November 28 - Lumberton, North Carolina

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday!! Sister Smith and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving! This week has been a slower week for us, but we have still been able to accomplish a lot of great work!!

Tuesday, we got a call from the mission housing coordinator informing us that we could begin moving into our new apartment that day!! So, we started packing up all of our stuff and began taking loads of stuff over to our new apartment. Our new apartment is really nice!!!! Hopefully we will be able to enjoy it more once we get everything organized and cleaned! It has also really been nice not having to bike in the cold!!!

By the way our new address is: 3705 A Hillcrest Drive Lumberton, NC 38358

On Thanksgiving, we had a lot of fun!! In the morning, we went over to one of the Burmese's home and had one of their traditional Burmese dishes. It wasn't terrible, it just tasted like soggy ramen noodles. In the afternoon, we went over to the Hutchinson's and had turkey, potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, rolls, and pie!!!! It was a lot of fun!! Our investigator Katie came over for dessert which was a lot of fun!! In the evening, we helped two of the Burmese Young Women apply to BYU and BYU-I. Our Bishop asked us to help them out and hopefully all will go well for them!!!

Sunday, we had two investigators come to church. It was really great! We did lose one of our most solid investigators this week which was really hard. She still really loved learning, but she is really overwhelmed with moving and so forth. Hopefully, in the future when things calm down, she will be able to have time for the missionaries again. Even though it's hard losing a great investigator, I remind myself that the Lord is just testing us and that He has something even greater planned out for us. Even though she won't be getting baptized anymore, we still have 7 baptismal dates that are on track for December and January!! Most of them are really great and show very strong interest in continuing to learn more!

The other night, we had a really powerful lesson with one of the families that we are working with. As we started the lesson, the husband, James, told us that we were going to have a hard time getting them to convert because they have both been raised in the churches they are in and have very strong ties to those churches. For our lesson, we read from the Book of Mormon with them since they hadn't started to read it yet. As we read through the introduction, James asked us many questions about Joseph Smith and little things that weren't of great importance. We both felt uncomfortable and weren't really sure where the lesson would end up going, but we answered his questions as best as we could and continued reading. As we began to read 1 Nephi Chapter 1, Sister Smith and I felt a change in the spirit in the room and so did James and Tasha. We only read one chapter, but that was enough. Sister Smith did a really great job at a explaining to them that as we began to read in The Book of Mormon, the feeling in the room changed and that was in fact the Holy Ghost testifying to all of us that what we were reading was true. This experience reminded me this week of the power of The Book of Mormon. The best way I can explain it is from the prophet Joseph Smith's words, "I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” The Book of Mormon is so powerful! It has the power to convert anyone to Jesus Christ. I truly know that the Book of Mormon brings us closer to our Heavenly Father as we study from it and apply what we learn into our lives. I am so grateful that our Heavenly Father provided us with such a powerful tool in these last days!!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!!! Thank you for everything!!!!

Love,

Sister Paynter

The first picture is of us and the key to our new apartment. The next picture....well, the elders hid 8 packages of cheese balls in our new apartment....we found one of them in Sister Smith's toilet....and....we still have not been able to find 2 of them. Oh what joy!!! Next week, we'll send pictures of the apartment once we get it cleaned!!!

 

 We went to Cracker Barrel on Saturday, we were going to go on Black Friday in honor of our Black Friday breakfast tradition, but Sister Smith was not feeling good that day. I even got the white chocolate berry cream cheese french toast that I got last year!!! And don't forget the side of hash brown casserole!!! (I have decided that Cracker Barrel is probably my favorite restaurant next to Cafe Rio)