02/16/16 - Clinton, North Carolina

Welp, the libraries were all closed yesterday either due to the holiday or the fact that there was a ton of ice everywhere!! But alas I am here to today. It was a good week! Contrary to last week, this one actually went by pretty quickly! Last Monday we went down to the Brooks Brothers outlet in our area and I bought two ties, it was amazing! I also was skinnying some more ties and I found out that one of my ties has six golden bars!! I'm not sure if anyone knows of the "bar system" of ties, but older ties used to have a certain number of bars on them depending on how rare they are. Six is the highest number!!! Anyways, we had Zone Training last week and we talked a lot about how to become better teachers. It was very motivating! We also had interviews with President James and it went just beautifully. He and his wife are amazing people. I am truly blessed to be able to have them!! So Elder Foote and I this past month have been tracting up the wazoo!! We have been working so hard to find investigators and last Wednesday night, we thought we finally had a miracle happen. Elder Foote and I were in the church parking lot trying to find some places on my GPS and a random car pulled up next to us! It was a younger gentleman that got out of the car and asked us if he could talk to someone about the church. We told him that of course he could talk to someone!! We took him inside, showed him around, and began to explain some different things about our church. He seemed really interested!! But as we began to talk more, he told us that he had a "very important favor" for us to help him with. He asked us if we had any money to help him get gas to get home (even though he lived around the block from the church) and it was the worst! Elder Foote gave him a few dollars and we told him that this church offers much more than money can offer (okay we didn't really say that last part, but we should have!) and he left with a big smirk on his face telling us that he would be at church on Sunday. We got back to the apartment that night and I fell on the floor. I just wanted to cry it was so depressing! We had been working so hard and thought we had finally found someone to teach. Oh well, the Lord is looking out for us and sometimes we just need to get cut down in order to grow! We tracted into someone this week that actually said through the door "No one is home!"..... Seriously?... So we went back to the same people that let us in a few weeks ago and gave us the pears, and they let us in again! They fed us some salmon patties and some amazing biscuits! We just sat there for a minute eating while the older lady sat at the table next to us with her face in her hands. We started to talk to her, but she looked up at us with a scowl and said "Don't look at me!" Well, despite our efforts to tell her how great she looked, she got up and went into the other room. We began to talk to the daughter about the message we share a little more and from the other room the lady shouted "Go find someone else to bother!" So I shared a quick testimony and, we left. But on a good note, we visited one of our investigators and she has been reading in the Book of Mormon! Woohoo!! And possibly the best story from last week is that we tracted into a family!! They are very jivin and were really excited about the message we shared with them!! They accepted everything very well and I definitely felt the Spirit teaching that lesson! Oh yeah, we talked to the cashier at Walgreens a few weeks ago and she friended me on Facebook! So hopefully we get the chance to teach her and her husband sometime! So yeah! A very long but also a very short week. Oh, and Happy Belated Valentine's Day everyone!! I love you all!!

Trying to console the insecurities of older ladies,
Elder Shearer