"Bear with Patience thine afflictions and I shall give thee success."

Hi!

This week has been another hard week. We are still working with Peter, the one I talked about in last week's email. He is really hard to get a hold of because he doesn't have a phone and he's work schedule is crazy. He was planning to coming to church yesterday and he even had his own ride set up but he never showed. That is the point we are trying to get to, which is to get an investigator to church. We've haven't been able to get one to church since I've been here. It is quite frustrating but we are keeping our heads up and trying to "bear our afflictions with patience."
We are teaching a young couple where the Elders cast out real evil spirits out of their home. We taught them a 1st lesson and committed them to baptism. They wanted to be baptized but wouldn't pick a date because they had a crazy schedule. Their son is having to go to the hospital all the time because he got sick and they are trying to figure out the cause. The husband also goes to the doctor's for treatment of his epilepsy. They didn't show up for church either.
So me and Sister Yancey have been praying hard to find someone who will keep their commitments and come to church. But Satan is still pushing us hard. We like to call ourselves the "golden investigator but won't come to church" whisperers because those are the only people we find. We meet them and they seem like they are so ready to accept the gospel and they believe it's true but won't come to church. We've had so many like that. But we keep telling Satan "to get off of my back".
On to a happier note, we got the whole day of Thanksgiving off! We got to watch two movies from an approved list. So we went to the church and made ourselves comfortable with a tv and snacks and enjoyed ourselves. But I've realized that I've been a missionary for a long time because I was relating everything in the movies to the gospel. We watched "Hercules" and I was thinking, "Um..this is kind of like the plan of salvation. First the fall of Adam from an immortal state, then our life on Earth as we try to follow God and prove ourselves on Earth and then we return to our Father's presence." It was weird. We then planned basketball for a couple of hours in the gym and had dinner with a member.
We also had zone conference this week and the focus was the Book of Mormon. The President had come across an amazing way to mark the BofM according to the lessons in PMG so one could find them really easy while in a lesson. We marked some scriptures at Zone Conference but I'm still going through the BofM marking things I could use in a lesson. I've come to realize how much information is in the BofM, how much it contains everything we teach and everything we need to gain salvation and to learn about the gospel. The Book of Mormon is so jammed packed with the gospel! I love it!
This week I've been studying about the Atonement the past couple of weeks because we have an investigator you feels that he's done so much wrong that there might not be a way to correct it. My love for the Savior continues to grow as I realize, more and more, what exactly the Atonement means for us. Christ came and suffered for our sins so that we could repent and be cleansed of our sins. He also suffered for our sorrows, heartaches, pains and afflictions so that He would know exactly how to help us. Because of the Atonement, He can heal us spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally. I am forever indebted to Him and my Father in Heaven for that great act of mercy.

Well, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! The church is true so keep the faith!

Love Sister Sumsion