Episode 6: Prayers and Painting!

Another week full of Miracles!

Wow who else loves to Pray??? This past week has been FILLED with them!! This is going to be a short one, I'm short on time haha but seriously! The power of prayer is real! We needed 3 rides for some of our friends to get to church and the Elders in our area (we share a ward with them) needed 4 rides and NO ONE was responding! One particular was critical getting to church, Don Steed. He is getting baptized this week and if he didn't come this Sunday, we would have to move his date back and he is so ready so we were stressing all week to get people to help us out. Saturday night we got 3 call backs saying they could give people rides! It was a miracle!

We weren't meeting our goal on finding people to teach and help serve, so our hearts were in continual prayer to help someone come closer to Christ. It was a rough week for us but I believe because of how much we were praying, God felt sorry and sent us 3 new people!! Haha no just kidding, but Thursday, Friday and Saturday we found people and were so humbled by the love of God and that He was listening to their prayers as well as ours. Thursday, we met Teresa, a 73 year old grandma who is full of life and saying she is "the hippiest grandma you'll ever meet!" Haha we love her and are teaching her the importance of baptism. She is so close already and is so willing to learn and loves the things we share. She is an elect child of God ready for His blessings!

On Friday we found a less active, Vicky and she asked us to help paint her living room! We were so excited to help do some service! So Saturday, we go over and are painting and get it all done in 3 hours and her cousin, Sandy, comes over and she was suppose to help but got caught up in stuff and couldn't make it until then. But she sees us there and she is a super nice lady. She is a preschool teacher and is so sweet and funny! She starts asking us questions about our missions and then starts asking all these really in depth questions about the church! So of course we perk right up and go into the Articles of Faith and teach the Restoration and teach the Book of Mormon, and holy cow!! She was just soaking everything up!! We couldn't believe it! She had tears in her eyes and would testify of the truth of the things we literally just taught her! She said that everything just made sense now and she couldn't wait to share it with her husband!! We were all just ecstatic! The less active was able to help us testify of coming to church and help us teach her cousin about what we believe, it was incredible...we were all in tears at one point and the spirit was so strong. We all had a moment of clarity and a moment when the spirit testified to us the truth of the things we said...it was magnificent!!! We gave her a Book of Mormon, like 3 pamphlets, a card with the Articles of Faith, and our card! We just loaded her up! We have an appointment to meet with her this following week! We can not wait...it was truly a miracle.

Later that night, we met up with a part member family, the Dillon's, ah such a wonderful family!! They were so sweet and kind! The husband is a member and the wife is not a member, so we taught the Restoration. Since being pumped up for meeting Sandy, we were just pumped and ready to go! Haha and the spirit was so so strong there too. She had previously been taught and dropped because she wasn't making a lot of progress, but we just felt that she was ready and she was! She was in tune with the spirit and it allowed us to teach and bring the spirit there as well. My companion and I were so in tune with each other and we were just on fire!! We had tears in our eyes as we testified of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon...man, I love that book!! Anyways, I felt impressed to share my Mother's conversion story. The Dillon's are originally Baptist and my Mom was raised Baptist too and I talked of the same questions my Mom had and she later exclaimed "how did you know I questioned that too??" And we were able to testify that it was the spirit of God. That Heavenly Father knows what she needs all the time and that because we are His servants, we felt we needed to share that. She was in tears as we all were! (Sisters, am I right? Haha I can't control my tears!!) But it was such a fabulous way to end the week. We could not believe all the miracles we just witnessed! That night we stayed on our knees in thanksgiving for what felt like hours!!! There is always so much you can thank our Heavenly Father for. I love this gospel and I love my Savior. Because of Him, I can be saved and because of Him, I can help bring in His lost sheep. Heavenly Father is so aware of our needs! Small or big, He shows us! One way He has shown me that He is aware of me is having our apartment right next to our friendly neighbor who has a dog named Molly!! (Back home we have a dog named Molly). She is a sweetheart and so I have a little bit of home...here in good ole' West Virginia!
Sister Reynolds

Our neighbor dog, Molly :)

Off to the doctor's office, which was creepy because it seemed like a sketchy little building...

When I arrived in West Virginia, I got a cold...

then it turned into an ear infection. Sister McKendrick suggested doing an ear candle, which I have never done before and it was scary!! It helped a little. The ward mission leader is a doctor and said I probably have a cold and ear infection due to adjusting to the climate of cold/humid. Being sick and away from home is not fun at all :(

Video chat on March 25, 2019