I Love OSU (Aug 6th)

Enter the apartment, prepared...

The district in scarlet and gray ... go OSU!

The zoo on p-day

A cool wall..

Sis Stratford with the Sister Training Leaders

Hello everyone!

This week was a giant MIRACLE. So many incredibly awesome things happened. Our district had a huge focus on finding new investigators. It was super motivating and got us out working hard. As a district we were able to find over 50 new investigators.. just last week!

Tuesday I got to go to MLC! Oh man, it was good. We talked about goal setting and planning and how to be accountable. We also did some fun role plays on how to find new people. We also counseled on a lot of things. One that I'm most excited about is temple attendance! We get to go on our 6 month mark, year mark, and day before we go home. Yay!

Tuesday night after MLC we had a very spirit guided experience. We got home and found our bedroom mirror on the ground and shattered. It was in a position that was not at all natural for it to have fallen from the wall. We tried to figure it out and had the prompting to leave the apartment. We called our district leader but he didn't answer, then called the zone leaders. We were in the hallway of our apartment building. They instructed us to go to the Sisters upstairs and pray with them. Pray to know if it is safe to return to our apartment all together and check every closet and corner for a possible person there. We all felt comfortable to go down together. We were a little nervous so we equipped ourselves with frying pans and knives and checked every nook and cranny in the apartment and didn't find anything else out of place. We then were instructed to pray to know that we were safe. We all individually thought about the dedication that took place exactly 4 weeks prior. We knew our apartment was a safe place and we had nothing to worry about. The sisters went back upstairs and we continued on with our night. (Still have no clue how the mirror fell and shattered the way it did... I guess it will remain a mystery! But we know that we are safe of any harm from things that are seen and unseen around us.)

Wednesday was a major miracle day, I'll share one of the many highlights. We were walking down the street from the institute and ran into a couple who had just gotten pizza. It was a super awkward contact but we asked if they wanted to come check out the church for 10 mins. They looked at each other and said, "sure! We have time!" We ended up finding out that they have recently been talking about starting to go to a church. They became new investigators and were supposed to come to church.

Here's something funny. We were teaching an investigator who's here for a month or two straight from China. We were teaching about baptism and he said he wouldn't feel comfortable with it. We asked why and he said, "I don't want to be standing next to someone when I'm naked." Hm we had no clue where he got that idea but we cleared it up and helped him understand. Hahaha I'm glad we have jumpsuits instead of birthday suits... 😂

Sunday we cool. So we walk in and two girls were standing there talking to the Elders. One says, yeah, these are the sisters I met! (I did not recognize her to save my life.. hah). She told the elders that we talked to her for like one minute before she got on her bus and invited her to church. We didn't even get her contact info or anything... but she came and brought her friend! We got their contact info and will be teaching them soon :'). We also had a church swap with some investigators. They came to church with us this morning and we went with them this evening. It was an Evangelical Christian church. It was more of a concert than church.. but hey! Confirmed the truthfulness of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints!  (Hey it was a good concert though not gonna lie).

Other random things. Someone was speeding down high street and threw a handful of coins at us. Luckily none hit us. A recent convert said I'm human cocaine. Why? Because I'm just always up and smiling and happy. We always give a recent convert a hard time for jaywalking. In a prayer in his lesson he said, "Heavenly Father, I repent for jaywalking." I couldn't stop laughing. He is awesome. We were talking about eternal marriage and his commitment was to ask a girl out on a date. I love YSA wards. We were searching for a less active and had to knock on some doors. That was weird. We got donuts this week and the worker put the one I wanted in a bag then shrugged his shoulders and put another one in. He gave it to me for free :) We contacted a huge tall buff guy and he said he has been here for 3 days. I asked if he was a new freshman and he said he was a grad student. Haha whoops 😬 One of the bishops took us to Piada, my favorite place out here. Some lady on the street asked if I was Princess Kate. When she realized I wasn't she said I look just like her? One investigator was praying about baptism and whether or not to keep meeting with us. She went on a de-stress run to think about it and ran into the Powell Elders. She said they said some random things that answered her prayers. She is still meeting with us and is on date for September 9th. We finished the new member lessons with all three of our recent converts!

Oh yeah! This is awesome! So remember when I was in Powell and we worked our tails off and found less success than we desired? Well, they just had a baptism! There is a couple that lives in the same apartment complex we did. They have been watching the sisters for a long time trying to figure out what we do without actually talking to us. They looked up a lot of stuff about the church and just showed up one day saying they want to get baptized. I ran into a member from the Powell Ward last week and she told me about this and said that I would've been one of the sisters they watched. Wahoo! Hah they probably saw me biking in the snow and lots of random embarrassing things. People are always watching, watch out!

Sister Barnes