Hello Family,

How is everyone doing today? It’s a lovely day here in Independence. Fall is a nice time of year to be in the Midwest. It’s the only nice time of year to be in the Midwest. The leaves are changing and I’ve taken a lot of nonmember tours just visiting town, seeing the sites.

We went to visit a less-active lady in the ward about to have a baby to see how she was doing. She was gone, but her dad was there and he talked to us. He used to be in the bishopric of one of the wards, but had been offended years ago. Every time I’ve seen him, he kind of just brushed us off. Last time were there he played solitaire in the corner while we taught and took off his hat when we prayed, but didn’t participate at all. But yesterday he opened the door and told us his life story. It was pretty amazing. He’s the only Hispanic I’ve heard of that was given the priesthood, before it was given to everyone else. He’s from kind of a unique tribe. He’s seen a lot of miracles. And he did have good reason to be offended about what happened to him, but he’s still so mad about it. And it was years and years ago. He gave us some old visitor center postcards from 1982.

I told him we missed him. Sister Williams talked about her dad feeling the same way some time ago and how that affected her family. I mentioned Martin Harris telling the missionaries that went to go see him, “I didn’t leave the church, the church left me.” And how he didn’t rejoin till he was elderly. The man said he used to mow the cemetery where OliverCowdery is buried. He was claiming he’ll be active when he goes back to the Dominican Republic, but it’s already almost too late. All his kids have gone less active. The younger ones are living with people. It’s sad. And I feel so annoyed every time I see his wife go to church alone. I read a scripture in Ezekiel yesterday. “Again, when a man doth turn from his righteousness and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumblingblock before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand” (3:20). And I thought about that conversation, wondering what it’s going to take for him to remember. He told us he’d just lost his job, and I think that might have been why he felt ready to really talk to us for the first time. I think part of what makes missions such a great learning experience as well as reading the scriptures, is that there are many examples of what NOT to do. #1, Apostasy=Waste of Time.

We also taught two other families this week that are so cute and know they need to go to church, but just don’t . They know it doesn’t make sense and they have good desires. They’ve been to the temple. They know exactly why they should go. They just don’t understand anymore. People just forget what the Spirit feels like. It’s the craziest thing. So we do our best to love them and bring the Spirit to them, but they’ll really feel it again when they start doing something. A lady who hasn’t come t ochurch in forever and a day who used to be a Relief Society president came to church last Sunday…sooo good. We’ve taught her family several times and the Bishopric has visited them, even though they live far out of the boundaries. That was really exciting.

Yesterday, everything sort of fell through and we had a sister in the stake Relief Society, Sis Jeffrey, as our teamup. She’s another one of those people I just want to be more like. She’s African American with her own style of doing things, but very classy and super funny. But I’m not sure if I could sure survive what she’s gone through: Fire, Divorce, Cancer, Poverty, stillborns, and big callings during some of these things. When a less-active member we went to see wasn’t home, we walked across the street to talk to some youth hanging on the playground. It was a Wednesday afternoon and these young men, looked pretty tough, but she wanted to know why they weren’t in school. And she told them a story about what having baggy pants Really means and gave them all the ‘mom look’. After the mini-thugs were traumatized by our beautiful teamup in her relief society presidency clothes, we played good cop and told them where they could find answers to their life questions and handed the mormon.org cards. It was a very memorable experience. Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Beautiful young people are a chance of nature. Beautiful old people are a work of art.”

Love you all, Hermana Deb