Pembroke, North Carolina - February 27

I hope everyone had a good week!! The week here in Pembroke has gone by very quickly!! Things have been going really well and the people here are just amazing!!

Monday night we set a baptismal date with a woman named Jessica!! She loves what we have been teaching her and just soaks up the gospel like a sponge!! It's amazing!!! We also met this really amazing couple!! Their names are Delois and Anthony. We met Delois while we were walking through some town homes. She was talking with some friends and when we started to talk to her, she expressed that she was very angry with God. She told us that she was terminally ill and that she had lost basically all of her family members at a young age. The conversation was really awkward as we tried to explain the Plan of Salvation to her. It seemed that for everything that we said she would have an argument for. We set up an appointment for the following evening. The following evening, we were really late for the appointment. In fact, we were so late that we almost didn't even bother going over. When we got there, we weren't sure if we had found her house. As we sat in the car in front of their house, a car pulled up next to us and rolled down there window. We rolled down ours and sure enough, it was Delois and her husband. She told us that she was having a bad day but that we were still welcome to come in. When we first went in, Anthony was very stand offish. We told him that he could ask us any questions he had. So of course he asked us the regular anti questions...are you a cult? Do you have more than one wife? Etc. As we met with them, she told us that she had just gotten back from a blood transfusion and dialysis. We talked about how trials are given to us to build us up and help us to become who God needs us to be. We showed her two videos. We showed her "The Refiner's Fire" first and then we showed her "The Will of God". By the end of the lesson Anthony was in tears as well as Delois. Delois told us that she felt happy for the first time in a long time. Anthony told us that he hadn't seen her this happy in a long time. They told us that they felt that God had answered their prayers by sending us to them and that they wanted to learn more. It was truly an amazing experience to be a part of!!

As I have reflected on this experience, it made me think about how the Lord prepares each of us in his own time. Whether we were born into the church or not, the Lord prepares us for what he needs us to do. For me, I definitely know that the Lord prepared me to come out on my mission at the time that he needed me. There have been people that I have met on my mission that I know for a fact I was sent there to help them. If I had gone on my mission earlier, those people would not have been ready to hear what I have to share with them. The Lord truly works in mysterious ways!!!!

I love you all so much!! Thank you for everything! Don't forget....SMILE because Heavenly Father loves you!!!

Love,

Sister Paynter

Picture 1: We rode up to our Mission Leadership Council with some of the other sisters. Sister Steenhoek, one of my good mission friends, saw this barbecue place and we thought the logo looked cool so we took a picture. It reminded us of the Big Bang Theory.

Picture 2: I got to see Sister Flinders at MLC!! She took a picture with all of her companions haha!!

Picture 3: All of the sisters I came out with, except for one who is a trainer right now, are Sister Training Leaders so we took a picture all together at MLC.