It's A Trap!!!

**I'm still trying to find my groove with this blog  (sorry Grandmas and Grandpas!!).**


AUGUST 24

Helloooooo family!! First of all, I love y'all so much! I feel the love and support being sent my way each and every day and it makes all the difference in the world. (:

So this week was crazy and hilarious and I have plenty of good stories to share. 

First, Sister Clarke and I walked straight into a trap this week and it was awesome.  Last week we were tracting and we did our survey with this man when his wife came out and was like, "Oh, we have to go right now, but do you like, make appointments so you can come back? We would love to have you come back soon!" and she invited us into her house for a minute and gave us water bottles and set a return appointment and then sent us on our way!  Sister Clarke and I were kinda like.. what the heck?  It seriously seemed too good to be true.  No one ever invites us in or gives us water or ASKS for us to come back.  WELL turns out it WAS too good to be true!  We show up later in the week for our appointment and the lady answers and she's super nice and her mom is there and they set out snacks for us and everything.  Like.. you don't understand how weird that is. They remembered the appointment AND set out snacks AND she invited her mom AND she read the pamphlet we left with her???  Wayyyyy too good to be true. So, we go upstairs and sit down and start giving the lesson and they're listening and its great and Sister Clarke and I are just in awe, and thennn we discovered we were in a trap.  The mom starts asking all these crazy Bible questions and trying to put us down and is literally telling us that we are wrong and that Joseph Smith didn't see God and Jesus, but that it was the devil in disguise and all this crazy stuff.  And we're just like listening to her and trying not to get super involved cuz contention is of the devil and whatnot, and then she was trying to tell us that our faith isnt in God, but its in the church, and blah blah blah... and thennnnn hahaha it was so funny.... then, since we say our faith is in God, she challenged us to "file for excommunication" to see if God would still love us. hahahahahah she was being dead serious and Sister Clarke and I just looked at each other and smiled and shook our heads and she kept going on about how she wanted us to come over twice a week so she could read all this stuff from the Bible that proves us wrong and we just stopped her and stood up and we were like, "Sorry, but thats not how we do missionary work." and we bore testimony of what we knew and then left. She walked us out the door saying to think about what we said concerning "filing for excommunication" and we just couldnt help but laugh. So we walked into a Bible bashing trap and it was weird and awesome, cuz it made me realize how thankful I am to have the knowledge that I have, and that I know what I know because I've prayed and received my own answers. The gospel is awesome and we shouldnt forget it!! 

Then, later in the week we were sooooo close to being saved by a couple of Baptist dudes! I went on exchanges again this week and when we were making lunch two Baptist guys knocked on our door.(I guess other people are feeling intimidated by our awesome missionaries going out and sharing what we believe and they feel like they need to send their own people out hehe) They started telling us that we're all sinners and that we have to repent, and it was really funny because we had something gospel related to counter everything they said and we totally stumped him and he got really frustrated and was going to leave, but wanted to say a prayer with us before he left, so of course we agreed. He starts praying to Jesus and my comp and then he tried to get us to repeat some stuff to get us to "confess to Jesus that we are his and that we are sinners", but we didnt think that was okay so we kindly told him that we don't pray to Jesus and he was disgusted. He was trying to get us to repeat something that apparently would have saved us right there on the spot. So we were really close! hahaha it was just an interesting experience. 

Thennnn, that same day, we had a really funny experience. We were trying to contact some guy, but discovered he moved so we just decided to knock some doors in the area. The first one that answered was a lady that was less than modestly dressed.. hahahaha she was in her bathing suit (if you could even call it that) and she came out and tanned/washed her car/had her husband come out and take pictures of her with her cars while we talked to her for a whole entire hour. We taught her a really great lesson and changed her whole perspective on the LDS church! She wasnt interested in having us come back, but even just being able to change the way she sees Mormons was a big success! The people here are seriously so interesting. Oh, and did I mention that she was 60!!!!!!!, had 5 children, and 25 grandchildren? hahahahaha she and her husband are body builders at ages 60 and 65. Theyre definitely rocking their old age. It was hilarious. 

This week has just been really great! I seriously love being a missionary so much. I wouldnt trade the experiences I have on a daily basis for anything!  I've definitely learned that perspective is a massively important thing in life! We can look at all the not so good things that happen in life and decide that life is the worst and that everything is hard and that we dont wanna do anything, orrrrrr we can decide to put a smile on our faces and look for the good in everything (no matter how bad the situation) and be happier! I love life and I love being a missionary and I love the gospel!

AUGUST 31

Helloooooo, everybody! This week has been quite the week! Definitely interesting. The days all kind of blur together, but I cant believe how fast its all already starting to go! Time is weird. 

So my very favorite part of this week was going on exchanges with Sister Collins, my MTC companion!! She is in my district so I see her every week at district meetings, but it was so fun to spend the whole day with her! Its pretty cool to think that we started out just a little while ago as little baby missionaries and now we're out here in the real world teaching real people and we actually kinda know what we're doing! It was actually such a good day. We had appointments the whole entire day and we set three people on date to be baptized! Thats a lot of people for one day! We were in her area, so I dont get to see those people again, but it was still exciting! We see miracles every single day out here! 

As far as work in our area, it's been a bit slow, but good anyway!  A few days ago Sister Clarke and I were just walking down a kind of sketchy street just talking to all the people we came across and we started talking to these two kids sitting on their porch smoking. They were 14 and 17. We did our survey with them and then started teaching them about the Restoration. One of our questions in the survey we do is "Would you like to be happier that you are at this point in your life right now? What is one thing that could make you happier?" and when we asked them, they both said they'd be happier if they could get out of all the trouble they were in and change their lifestyles. So we taught them and they were really into it and asking all these questions. We wanted to keep teaching them, but they live out of our area so we had to give them to some other elders as a referral. Well, yesterday we drove back by the house they were at... and they were being arrested............ Like, there were 5 cop cars and it was all crazy and nothing good was going on in their house.. It was definitely interesting. That just gives yall a little taste of what our area is like. That kind of thing is not all too uncommon to come across here. Its definitely nothing like home, but I love it. Its so different and the people are so interesting. Anywho, hopefully the lesson we taught them sticks with them. Maybe somewhere down the road they'll pull out the pamphlets we gave them and think about it. Planting seeds is such an important thing to do! 

We have two investigators that are actually progressing, which is great! The first is a little 9 year old girl named Patience. Her mom is a less-active and we were trying to get her to come back to church, but ended up teaching her daughter instead. She's super cute and wants to be baptized and she comes to church with her big sister every week, but she gets super bored and tries to stay home on Sundays. We hope to have her baptized by the end of the month, but we'll see how things play out! Our other one is this super nice lady we met right when I got here named Candi. We actually found her because we were lost and on the totally wrong street looking for a house that didnt even exist. She was just getting out of her car and so we talked to her and it turns out she had a great aunt that was LDS and she loveddddd her great aunt. She invited us to come back and we've taught her two lessons so far. We invited her to be baptized, but she has a "calling" in her own church and she feels obligated to go there. But we're working on it and shes reading the Book of Mormon and shes an incredible lady! We have a lot of hope for her!

Anyway, I love yall and I hope everything is going well! Missions are awesome and I'm so happy to be a part of this great work. (:

Love,

Sister Harshaw