**She's Off and Running In Denver**

**So glad to hear that my girl is doing great and getting to work!**

FAMILY,

 

Okay so Im officially in Colorado in my first area. We woke up at 2 A.M. yesterday to be to the travel office at 3:30. My suitcases were both 47 pounds and my carry-on duffel was full of all my shoes. :P IT WAS EPIC. I had to say see ya later to Sister Boone... That was rough. I love her so much.... We both wished each other luck and said we'd email. So then sister Sheurman, Sister Anderson and I headed out on the bus to the airport. We got through security and flew out by 8:10 Im pretty sure. We travelled with six elders and three other sisters, it was such a fun group! The elders helped every single one of us with our suitcases and things. One elder even carried my, previously mentioned, duffel bag of shoes. SO STUDLY! We landed in Colorado and President Toombs and his wife were there to greet us! HOW NICE ARE THEY! I felt right at home as soon as we met them! The AP's are really fun too! The one elder is 6'8" and his comp is 5'8", its a kick. So a bunch of us all had to pile into the mission van, of course we are trying to figure out how we can fit all these elders and sisters in without breaking any mission rules... Story of our lives.It was a hoot. We did a lot of paper work and training sessions once we got to the mission home. Eventually I got to meet with President and he assigned me to the Denver North Stake, serving in the East Lake ward! My companion is Sister Grenfell and she's AWESOME! We are the first sisters in this ward and there are a lot of youth who are so enthusiastic about missionary work and so is the whole ward in general.Oh and Im also driving.... yeah... my comps license expired so I get to drive and we have a brand new ford fusion 2014 model. It had 63 miles on it when we got it.... Im not even technically certified but we didnt really have any other options. Its been an adventure! :) So as soon as we left and helped some elders transport their luggage to their house we got busy. We decided to go get our area book and map and get tracting. So we saw a lady the elders referred to us, her name was Jennifer. She was busy and didnt really wanna meet with us when we showed up so we decided to just start placing some Books of Mormon (president issued a challenge to see how many we could place, how many baptismal invitations we could give, and how many different ways we coud find people to teach.) So we head over to her neighbors house.They have this big american flag in their window, very patriotic right, so I knock on the door and I was like "Hey we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We help others learn of Christ." the lady says "Oh... okay yeah." I said "So do you believe in God?" she says "Yeah, but Im right in the middle of something right now so I can't talk." then I say "Okay, well can I leave this Book of Mormon with you?" I give it to her and she's just like okay whatever. I tell her that it will bless her life and she can know that its true if she prays. So we leave her door and cross the street. Then this big truck comes down the road and parks outside her house, these two big huge latino men get out and walk into the house. We can hear some yelling and this man comes back out, Book of Mormon in hand and just flips nuggets on us. We are standing in the middle of the street and this guy basically says that he never wants us to come back again and that he doesnt want our book and wanted to know where the church was so he could come and do some damage and at this point he's trying to hand us the book back and Sister Grenfell pretty much says no,you keep it, itll bless your life.He got so mad he just throws it on the ground, cusses at us some more, says that he was shot three times in the war and that God doesnt care about him and walks back to his house. So we just stand there is second and try and comprehend what just happened, the man was drunk we think. But we just decided to try a couple more houses, we placed a book of mormon with a really nice family and then tried another house and the lady didnt want to hear anything we had to say, we left her with a mormon.org card and walked back to the car. Safe to say it was probably the worse yet best first tracting experiences ever... It was good in the sense that I rather start at the very bottom and just have it go better from there. I mainly just felt so bad for the man because he has obviously had a really hard life and just doesnt know where he can truly turn for peace. We then got to meet with the bishop, bishop Pitts. He has quite the vision for his ward and our part in it! I LOVE IT! He is like the golden bishop! Its their wards goal to have 24 baptisms by the end of the year, they have implemented this 5.5.5 program which means that each of the adult auxilaries finds 5 people to teach and they work with the missionaries to teach these 15 people. ITS AWESOME. We are also so involved with the youth, we meet with them on wednesdays, thrusdays for a scripture study class, and sundays we teach/ help THEM prepare to teach sunday school lessons. Today we got to meet with the Elders and they gave us a list of 20 plus families who are either less actives, part members, or non-members that we will be teaching.There is so much work that needs to be done here and Im so thankful Sister Grenfell and I get to be the ones who do it. She's a hard worker, I love that and I think these next six weeks will be amazing with her.We also live with a really neat lady! Her name is Sister Klepiz (spelling)....She was so nice and fed us last night and we live in her basement, its so nice! We have our own bathroom and living room down there that we study in. Some elders lived there before us and they said that we really lucked out being able to live with her. I feel really blessed that this will be my first area. Im meeting so many people and learning lots of new things. I was able to do an hour of personal study this morning and my head was still kind of clouded from tracting last night and the whole time I was studying things just became really clear. In one of the talks I have,its called the fourth missionary, it talks about adversity and how we will never be the people the Lord needs us to be if we dont pass through hard times. So I was able to really think about that and read my patriachal blessing and just feel like the Lord has given me these things to handle for a reason, and its my job to figure out what that is. He has also blessed me a lot with this amazing ward and companion. The Lord watches over this work and I know there are people here in the East Lake ward who need us to find them and bring them unto Christ. When we were meeting with the elders and discussing these people we are to teach this thought came into my head clear as day, "You're here to heal these people". So thats my goal, to invite these people to come unto Christ and be healed in every way through his atonement. I know the Lord loves me and is aware of me and all of His children. Hoorah for Isreal!