Summer!!!

Hey Family!!!!

I'm excited to write y'all today since we couldn't yesterday because of memorial day. The library was closed. How was your memorial day? Do anything fun?! We worked, and had p-day to shop and do laundry. :) It sounds like Chalece and Mike are all moved it! I wish I could've helped, but have them save some stuff for me to do next summer and I'll make up for not being there to help.

I'm so excited for Uncle John L and Aunt Larraine! Ghana’s  an exciting mission call. Are they excited?

I'll try to answer all the questions I can.... We bike and drive about 50/50. We try to drive in the afternoons since it's so hot outside, but we won't be able to do that all of the time. We did have a cute couple offer a GPS to us that we are borrowing until we can get the area down for the most part, so we'll see how that goes.... they move in August so I may be investing in a GPS. :) The ward here is HUGE! There are over 700 on the roll and more than half are less actives, which means we will be working to find a lot of those less actives and tract them down. We are working with some less actives now to try to get them back to church. The ward has lots of young couples from BYU who are going to med school here, but there are also some older people who have been in the ward forever. Lots of diversity in the ward! The youth seems pretty strong. We sent around a sign up in young womens on Sunday and 5-6 girls came up to us after church to tell us how excited they are to come out with us to appointments! We are excited to have them have that experience cause some of them want to serve missions. Kailey and Alli you should go out with the sister missionaries sometime and see what it's like. They need your help I'm sure!

President and Sister Saylins family leaves the 2nd week in July and they are from Bountiful so you'll for sure have to go to their homecoming! I'm sure there are going to be tons of missionaries there. I'm excited for you to meet them and their family. They are soooo great. I hope I have a family like theirs one day. It'll be sad to say goodbye to them, but exciting to have another big family come in. Our new mission presidents wife is having their 7th child the 1st week of July and that's why President Saylin is staying and extra few weeks to help out.

My companion, Sister Draeger is having her homecoming on July 8th in Lehi and she said ya'll could come to that too! :) She's getting excited.

The work here in Maplewood is going good. We are definitely doing a lot of weeding through people. President told us as we work hard we will see the sifting affect a lot quicker, and we are seeing that. This week I have seen the parable of the vineyard apply in every aspect of our missionary work. Planting seeds as we bare simple testimony to tons of people on the street, teaching people who aren't interested and then dropping them, and teaching the elect. We have some great people we are working with and we are praying for miracles. We are teaching 2 girls who are soaking in everything we teach, and it's awesome to see the light in their faces as we share more and more with them. They LOVE it! We are also teaching an 8 year old boy who is from a part member family who is going to be baptized in the next few weekends! He loves church, and he knows way more than I did when I was 8. The other day he was quizzing us on our Book of Mormon knowledge. haha

Our district is setting up a ward fast for missionary opportunities and we will be having the fast for a whole month where at least one family will be fasting at all times. It's going to be a great way to find people to teach and to share the gospel with! You should try it in our ward back home.

We have been visiting lots of inactives from the ward and on one day in particular I was getting very upset because these people had such hard hearts. I think it made me upset the most because they were totally mocking the Atonement of Christ. Saying things like, well Christ can do anything, and I'm sure the suffering in the garden wasn't that long. When they were saying that if I wasn't a missionary I would have said some not very nice things, but It made me realize how much the Atonement means to me in my life. Also how great of a person Christ is for still loving these people as much as He loves me or anyone else. Sister Draeger and I were talking about if after we left and how each person is going to feel when they look into their Saviors eyes when He comes again. It gave me the chills thinking how I will feel inside when I get to look Jesus Christ in the eyes. Hopefully I can tell Him I gave it my all!

Missionary work is hard, but we read a quote the other day that said. "The greatest decision I ever made in my life was to give up something I dearly loved to the God I loved even more. He has never forgotten me for it." I feel that same way. I feel like I've sacrificed a lot to come on a mission, and I'm still sacrificing but my sacrifice will never be greater than the Lords sacrifice for me. 

I love you all soo much! Thank you for your sacrifice in getting me here on a mission and helping to support me in every way!

If there is anything I can do for you please let me know!!

Love you!!!!!!

Erianne

Oh! Yesterday we got to go to the church for a little bit and play basketball, volleyball and soccer. It felt sooo good to goof off for a minute and just be myself! haha I felt like Dylan and Jaylee. Sometimes it's good to step out of the mold of a missionary. :)