"Risen" - Monday, January 24, 2022

January 24, 2022

Everyone!!! You will never believe what happened this week! It was full of ups and downs but also, so many miracles!!!

First!!! Guess who came to the 2nd hour of church yesterday?! DAVID! Yes!! He was there, in the flesh! It was him!!! He attended Elders Quorum with the Elders and then afterward came and found us! He apologized for what his girlfriend had said to us and explained it was not how he felt. He also talked about how one of his house plants had died and he felt it was because we had stopped coming by. We are going to be messaging with him and sending scriptures! He is not quite ready to meet to have a lesson but we will work toward that!! Oh my goodness, everyone! It was such a miracle! I know that Heavenly Father knows David and He is helping him find his way. Keep him in your prayers!!!

We had a lesson with Starr on Tuesday! She had read the first part of the Restoration pamphlet we had given her and talked about how the foundation of each different church is always that God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die for our sins. We taught her the Restoration lesson and she accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon. She was wondering why it wasn't part of the Bible because it's another witness of Jesus Christ, just like the Gospels in the New Testament. It was a great question! And we explained how The Book of Mormon was a second witness to the Bible that Jesus is the Christ, Heavenly Fathers only Begotten Son. We have another lesson with her this Tuesday!

The Zone Leaders taught District Council on Thursday! They taught on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It was amazing! The Spirit was so strong as they testified of the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ for us. I know that He is my Savior and that He suffered for me and everyone in the Garden of Gethsemane so that we could become perfected in Him. He knows each of us!

Friday was a very eventful day. We decided to travel to the bottom of our area to visit the ward members and others who live down there. It takes about an hour to get to the farthest person. We planned out our route and began driving! The first person we visited was Sister Evy Linville. She is such a sweet lady! We shared a message on God's Love for her and testified that He is there. We then drove to visit Myrtle. She is a sweet old lady who lives in a little cottage in a very remote part of West Virginia. While we were there her grandson came and through him we found out Myrtle is Evy's mother and Brother Linville, in the bishopric, is her son, making Myrtle his grandmother. It was a crazy cool family history moment! We shared a message with her and then drove to our next destination. However, in West Virginia you should always pull up all the directions you will need while you have service! Because, unless you are in a city, there won't be any service!! This is the problem we had. We began driving in the direction of the next person we were planning to visit. Every few minutes we would check to see if we had service but to no avail. Eventually Sister Morales figured out she could find out the general location of where we were using road signs and google maps (It was a complete miracle!!! Because mine and Sister Humphries wasn't pulling anything up)! We began looking for the address but eventually found ourselves next to Evys house again. We pulled over and reevaluated. We decided we should move on to the next people we had to visit and decided we would have to plan another trip down to the bottom of our area! The next persons home we tried to find didn't exist! And the next person lived up a holler. We felt a little uneasy about visiting them so we pulled into the driveway to turn around but then got stuck in the snow!!! Oh my goodness!! It was scary!! The driveway was a little slanted and was covered in ice and snow! We slid a little bit and just got more and more stuck. We could see some of the persons neighbors watching us and eventually decided to ask them for help. They came over and got another neighbor to help us out. He was a super nice man who told us how to turn the wheels and back out of the driveway. Eventually we made it safely back onto the road!! What a miracle!! It was stressful but we made it out in the end! After that we tried visiting one more member who wasn't home, so we drove back to Barboursville. It was quite an adventurous day!!

As missionaries we have a safety device in our cars called Twi. She tracks our speed and driving to make sure we are safe and everything. If you speed she tells you to slow down and if you drive aggressively she tells you to stop. Well, on Friday we got in the car and she didnt turn on.... so we called the company and they told us to UNPLUG HER!!! Its a mission rule that you NEVER unplug her because she is there to keep us safe. After we unplugged Twi we plugged her back in and she worked! So it was all ok but it was a funny experience, haha. I've now unplugged Twi!

Song of the Week: "I Know He Lives" by April Meservy. It has been a harder week out here but I know that Christ's Atonement is real. He knows each of us. And He loves us! He watches over us and we need not fear. We will have trials and hardships in this life but Christ knows our pains and weaknesses. He suffered the Atonement for us so He could more fully understand us. I am so grateful for Him and my Heavenly Father.

Have a hope filled week!! Talk to y'all next Monday!

-Sister Sariah Francis

Pictures!!!