Best Week EVER!

Hola Familia!

Sometimes I pretend like I speak Spanish to people on the street. It usually doesn't work out that well. But it's cool- Sister Burrup teaches me a little here and there. This week has been the BEST week so far! Holy cow it was such a blessing!

On Tuesday Elder Neal L. Anderson came to speak to our mission! We had a conference with the Las Vegas West mission and ours. He was only supposed to talk for 2 hours and ended up going for 3 and thank goodness he did! We learned so many great things from him. He told us that he wants us to serve in our areas for 6-8 months at a time now so we can get to know the ward better and gain their trust. That means sisters will probably only be in 2 or 3 areas their whole mission! Crazy. He really emphasized the atonement and the power of bearing testimony at all times. Elder Tad R. Callister of the presidency of the 70 also came and talked about not just changing our behavior as missionaries but changing our nature. The whole meeting just empowered us for the rest of the week. It was fun to see all the missionaries too- there were about 500 of us in the stake center. I saw Elder Perrins and Elder Titus was there too.

Yesterday church was magnificent. We had SO many people there and the whole meeting was just awesome. Sister Remund and I were a little worried about having our investigators and less actives in the ward feel welcome, but the ward completely reached out to them. The investigators are already a part of the Relief Society and have lots of friends there. The kids loved Primary too so that always helps. Our Primary program is coming up in a couple weeks and it looks like our investigator (Jasmine)'s nephew and an inactive family we are working with will be in it! So we are excited.

We are working with so many amazing people right now- 2 of our investigators are SO ready for their baptism and it has been fun to help them prepare for that. Jasmine is still doing so great and is such an example to me. We are teaching another Lady- Sister Rahim- and we had the coolest experience with her yesterday. We took her to a Why I Believe fireside which is a mission-wide fireside where converts come and tell their conversion story. It was so great and the spirit was CRAZY strong there. Right when the fireside finished she said "Alright I want to be baptized this week" and she couldn't stop talking about the "overwarming feeling" that was there. She said that as she was sitting there she didn't even crave cigarettes and she wanted to sleep in the chapel so she wouldn't ever pick up a cigarette again. Haha I love her. We then taught her that she can have that warm feeling any time she wants- she didn't need to go to a chapel or hear someone's testimony. When we read the Book of Mormon we allow the spirit to come into our lives and the spirit is what helps us keep the Word of Wisdom.

Well hope you all have a great rest of the week! Sister Remund and are off to this crazy 13 mile bike trail along a mountain and apparently there are railroad tracks involved? I don't really get it but I'm excited. Thank you for the prayers- they really are helping me.

Love,
Sister Stoker