Sunday, March 5, 2017

February 27, 2017

Hi all!!

Well it has been quite the week! The mission had a huge transfer with a lot of people getting moved. But so far I have really loved Montgomery Village. The area it self is pretty small, but there is quite a bit going on here! It is also super diverse here, we have an investigator from Nigeria, recent converts from Sierra Leone, I met a member from Sri Lanka and countless other places. It is amazing! I'll get to all of that later..

Sounds like it was an awesome week back home! I am so glad that the approval came through and you finally got to tell the kids about the trip to pick me up! I'm glad everyone is so excited, I know I am! The Johnsons are super excited to get to meet everyone. Also I saw the Morgan's yesterday, they attend the YSA branch in our building up here. I just can't get away from them haha. But they said they want to do at least lunch with the family when we are here. I said we would for sure do something with them! Awesome to hear about Alyssa's call! Sounds like she is really excited for it and sounds like it will be a great mission. Kinda sad I'll miss her with getting home after she goes to the MTC but she will do great! 

Okay so more for this week. So first and foremost I'll get this out of the way...so I threw my back out really bad this week. I feel like such an old man! So I went to put some clothes in my dresser on Friday and it just felt like someone stabbed me in my left lower back. So I collapsed and it took a couple hours to the point I could get back up. It was terrible! So we got slowed down pretty bad. I shuffle like an old man at the moment and Sister Johnson has told me we have to limit our walking so we can't go tract or do much besides walk from the car to appointments and go to set meetings. Other then that I have to lay on the floor of the apartment with a heating pad on it and do these back stretches. So it's been frustrating, especially with white washing the area here. It felt like we were really going to finally get things going. But the Lord has looked out for us. He knows we want to work so despite not getting to go find people ourselves he's done it for us.  Since getting to the area we have got 6 Church Headquarters referrals, 3 investigators who have moved from other areas to ours, and a guy who stopped us when we walked out of our apartment and told us he use to meet with the missionaries and he wants to start meeting with us again. Incredible! Truly the Lords work, and he will make sure it keeps going even if I currently have the back of an 87 year old!

Sister Johnsons says she thinks I've had a subluxation.. she explained it but it kinda went over my head. Basically all I know is my back hurts haha. But we might be going in this week to get it checked out, so I'll keep you in the loop of what we decide and what happens. 

Sunday we had a Stake Missionary meeting and this Stake is awesome! One of the better missionary Stakes in the mission I would say. After the meeting I asked President for a blessing for my back, and that was an amazing experience. Highly recommend getting a blessing from your mission president. Just so many things I needed to hear besides things about my back. It was kinda frustrating though when he said "take care to listen to the medical help you will receive and do not push yourself too fast too soon" So now I've been told by both my mission president and mission mom I need to take it easy for a little bit... So we will see how it goes. 

This area is going pretty good! They have had 3 baptisms already this year, but sadly that was most of their investigators, but we have been having a lot of success so far. Last night we taught a new investigator who was an online Bible referral who came here from Nigeria only 3 weeks ago! His name is Oladipupo, have fun pronouncing that haha. But we call him Dee-Poh for short. He is super solid and said he knows he will get an answer when he prays about the Book of Mormon.  We are going back this week to see him. It was a great way to end a frustrating week of not getting to work the area as much as I would have liked.  But I 'm really seeing that everything will work out and we will still meet the needs of the people in this area. 

Sure love you guys!! Hope you had a good weeks and I'll talk to you soon! Love and miss you!
-Austin 


Two of our recent Converts nephews


Goodbye Annapolis District.. 

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