I Can Ride My Bike with No Handlebars

We cleaned our car for hours and it paid off - clean car award!

After our 22 mile bike day - brownies and watermelon!

Here's one from one of our biking breaks (excuse the apostate knee!)

Hey family and friends,
Wow it's been such a great week. It FLEW by. I don't know where to start. The work here is rolling. Literally. We biked over 50 miles in 3 days (in skirts. Lol people look at us like we are insane hahahaha). From those thousands of miles and hours on bike we have gotten pretty good at riding with no handlebars. I can even go around turns and stuff!!

Well we have met so many awesome people:
We met this one guy. He's an OU student and is funny. He basically asked us both on a date for the next appointment. Haha check the "get asked out on a date" off the mission bucket list. 

There was this older guy on the bike path. He knew a lot about our church and ended up being an anti. Hahaha check the "talk about church with an anti" off the list too. He was impressed that we could reference the bible! But we didn't talk to him too much. 

I'll talk about some more with another story. This week we've been very conservative with our miles so we have been biking everywhere possible. We biked about 50 miles over 3 days. We are physically exhausted but spiritually full. There are so many people to contact on the Athens bike path! On Saturday we made the goal to teach 17 other quality lessons and get contact info for each of them. It's kind of hard to stop people racing down the bike path, but we asked people for suggestions and came up with some fun ways. We found that if you hold out a pass along card and say "hey, take our card!" They'll usually say something like "wait what?" And stop their bikes. At that point we can talk to them, teach a lesson, promise blessings, testify, and get contact info. It was very successful! 
 
We biked about 10 miles away to contact a referral and tried to get everyone we passed to stop and talk to us. It took a lot longer than we thought to get to the referral, and we had about an hour to get back to our town for a lesson. I prayed that we'd have the energy and endurance we needed to make it back in time. The sun seemed to blaze harder and he humidity seemed to get thicker, but we peddled harder. We talked to everyone we passed and made it to the location for our appointment with just a few minutes to spare. We can do anything if we trust in God! We were also able to get our 17 lessons and quite a few promising potentials and new investigators. I know that if we trust in God and do everything we possibly can, he will make up for the rest and help us accomplish the goals we set. No matter how crazy or far out they may be! 

So some funny contacts from the card hand offs:
One guy is a college student and I said "hey take this card!" And he said "who's is it?" And we said "yours!!" It was awesome. He stopped his bike, we taught a lesson, got his info, and called today (like 2 days later) and set up an appointment. He watched the video we told him to so he is now a progressing investigator! He's awesome. 

Another guy is also in college. He was in a super rush but sister Blaser got out her cards just in time.... To give him the whole stack. He said "I don't need all of these!" And stopped his bike. We were able to talk to him for a bit! He promised to call us back (hasn't yet, but we're hopeful.)

Yeah people are just the coolest! 

We met another guy. He moved to the US about 4 years ago from Nigeria. He has a sick accent and story of how he got here. We were in the local laundry place waiting for someone to show up to an appointment. She didn't come but we were able to have a nice discussion with him. We're going to meet with him soon!

The next guy is way cool. We met him on his way back from the store. We had an awesome discussion with him when we went back to his house to talk. He's super open to the church and is coming on Sunday yay!

Last one, a lady just moved here with her family and has been looking for a good church to go to with her kids! She was super touched by our message and invited us back for later this week. She was chocking up like she's been waiting for something like this to happen. Yay! She asked if we go to apartments and we said we can! And she gave us a bunch of names of friends and family she wants us to see. (CHA-CHING). We love her!!

Our investigator I told you about last week is still awesome! We haven't got to meet with him because he's been super super busy with football, but we've been emailing him! He's been reading his Book of Mormon and is excited to meet with us more. 

Hm yeah that's about it for people this week!

Besides meeting with them and riding bikes all over, not a ton happened! We had zone conference and it was awesome! I love zone conference. Talk to you all later! Love you lots. 
Sister Barnes