results from it.

We're continue to find and to teach, and to find joy in missionary life. The members have been really willing to come and work with us this past week, and that's always a blessing. We've also found some promising potential investigators, so hopefully we'll continue to see some progress this week. But it's always hard at this point because all of them are still so new and you can't really predict who will progress and who won't but we're keeping the faith that all will work!

The men of the L family though are slowly softening their hearts which has been such a miracle! Last week E came to church with N and now they all come out to listen whenever we come so it's a slow process, but I hope things continue to go well with them because it would so amazing beyond words if the men joined their wives in the gospel and church. We'll keep working on them :) Last week we had FHE with them and it was really fun and they enjoyed it!

Anyways, there's other miracle stories but they'll have to wait until next week because we're now the last missionaries in the computer shop and we still haven't written president.

love you!

xxxx

Sister Fitzgerald and her companion at Stake Conference