January 18-Jacksonville, North Carolina

Hey y'all!! I hope everything has been going well for everyone!! This week has been a pretty good week.

Monday, at our Zone Activity, we played volleyball and dodge ball. Yeah dodge ball was scary because number one we played with the rubber kick balls and number two, the Elders would throw them so hard!! I ended up sitting out for that one. Volleyball was a lot of fun though!! That night, we ate dinner with Sister Diaz who is a recent convert. I love going to her house and hearing her stories about conversion and missionary work! That night we stopped by Joyce's and read a little bit out of the Book of Mormon which was a lot of fun.

Tuesday, we stopped by a couple of headquarters referrals. One of them invited us into her house, let us teach her the Restoration and invited us to come back next week! I can't wait to see how that goes! That night, we had dinner with Sister Parker and her husband who is not a member. Her husband though was so funny!! He is a 6 year old child in a 60 year old man's body! He has a remote control helicopter and tinker toys sitting in their living room! That night, we went to an appointment with the Brooks family. We ended up watching the Restoration DVD with them again because their kids were not there during our last visit. It was great though because they all found things that they really liked or hadn't noticed the first time we met with them. They are making a lot of progress!!

Wednesday, we had Zone training in the morning. At zone training, we had several really good instructions. My favorite though was probably the last one because he talked about the motivators of missionary work, love being the motivator that should be pushing us to be better missionaries every single day. That night, we had dinner with a member family in our ward, the Brown's. Their son was getting baptized this week so they wanted us to come and teach him a little bit about baptism! After dinner, we met with Robert. We had a really good visit with him, but learned that he has not developed a testimony of the Book of Mormon yet. So we are going to be starting pretty much at the beginning with him now.

Thursday was weekly planning which means we didn't do much but plan until after dinner. Sister Mitchell came out with us that night to go to an appointment and stop by some potentials and less actives. When we went to our appointment (which was an appointment we made with them after knocking on their door), they completely ignored us at the door and their son kept looking out the window and yelling go away...so that was a lot of fun.

Friday, we had first transfer meeting in Fayetteville which is about 2 to 3 hours away! (We had to wake up really early!) At firs transfer meeting, President James gave us an exceptional instruction on the Book of Mormon. The assistants gave also gave an amazing instruction on the Restoration and how to tie every part of the lesson to baptism. By doing so, it makes it a lot easier to invite the investigator to be baptized and it also makes them expect the invitation to be made. That night, we stopped by one of our potentials that we met my first night here. She let us in and we were able to teach the Restoration using the instructions we were given at our meeting! I was able to invite her to be baptized! However, she did say that she didn't know if she could accept yet but that she did want to continue to learn!! After that, we did a lot of tracting....yay!

Saturday was a pretty slow day. We had a lesson with a recent convert who is less active but is trying really hard to come back because she wants to go to the temple! After that, we did a lot more tracting. For dinner, we ate with the Valentine family! I had so much fun there! Brother Valentine reminded me of uncle Michael!! That night we just made a lot of stop-byes with Brooke.

Sunday, we had a multi-stake broadcast from Salt Lake City! We got to hear from L. Whitney Clayton, Linda S. Reeves, Elder Ronald A. Rasband, and Elder Robert D. Hales. It was a great meeting! It was really neat to hear Elder Ronald A. Rasband speak as an apostle. Elder Robert D. Hales is getting so old...which is really quite sad. Elder Hales though gave a really great talk and also expressed to the members how important member missionary work is! I read a story from President Eyring about when he was a missionary in the air force and out of the 40 hour weeks of missionary work he did for two years, he didn't have to knock on a single door because the members kept finding so many investigators for them to teach! That night, we had dinner at Sister Mitchell's with Joyce! It was so much fun! We talked to Joyce about the Book of Mormon to see where she is at with her testimony and she said that she believes it!!

I am so grateful for everyone who has supported me in my decision to serve a mission! I thank Heavenly Father every single time I pray for the opportunity I have to be serving!! I hope everything goes well for everyone this week!

Love,

Sister Paynter

This is my Gryffindor outfit...hahaha (I'm wearing golden yellow, maroon, and black)