Week 52 - Passing-Along Miracles!

Hello there!

Week FIFTY-TWO!!! Y'all!! I hit my 1 year mark this week! I genuinely cannot believe it, but here we are nonetheless! What a crazy year it has been. Frankly, it's been a crazy year for all of us, but going through everything we have while on a mission, which is crazy in and of itself? Geewiz, there's a head-spinner for you. Honestly, if you know ANY missionaries serving right now, you should just plan on having them checked out by a therapist immediately upon returning hahaha. Naturally I'm kidding and grossly exaggerating, but it truly has been a ride. Each of you know varying amounts of my mission's highs and lows, but there have been a lot of them. There are moments that have made me want to throw in the towel and get on the next flight to Utah, and others that have made me wish I could do this for another 18 months. Y'know, sometimes I have both kinds of moments in one day! Thankfully the good always outweighs the bad, especially because God has promised to turn all things to our gain, so even if there ARE bad times, they are going to turn into good times. Isn't God so good?

Let's dive right into some of those amazing good times, shall we? :) So, I'm not even going to try to hide it: I am SO proud of the double-pun of my subject line. Pun one is that I have been passing off miracles to other missionaries all week, but Sister Kropf and I also experienced a miracle ourselves that came from a pass-along card! Pretty clever, huh? 

So, passing off miracles.

President Howell has been his characteristically insane self and has upgraded my assignment as referral manager. Now in addition to making sure all referrals our mission receives gets contacted by the missionaries assigned to them, but I'm to go through and search for social media profiles of EVERY referral we've received in the past 3 years that was marked as "unable to contact," and then I'm supposed to message each and every one of them. Just for some perspective and stats, that's 783 profiles to search for; I've found 90 of the 164 I've searched for so far and have messaged a meager 40-something. OOF. The incredible thing though is that two have responded saying they're still interested in learning more, so I got to talk with them and set up appointments then call the assigned missionaries and say, "Hey, I found you a new person for you to teach tomorrow." Man, I can't even imagine how cool that must be for the receiving missionaries to hear! They aren't people for my area, but it is still productive missionary work, so I'll take it! 

Now, the pass-along card miracle.

So 6 weeks ago we met this guy in the lobby of the apartment complex we teach Lexi in and I struck up a conversation like a good little missionary. His name was Brian, and his dream is to become a professional ventriloquist. I mean, why not? Anyway, I asked him if he would like to learn more about Christ and do a bible study or something sometime and he politely declined. Well, if you've ever been a missionary before you know that when that happens you simply hand off a pass-along card with your contact info and ask for referrals. That was done, and we honestly didn't think anything of it, because who the heck ever reaches out from a pass-along card? No one, by the way. No one. UNTIL TUESDAY JANUARY 5, 2021. It's 9:32pm, and we get a call from a number we didn't recognize. We answered, and he's all, "Hey, it's Brian!" we had no idea who this was still because we had forgotten about him (yikes). He reminded us, and we were SHOOK!!! He said that he was running low on faith and wanted to strengthen his relationship with God and wanted us to come over and meet with him and his wife!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We taught the whole restoration, he loved the Book of Mormon and everything else, and is SO prepared. 10/10 solid first lesson. Basically Brian and Candace are the Ted and Angela of Bismarck. I love them so much already. 

Lexi is doing good, but PLEASE pray for her if you remember to. She needs some help right now. She believes what we tell her.... but then has no desire to change. Well, scratch that, she does, but she doesn't want to do any of the things necessary to change. Grr. Honestly though, her and her friend Erica are my best friends in Bismarck. I could hang out with them all day, their quirks and all. In fact, we do hang out with them all the time. We teach them every day, and this morning we went over and watched veggie tales with them! It was amazing. Love them. 

I don't think there's much else to tell about! At least, not that I can think of or want to write about. 

Love you all! Sorry this is getting to you so late.

Sister Balls