Midwest Missionary: Greetings from Cincy! {8/5/13}

Lovely people!!

How are you?! I want you all to know how much I love you. Seriously. So much. I haven't read your emails yet, so sorry if I don't answer questions and what not, but I figure I'll send out this big one then see what I can get to!
So, apologies for another all over the place letter.

This week has been AMAZING! Sis. Parker and I have been literally seeing miracles every day. Pres. Porter has all the missionaries in our mission (almost 200 right now) pray at 6:30 every morning that we will be able to find the elect. We can see the power in that--wow!! I'm so amazed by the people we are led to and the circumstances that lead us there. Just last night we were visiting a less active family. Their little girls wanted us to visit their friend but we had to be home soon so we were going to leave. Well, we decided just to go over with them for a minute. We found the most amazing lady!! Wow. She recognizes the hand of God in her life and has the strongest testimony of him and his love for her. She is definitely one of the elect. We fell in love with her, she fell in love with us, we're meeting with her this week and she wants to go to church with us!!

Another fun story. Sis Parker and I are both very directionally challenged. Luckily we have a GPS (but only for a few more days, yikes). Anyway, we still end up getting pretty lost sometimes. The other night we were trying to find a former investigating family and ended up driving along this little 2 track road. The gps told us the house was at a power plant and we got stuck on this little hill in the trees without any road at all. We had a good laugh. I'll send you a picture so you can have a good laugh too :) I checked the address again, realized we typed it in wrong, and we found their house!! They only had a minute but we talked with them about the articles of faith and set up a return appointment. They ended up cancelling appointment BUT they asked if they could come to church! Uh, YES!!! So their family of 7 came to church yesterday and LOVED it!! They are such an amazing family. We know that they are going to be baptized! Their 7 year old daughter sat next to me and kept telling me "this is the best church I've ever been to!!" It melted my heart. Every time we would sing she'd say "Well, this is fun!" Oh and she told me my fingers are big (long) and skinny just like I'm big and skinny. Haha. She is so cute! Speaking of investigators at church, between the 3 sets of missionaries in our ward (yes, 3!) we had 17 nonmembers at church!!! WOW. The Lord is blessing us here in Eastgate so so much. It's amazing. It was the perfect day for them to be there too because our investigator (now member!!) Sarah was confirmed and her baby boy was blessed. What a sweet, sweet sacrament it was. Ah, I love it! I wish I could tell you about all of our miracles.

Sarah's baptism was so sweet. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was to have a baptism my first week in the field and I feel like I was not because of the numbers but because of the amazing spirit that was there. Now more than ever I want all of my investigators to have that cleansing of their sins and to see the happiness it can bring them, just as it did Sarah and her family. Her family is a little crazy but I love them. Her mom calls us her babies and her dad calls me Sister German because apparently our last name is German!

Speaking of people I love (trying to tie things together here :) I LOVE the Blackham's, the family I live with. I can't even describe to you how much I love them. I feel like their house is my home and they are my surrogate parents. They do SO much for us and are so sweet and loving and fun. I can talk to Sis Blackham about anything (and I do!) and Bro. Blackham is hilarious and makes treats all the time, so of course I love him :) Right now we're helping them finish their basement for the missionaries. Like I said, they are the sweetest people.

I also love my companion Sister Parker!! I know without a doubt we were put together as companions for a reason. I could not have asked for a better trainer!! She is powerful. I've never met someone who is so intune with the spirit or listens to promptings as well as she does. It's amazing. I have learned so much from her and we work together so well! We both have the same quirky sense of humor and have lots of fun together talking in accents and making up songs.

A couple funny stories quickly.. Yesterday we decided to do a little tracting. We choose a house at random--not the first on the street or anything--and this lady peaks around and tells us she's sorry but she's in her pajamas. So we tell her its okay but we're missionaries. She tells us she knows, she was at church today. We're both so confused!! Then she explains that yep she's in our ward and was at church with us today!! We felt so dumb!!! We totally tracted a member in our ward. Out of all the houses in our area (our area is huge) we happened to knock on a member of our ward's door and didn't even know her--oops! Later, we went to Care Springs-- a nursing home in our area. We visited a few ladies who were so sweet. One told us that she knew God sent us to her and we were her angels! She has been reading the Book of Mormon and wants us to come back and read with her!! Dad, I felt so at home in this nursing home since I practically grew up in them! Here's the funny part of this touching story, we set off the alarm when we were trying to leave! Oops.. Okay, one more. We barely knocked a door and this huge guy opened it as we were knocking and we both jumped back and screamed. It was really embarrassing and he laughed at us. Then he told us a fake name (from an old movie apparently) and we didn't know who it was so we kept calling him Dobey, the fake name. We felt pretty dumb, but luckily we're real good at laughing at ourselves.

So remember the cheesy Mormon movie baptists at our barbecue? The other night we had a Mormons at our Baptist BBQ experience. Some of our investigators invited us to go to a baptist BBQ with them so we did. It was so fun! haha. A lady told me she saw me on the news! :) And we ended up having a really good discussion with this guy about the Book of Mormon. We also met a lady from Russia and one from Hungary and all I could think of (Tayler) was "We're Russian here from Hungary!!" :)

I am so so happy we wrote down my setting apart blessing. I have already seen so many parts of it come about and It's only been a month! The other night we were talking to an investigator who is really struggling with her self confidence and with belief in god and many other things (Dad I want her to go through the SOLF SO BAD! it would be perfect for her.) We have become really good friends with her and were able to just sit and talk about everything. After she told us that she was feeling comfortable with the idea of church (it gave her anxiety attacks before!!). When she prayed she thanked God for sending us to her and for the relaxed way we talked and how comfortable we made her feel-- EXACTLY what I was promised in my Setting apart!!

Love your loving missionary,
xoxo
Sister Rolfe

P.S. I LOVE YOU