LITTLE TEXAN ESKIMO: Just livin' life as a Sitkan!

Hello friends and family!

I've survived another week without getting eaten by a bear. :)

I hope you're all relieved! I know I am. I've never been so paranoid in my life walking down the street!

And while we're talking about bears...I FED ONE THIS WEEK! Through a very strong metal gate. Its breath was on my hand. Yeah...SCARY. But awesome.

Serving a mission is seriously the coolest thing ever.

So this week was pretty good. Sister Hewitt and I still love each other. :) And I still just love the people here so much! My heart could explode! We met with Toby again last Wednesday and gave him a Book of Mormon. Then he came to church yesterday and we asked him how his reading has been going. He said he is almost done with 2 Nephi!!!! Can you believe it?! In only four days! He wants to be baptized, he told us. He just needs us to give him a date! We are meeting with him sometime this week to give him a date to be baptized. So excited!

Our other investigator Kristina is slooowly warming up. She will take a little longer, but is so willing to discuss the gospel with us. She has alot of the same beliefs and seems very intrigued by our church. :) She is reading the book of Mormon slowly and we can definitely feel the spirit so strong in our lessons. She is just the sweetest lady in the world, too. Last week when we were doing emails, she left us some warm banana bread on our car with a little note that said "thanks for the fellowship!" SO sweet! We both died.

The weather has actually been reeeeally nice. It's been in the 60's all week...sunny most days. Today is a bit rainy and chilly, but even that isn't too bad. Nothing I haven't endured in Texas. :) I mean, can't complain...I live on a lush island, the beauty that surrounds me every day in breath taking. The rain is the least of my worries.

I want to share a really sweet experience we had recently. Last Wednesday Sister Hewitt and I had a really long day just packed full of seeing so many people. We were DRAINED by the end of the night. Well we got out of our last lesson and it was 8:30 at night...we were both just so ready to go home but we knew if we wanted to be obedient, we needed to stay out until 9. We had this lady we had written in our planner to see at 8:30, but we didn't think she would be home. The missionaries had been trying to knock on her door for months and were never able to make contact because her schedule is so busy. And if she was home, we doubted she would want to see two missionaries sitting on her front porch at 8:30 pm after a long day of work. We sat in her drive way for a few minutes trying to decide if we even wanted to go knock. Finally we just decided we better just go try so that we could say that we did it. Well. We knocked on her door...and she was home. She was so excited to see us. She invited us in and told us about her life. Her husband passed away a few years ago and she works every day from 6 am to sometimes as late as 10 pm. She is completely alone... It brought tears to my eyes. We were able to share a little uplifting message about the love of God. She was so appreciative. She gave us the biggest hug when we left and thanked us. I felt the love of God stronger than ever. I realized that Sister Brown, who is completely alone in her life, who works so hard to receive so little, who is not able to even come to church because she has to support herself, is loved SO deeply and known SO well by a watchful Father in Heaven. He loves her with an infinite love.

No one is really alone in this life. We are all looked at with such incredible love by a our Father. We are CHILDREN of a king. Just think about how much worth we have. We are worthy of so much, we have SO much divine potential but Satan convinces us otherwise. We can't let Satan win. We are fighting a battle we agreed to fight before we even came here. Don't give in. We. are. worthy.

I love you all so much. I pray for you all every night!!! Have a wonderful week!

Sister Hallmark