This is it, my last transfer!

Well as I told y'all last week- I am staying in Taylor to finish my mission. Sister Ylisaari got transferred and my new companion is Sister Jones from Grants Pass, Oregon! She has been out a few transfers and came from Scottsdale where it was 70+ degrees to up here where it's windy and snowing, and that's not the only major difference! This small town is a lot different than Scottsdale where she saw mansions and nice cars every day. She's a great missionary though and we're working well together and seeing success! Everyone here has a hard time believing that I am still here and they wonder what it is that I keep doing with all of my companions. I keep getting asked "how long have you been here?!" and well it's been over 8 months and by the time I'm done it'll be almost 10. Many have said "you must still have work to do here" and I 100% agree and am excited to work hard with Sister Jones my last seven weeks.

Baptism news: One of the families we have been working with that recently has started coming back to church will be baptizing their son Anthony this weekend! We're so excited for them. 

We have a 9 year old investigator, Ryland, whose family isn't active and we have been teaching him and seeing lots of growth and progress in him and his family and we set a date for him to be baptized the 20th of this month. 

The Furbushs are very excited for their baptism. Jenny hasn't been doing very well though and is afraid she might be back on dialysis which will cause her to have a port put back in which can't get wet... so we're hoping she doesn't have to do dialysis again! :/

This week we taught the Furbushs about missionary work. Amelia's young women's activity this week was also on missionary work and we and some returned missionaries were asked to help out with the activity. The young women were all given a mission call to serve right here in Taylor. It was a pretty neat activity. Amelia hung hers up at home. We discussed with the Furbushs how they can do missionary work and they plan on inviting their family and friends to their baptism. Amelia has already invited a few friends. Chris' family is still meeting with the Elders in Snowflake and Chris has been doing what he can to explain the gospel to his brother. Jenny is still sending materials to her friend in New York and talking to her on the phone about what she's been learning with us. It's just been so neat to see. We can see their conversion deepening as they desire to share the gospel with others!

So Sister Jones arrived in Taylor Friday night and we went straight to dinner and then had a lesson with Ryland and after his lesson it was really tempting to just head home a little early and get settled but I felt we needed to go see this inactive family we've been trying to make progress with for quite a while. The mom hasn't been to church in years and the daughter is 8 years old and hasn't been baptized yet. We were able to contact the mom's fiance who is also an inactive member and it turns out that he had a really rough day, he found out a family member passed and the start of this new year has been trial after trial for him. We were able to share a thought, our testimonies and a prayer with him and he was so appreciative of our visit. I'm so grateful that I listened to the prompting for us to visit them that night. He told us they've been thinking about coming to church and just thinking about it is a miracle for this family. He invited us to come backtonight to share a lesson and in the past we've never had success with the mom keeping appts but I hope now that Marcus is there and his heart is really softened right now that we'll be able to see them and bring them back to church and help the daughter get baptized. 

The biggest miracle of the week though was that our investigator Heather came to church for the first time! She's really shy and we've invited her a lot but yesterday she finally came. It was a huge step for her! :)

Things are going really well in the area and I hope we can work hard and see lots of success. I have faith that we will! I hope you all have a great week!

Love, 

Sister Richards

So a wonderful Sister from Taylor owns Wild and Free Photography. She did a photo shoot with Sis RIchards and Sis Ylisaari. What great treat to get these is my email.