So this all might not make ANY sense but I'm going to try to catch ya'll up on some awesome things that have happened out here on the mission! I appologize for being so short just had to deal with things but that's life right?! hahaha Here we go! :D!
Updates on Neiva and Isemale and JoJo! They are FINALLY progressing! They have come to church twice now and are reading from the Book of Mormon! We had a great lesson on Faith with Neiva. We read out of Ether 12 and talked about how faith is our foundation in life. I like to say if we don't have faith, you have nothing! JoJo said the prayer with his dad's help, which was awesome! We taught Repentance this week on JoJo's level and talked about Baptism. They still don't understand the whole importance of the priesthood and baptism, but they do want to be baptized to follow what God wants them to do. They just need to gain a testimony of it for themselves first! She wants so bad to belong to a church and more importantly have a testimony KNOWING that the Gospel is true!
We are teaching a girl named Angelica and she is pretty awesome! She comes from a family who is not super active and all she knows is that she wants to be baptized! She said the prayer for her first lesson and it was beautiful! She thanked God for sending her Jesus Christ to help her with her life and take away her sins! She has come to church once and when she got there she said that the Holy Ghost talked to her and that July 18th is the day she will get baptized!!! Wahooo!!!! So exciting!!!
We have this sweet family who has been homeless for the last past year but have finally got an apartment to live in. The oldest daughter is 17. Her name is Erinn and we caught her at home and shared Ether 12 27 with her and it was exactly what she needed! She could apply it to herself in sooo many ways! I love experiences like that! It truly shows that our calling as missionaries is not one to take lightly! It is a serious responsibility and gift for us to help others with!
Rebecca is a lady we met while walking to see Sister Sabbah and she was just outside on her deck thing of her apartment. We have been visiting with her a lot lately. We had a really awesome discussion about Faith where we gave her Almas' definition of faith. The next week we came back and she said she had been thinking about it a lot over the past week and she asked us where we got our faith without using any scriptures! That was such an amazing question and it has been something we have been talking about a lot with people lately! I told her that Faith is a gift and I believe that some people have that gift from the start but some have to acquire that gift. For me I have always had faith! There is not a time in my life that it had hit me that oh, now I have faith! Yes, it has grown tremendously! But I have always had it! It's one of the spiritual gifts that I was born with! Then we shared Helaman 5 12 which strongly supported what she had told us about the last 4 months with four of her friends dieing suddenly! That scripture bolstered her faith sooo much! She loves having us over and is soo ready to learn just has to get done with her 4 majors! I know CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brother Sexton is one of my favorite people right now! He is a RM from the great IBM (Idaho Boise MIssion) who has become less active and has realized it and is doing everything he can to come back to church! He has gone to church two times this month and who knows how long it has been! He hasn't come to our ward becuase of work but he goes! AND he is looking to take a pay cut so he can have his Sundays off and free to go to church!!!! His testimony has come back full force and he's headed for the sun!!!! [get the hint ;)] I love being able to watch someone's testimony be rekindled and see that moment when they receive that peace back into their lives again!
We met with Mark Aims again this week and he quickly hid his beer can! His nephew also showed up with a friend and we were only there for like 10 mins more and his friend had downed 2 beers and one cig! I can't stand the sweet smell of beer! Its an awful sweetness, not good at all! He still had that testimony of Jesus Christ being his Savior which is sooo good!
Mary, one of our investigators, finally picked a baptismal date as a goal for her to quit smoking...its not going too well tho...so all the prayers for her would be great!
Less spiritual here, I had some cavities that had to be fixed so Brother Brown did them for me right before district meeting so I couldn't talk, how fun right?! haha District meeting was great! So yes here I go becoming like my mom!!!! My district leader is sooo awesome and I have decided he will be my brother in law! :D!!!!!!!!!! hahaha I LOVE to tease people and when I talk about that, his face gets all red its super cute!!!! I can say that cuz he is younger then me! Even though I'm a missionary I am still Ash! hahaha
So those pictures that I sent last week were of 'Paint the Town Boise!' So Boise is awesome! They have every summer great projects where they pay for paint for volunteers like ourselves to paint folks home that can't do it themselves! Brother Woodland is in charge of helping get the Justserve.org kicked off in Boise and man is it going great! We had a blast painting! I would have to say I'm pretty pro at it with painting ours a thousand times and driving 2 hours south just to paint Aunt Debbie's house! hahaha BUT I ALWAYS get paint on me! It's just how I roll! hahaha
So as I said we got moved out of our apartment due to the Elders house getting sold and moved into live with the sisters. That house is also on the market so we have people come down and tour our living area on occation! Its very interesting! I remember a talk that was given, don't remember by who, but it was talking about how the missionaries couldn't go out of their apartments because of crazy country things so the people would come to them for the lessons. So when the first couple came down to look at the basement apartment I had to control myself from laughing and then inviting them to sit down so we could teach them about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! That would be soo nice tho! hahaha
We have had a ton of service projects! We moved in a sweet elderly lady which took a whole 15 mins because she had nothing! Then we moved someone into Liberty ward! Yay!!!! And her sister is LDS! So a possibility there!!!! wahoo!!! That ward needs somthing! Four Elders came and helped out and a couple men from the ward! We had such a blast! I love these Men I serve with! Yes, they can be boys but they wear the title of Elder very well when it really counts the most!
Well I will have to catch up more next week! I love you all so much! and I LOVE what they say about missions, that the greatest convert on your mission is yourself and man can I attest to that! Sorry David! I'll have pictures next time!!!! :)
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<3 Sister Ashley Clawson
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