Dear Family and Friends,

We had an amazing week! I hope I can remember all the highlights. It sounds like everything at home and with everyone is going well. I am excited for y'all. Keep encouraging Casie. This is such a great opportunity to be able to have the lessons with her at our house.

So, Stake Conference was really good and two of our investigators and our recent convert came. It was good. Bishop Edgely spoke directly to the youth, recent converts, investigators, and less-active members about strengthening their testimonies. It was also really good for the unbaptized members of the branch we have. Pretty much everyone in the branch came, so that was good.

Zone Conference was really good, too! We had an amazing opportunity as we talked about prayer from Elder Bednar's talk in Conference and then we all joined in prayer for our areas. It was very spiritual. The whole meeting was perfect for where our Zone is at right now. There is so much happening missionary work-wise. At the last Zone Conference President Summerhays told me who my new companion would be, but it isn't going to be her anymore. I'm not sure at all who it will be. I guess I'll find out next week.

We had a miraculous Saturday last week. Most of this all happened Saturday as we tried to apply the Zone Conference training from Friday. As we went out, we spent most of the day tracting. I will be the first to admit, it is not my favorite finding method. I did not let that deter us. I know we had done our part and had prayed for the Lord to consecrate the work we did. Well, we only got one person to who wanted us to come back. We caught her at a very inconvenient time, so we didn't even get to really teach her anything. She just said we should come back next week. I wasn't going to get discouraged though. That afternoon we went to visit a les-active member, but he wasn't home so we tracted in his apartments. That is where it all began. We talked to two ladies who didn't have time to listen to us then, but we could come back and talk to them. Then we met Shawanda. We taught her a basic lesson one and about how we have a prophet and the restored gospel and how it can help her be happier in her life. She said that we could come back next Saturday. Then we went to try and get into a referral's home, but she wasn't home. We tracted her neighborhood and met Caroline. She, too, was busy, but we taught her and she said we could come back next Saturday as well. We continued on our tracting efforts. In that neighborhood, there was a friend of Sister McDaniel who had taken the lessons before but becuase of pressure from her family, she stopped. We decided we would just tract around her neighboorhood until we found her. On our way we met Dorothy. We finally found Lola, Sister McDaniel's friend, and taught her. She was excited to see us and wanted us to come back. She just didn't know right then what time would be best. As we continued tracting we met Reginald who also wanted us to come back.

Saturday night we met with Donnie. We even got Melissa to come out for the lesson. Towards the end of the lesson Donnie began telling us that after work he was going to walk home becuase he was feeling lazy and knew that once he got home he wouldn't want to exercise or go back to pick Melissa up from work. So he walked home. About 15 minutes later someone picked him up. It was his brother, Charles's neighbor. As she was dropping him off, she told him that she wanted things to be more stable in her home. She has a lot of people come and go, and it didn't bring the best attitude into her home. She also wanted her children to learn about Jesus. Donnie said he thought it would be alright for us to just stop by, but he wasn't sure. We planned to go see her on Sunday if any of our appointments cancelled, and sure enough, one did. We went to see Lisa and when we got there she greeted us warmly. We had met her at WInn-Dixie a couple of weeks earlier! We went in and got to know her and there were two other men there. They both were lkiving there for the time. As we started talking to one, he asked about if we went to Stake Conference and he talked as if he was very familiar with the Church. Sure enough, he was a less-active member who is going through a divorce with his wife right now. So, we taught Lisa and TJ (the other non-member) and are going back next Friday. She told us she wanted to be part of the true Church and she hung on every single word that we said. She was thrilled to get a copy of the Book of Mormon. I'm excited for it. And, it was a referral from Donnie! That is probably one of the highlights of my mission!

Things are going very well. Sister Mickelson and Sister Osburn are going home next week. I will still be here in Andalusia :) I'm happy for that. It is fine for President Pleshek to use part of my letter. That is kind of intimidating to know that he will be quoting me in training meetings. During some extra time that we had this week, I was looking through my missionary training packet. There are some talks included about involving members in doing missionary work. I realized that one of the reasons why I needed to come on a mission was so that I learned that missionary work really is a responsibility of members. I guess being at BYU where everyone I knew was a member kind of made me forget that. When I get home I will try to do better at being a member missionary.

Well, I love you all! I hope you all have a good week. Isn't this the week that you are going to see Afton? Take lots of pictures for me.

Love, Joanna