Hey yall,

I sincerely hope that you are all much warmer than me today!!! We had a bit of an adventure even making it to the library today to come email all of you wonderful people. I took some videos of us trying to open our car doors.....they were frozen shut.....like in a super solid way, I was afraid I was going to break the handle trying to open up the door.......fun times eh???

But on to the meat of the email: This week has been solid gold!!! I have had such a good week it has been great!! The Lord has truly blessed me and Sister Anderson and we have just been so amazed at what He has done for us. I am going to paste in my cliff notes version and then I'm going to pick and choose what I give you the full deets on because I am feeling mighty lazy today! haha

This past week has been absolutely phenomenal for Sister Anderson and I. We have truly seen that this is the Lords work and we are merely His instruments. We have been able to meet with Jon three times this week and he is amazing. His grasp of the scriptures is really good, and it is especially cool to see, because this is the first time he has ever read any scriptures. He really wants to know and that is amazing to see someone with such a desire to know truth.
I absolutely loved the chance we had to read the Fourth Missionary and to go through our Patriachal Blessings. It taught me a lot and I feel like it is truly going to change the way I approach the rest of my mission. I am so grateful to be here in the Englewood Ward, but more especially to be serving in Vandalia. I know that this is a mission of miracles because the start of this new year truly has been one for me.
There truly has been so much that has happened for us this week and I don't want to take too much more of your time, but I just want to tell you one last story. We have an investigator named Mike that we have been talking to at his door since Thanksgiving. We were able to set up a legitimate appointment with him and get a member out with us. We had a really great weekly planning session this week and we really felt like we needed to invite Mike to be baptized on a specific date. So after we taught him the Plan of Salvation Sister Anderson invited Mike to be baptized. He didn't really say yes, but he was excited and at the end of the lesson when he said the prayer he told the Lord that we had set a goal for a day to be baptized. It was so exciting!!! I can't believe the joy that comes with helping people truly progress toward the Lord, it is such a privilege to me to be a part of this work.

Alright so I just have to tell you all about Jon because he is AMAZING!!!!!!! I love him. We had a church tour with him on Tuesday and when we text him to confirm it he backed out of the tour, we were terrified that he was dropping us, but nope he just really didn't feel comfortable going to the church, so we were able to go to his apartment and teach him there. He is cool. I wish you could all meet my new bestie....I don't think he knows that I count him as one of my besties, but thats besides the point. We had a good lesson with him and were able to answer some of his questions, encouraged him to keep reading and set up a return appointment for Friday. Sister Dotson was kind enough to come out with us, and she was able to bear testimony to him and answer one of his questions that Sister Anderson and I really didn't know too much about....and then Jon gave us some random facts about the elite runners in Kenya and what makes them so good.....basically they have a very, very, very high tolerance for pain. Anyways we went back on Sunday because why not keep going back to someone who welcomes you to come and is genuinely happy to see you?!? I never turn down such awesome experiences thats for sure. We were able to give him a Bible so he can look things up on his own....maybe it will help him. He really is one of the coolest people I have met in Ohio. He is surely in my top ten, so it is so fun to be able to visit him. I told him to watch the Joseph Smith movie on mormon.org and he liked it this was his quote about it: "It was a very touching movie" haha I love him......When he texts us randomly it is my favorite.

Alright I feel like I should probably move on to other things as well, I could probably write you a whole novel on Jon and still have more to say :)

We finally were able to see Derek on Saturday!!! That was an accomplishment. We have been trying to see him for eons, and it just never has worked. He is so special to both of us, so it is so disapointing when it doesn't work out for us to go see him. He told us that even if he doesn't respond back to our texts he loves hearing from us everyday. Haha I told him good because we were going to text him everyday regardless. But we were able to give him the Atonement book and we are hoping that he lets it really work on him and help him through his trials right now. I still can't believe how much Satan works on him, it really just affirms how spirtual he is to me, because if he wasn't destined to do such amazing things, Satan wouldn't work on him so hard.

Church was good, I feel like the majority of the ward decided not to chance it, so it was sorta empty, but for those of us that were there it was grand.

I love you guys.....ohhhh and I just wanted to tell you this one more random thing. So most of the people that Sister Anderson and I are working with are single guys so we have hereby decided that we need to be made a trio so we can just go and visit them and not worry about freezing since we can't go inside, and even better be able to take guys out with us so that they can build relationships with our awesome investigators. But I've decided to start praying for it!!! Haha I know it really comes down to the Lord but I figure I can give Him my opinion on the matter :)

Love you soo much! Stay warm and have a fabulous week!!

Love,

Sister Julie Ann! aka Sister Christiansen