Happy Independence Day!!

Well Hay there. :)

July 6, 2015

Hello Family!

Happy 4th of July! Hope it was a good one. It sounds like you are all having fun at the family reunions! I'm sad to not be seeing all you Petrie's, but this week I realized just how grateful I am to be a missionary, and especially to be in Centralia. The missionary work here is amazing!
This week was fantastic...I just kept realizing how much I love each of the people we're teaching! Like S. She is amazing. She's the P.'s daughter I told you about! She has two of the most beautiful children I've ever seen. She's getting baptized the 8th of August, and we are SO excited. Before our lesson with her this week, we prayed that we would really be able to help her, like really help her feel the spirit and Heavenly Father's love for her. Our prayer was answered the minute we walked in the door. We could tell she'd had a really bad day, just with some family issues she is struggling with. She opened up to us, cried it out, and we listened and loved her. We decided to all go out for ice cream for the lesson, and it was amazing! We really felt like friends, not just missionaries teaching another lesson. The spirit was so strong as we testified of how the Savior has helped us through everything. By the end we were all laughs and smiles, and the spirit of love was strong! Those moments mean everything to me.

We really had to use our faith this week...to find those prepared for the gospel! Do you want to hear a cool story?? We have a transfer goal to keep the amount of people we're teaching at least at 20 when we report our numbers every Sunday night. We started the week at about 23 but when we got to Thursday, we had had to stop teaching almost half of them. Friday morning we had 13 investigators. We prayed and prayed, asking the Lord to help us achieve our goal and find the people he wanted us to teach. We had about an hour and a half Friday morning of time with no lessons, so we just started walking outside our apartment. We talked to everyone we met, said prayers with strangers, passed out Book of Mormons, set return appointments and came back after an hour and a half with 6 new investigators. I have never had something like that happen before! We just thanked Heavenly Father, over and over for blessing us and consecrating our efforts. The second half of the story happened on Sunday night. It was 8pm, and we realized we still needed another new investigator to make our goal. We changed our plans, said a prayer, and went to contact Samantha, a former investigator. On the way there, Sister Schow (she is AWESOME) said, "there are two ladies on that porch over there." I said, "Do we need to stop?" She said 'YES!" and we pulled over. We talked to three awesome ladies, and one of them was completely interested, and became our new investigator!. My favorite part of this story is that we weren't just working with a bunch of numbers. Each one of the 7 was a child of our Heavenly Father who now has the opportunity to learn truth and change their lives. They are 7 wonderful souls that we probably never would have met if we hadn't made that goal. I love all of them!

Did I ever tell you about B. and D. D.? Their story is amazing. A long time ago, B. had his records removed from the church and completely turned away from the church. His life went a little crazy for about 10 years, but one day, they found a note from the sisters on their door, and B. realized how much he needed the gospel. He called the church, and Bishop sent me and Sister Brimley over to their house. We've been teaching him ever since, and yesterday, he was finally re-baptized into the church! The service was amazing. His testimony was so heartfelt, it strengthened MY testimony that the gospel is the only way to happiness. Here's a picture of us!

B. and D. after the baptism :)

The fourth of july was awesome :) :) We went to a carnival in centralia and got to watch fireworks with members that night! It was a fun day. Here's a sparkler picture!

Sparklers!

I love you all, and I love these people we're teaching! Have a fantastic week.

Sister Petrie

These are my favorite little girls in the whole world! (member family)