May 4th E-Mail / Pictures

Here is Justin's e-mail from May 4th - I'm finally getting caught up. Today he gets to call home for Mother's Day, and we're really looking forward to that!!! We also received from more pictures from Justin, which I have posted. The picture below is of Justin near the Arkansas River, right outside Clarksville, AR, taken on April 6, 2009. To see all 38 photos that I've posted, please click here for Flickr, and here for Facebook.

Hey everybody! How's your week going? Ours has been very wet. It rained non stop Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and some of Thursday too. It finally stopped last night, but there's some major flooding. Half the roads into town are closed, and a bunch of the city is under water too. It's pretty cool, but it also kind of sucks because one of our investigators (Karlee Hood, who is getting baptized on Saturday) wasn't able to make it to church because of the flood. It's also been tough to get ahold of alot of people, and there's been no one outside to talk to the last 3 days. It definitely led to some fun experiences, though. Saturday we were up in Baxter Springs and our car got stuck in the mud, and Friday while I was on exchanges in Neosho (over in Missouri) I got one real fun experience that I'll probably never try again: tracting in a hail storm. 

All the flooding from the storm.

Ouch. But otherwise things have been good. We really should be thankful because last year at this time the floods got even higher than this year. Though we may have that chance because another storm is supposed to be coming in tomorrow. I'm still praying for a tornado, too, so maybe this will be the one... Speaking of tornados, that's way cool that you got to see video of the one here back on April 9. I was kinda bummed I missed that, it was the day before I got here. We got pretty good storms that night, too, though. It was a huge nasty storm system, and pretty much the entire mission was under tornado watch that night. As far as I know there were only two that actually hit that night. There was that little one here in Miami, and then a huge tornado hit Mena, Arkansas. You should look that one up, Mena was just demolished. The next day I actually talked to the missionaries who serve in Mena, their house got pretty trashed too. Luckily they were safe in the closet, but I bet that would be scary. Also look up the Picher tornado in May of last year. Picher is a little town just north of Miami that used to be in our area. I guess it still is but there's not much left of the town after that tornado. This is just about the best area to be in if I want to see a tornado! Not to scare you or anything...

Everything else is going really great here as well. Jason and Savannah are still golden, we have Karlee's baptism on May 9, and hopefully Andy Arms later this month as well. Then there's always Sarah... Hopefully she'll get baptized sometime soon as well. She just needs to start living the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity and she'll be good to go. There's alot of other great work going on as well. The Lord was definitely testing us this week with all of the trials He threw our way, but I know it's always for our benefit. We were definitely compelled to be humble, which we needed, and we learned a ton too. We've got a lot of really promising investigators we're working with right now and this week with the nicer weather I know we will find a ton more. We have definitely seen alot of miracles and after the disappointments this week I can feel more coming. One thing I've learned is that as missionaries, and just throughout life in general, we have to expect miracles. Every time there's a major let down we know that there's a miracle right around the corner, because God loves us and wants so badly to bless us. We just need to have faith in Him, and He will shower them down. Of course, that doesn't mean we should feel entitled to blessings or get down if they don't come, but instead have that "but if not" faith, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego had. (Daniel 2:18) If we do, we have nothing to fear and no reason to get discouraged. I actually just read a really good talk on that subject this morning. It's called "Seeing the Promises Afar Off" by Anne C. Pingree. She gave it in the October 2003 General Conference. I'm not going to say much about it cuz I feel like I'm just rambling on, but ya'll should read it. Well, that's about it for this week. Keep praying for us please. I love you! Have a great week!