What A Fabulous Week!

September 14, 2009

Dear Family & Friends:

What a fabulous week! Oh man! I love my job! This week we’ve done a lot of less-active work! And we’ve had many great experiences! A lot of our less-actives are women who are fairly recent converts. We KNOW the Lord has prepared some of their families to be completed in the gospel so we’re on a hunt… it’s almost like a treasure hunt! We’ve seen “many mighty miracles” along the way. This HAS to be the Lord’s work because He has such an interest in what we’re doing!

Our investigator situation is about the same-hard to get a hold of. grrr. But our Ghanaians are doing well! And I love them SO much! Kate is doing great! She is the best missionary in the ward. I love spending time at her home! She was telling us the other day how much the gospel has blessed her life. Before she joined the church she often felt discouraged and depressed. Now since she’s joined she feels happy all of the time! Although circumstances in her life haven’t changed, she sees the blessings and feels the Lord watching over her. So she said whenever she talks to friends who are sad she tells them, “come with me to church.” I love her! Kate and Suzzy (our investigator) and Anna (Kate’s daughter) taught us our names in Twi (sounds like sh-w-ee). Since I was born on a Thursday mine is Yaa. ha ha. It’s easy. Poor Sister Thacker was born on a Sunday so she is Akosua. Girl is omba so if you say “omba yaa” I’m “Thursday girl.” Sweet huh!

We watched the movie “Pioneers of Africa” with Martin and Suzzy. It’s all about the church in Ghana and Nigeria. It’s incredible! Mom you should order it and watch it with the family. Sister Thacker and I walked away feeling inspired to do better missionary work! The movie was great for Martin because it answered a lot of his questions about the Church in Ghana.

Oh! And we had interviews this week! I’m pretty sure this is the best mission ever! And President and Sister Robbins are the best! What a tender mercy!

Lots of tender mercies! We had another tender mercy this week. We finally found 3 new investigators! It’s amazing how missionary work is really just an act of faith. You tell Heavenly Father what your goal is and then you work work work. In His mercy he’ll let us witness miracles! These three are a grandmother, granddaughter and her friend. The grandmother had the missionaries 25 years ago! And she remembers a lot of what they taught. We had a wonderful discussion about living with Heavenly Father before we came to this Earth. The girls are both 14, but they sat and talked about it with us and one of the girls told us she had a “weird feeling.” We asked if it was a good weird feeling. She said yes. We told her that was the Spirit telling her that what we were talking about was true and Heavenly Father wanted her to know that. These two 14 yr old girls were the ones that asked US if we could come back! (I love it when that happens!) The church is true.

I wish I could tell you about EVERYTHING that is going on. It makes my heart swell with gratitude! This gospel brings so many blessings into our lives. If we just do what the Lord asks we are blessed BEYOND measure! I’ll try and tell you more next week!

I love you lots! lots and lots!
Sister Painter