I'm glad y'all got to hear from Sister Zollinger! She is an amazing relief society president and we are excited to work with her to help these sisters in the ward. The lunch with her and her counselor was DELICIOUS! It was like a restaurant style meal. :) I hope I can cook one day like that. Mom, I want to cook for y'all when I get home cause many members have given me recipes from around the world. It'll be fun!

It sounds like everyone is doing great! I'm always anxious to hear how everyone is doing on Mondays when we come to email. I can't believe that Kailey and Alli only have 3 more months left of school. How does that feel? I'm jealous of everyone here right now cause they are all on spring break, but it means we will have more people to talk with since they are all out of school hopefully. Any fun plans for spring break up in Utah? Hopefully it warms up there for you. We had 78 degree weather this past week, but today it's much colder... 56 degrees. I know.... I'm going to be a whimp when I get back to Utah.

This week was a great week! We met several new investigators and we are getting lots of referrals from members here in the ward. Especially from the youth! It's awesome. (Some members who are in the Elders area want us to teach their friends haha) I feel bad, but it goes both ways. Some people like the elders more than the sisters. Most of our investigators right now are referrals from members, so it's been good to have the members come visiting with us. It helps these people so much! Valencia is one who we are working lots with. She came to church last week on her own, but this week her daughter was in town from college (she plays volleyball too) so they didn't come. But Valencia has such a sincere desire to do good. She says she is much more of a spiritual person than a religious person because she thinks people can get lost in religion, but if they just rely on God they will be better off. We are trying to stress the importance of the Priesthood to her so she can understand the difference of her Baptist church and our church. After a baptism on Saturday that she came with us to she leaned over to us and said, "yeah that is exactly how I was baptized." Agh... haha If only we could fill in that missing link for her. But she'll come around, we just have to keep explaining everything clearly for her.

We also met with another referral of a member, Hector and his mom Maria. Maria told us that she is looking for Christ's church and she is so confused! The whole time she was talking and asking us questions I just wanted to jump up and tell her, "you've found it!!!! don't worry!" haha But the sad thing is she called us a few days later and told us, " I've been talking with my husband and we aren't ready yet." It's discouraging when you know they are ready but people anti them. Hopefully we can meet with them again soon.

So there is this family in our ward named the Johnsons. They had 6 kids, their three oldest are on/have been on missions. Last July they were going with 4 of their kids to go pick up their daughter from her mission in Utah and they got into a really bad car accident. The two youngest girls died and the third youngest is now handicapped. We went over to help Sister Johnson do exercises with their daughter Megan (the handicapped daughter) and I can't believe how strong they are. Sister Johnson gave a talk on the Atonement in Relief Society last week and so many people were helped. We are going to try to help her out every week with her daughter. It was actually a confirmation for me of what I want to go into because the night before I was praying about schools and majors because I have to make a decision in the next few weeks about school, and that next day we went and did rehabilitation exercises to keep her muscles moving. I really enjoy it! I love helping those with disabilities and I feel really good about Occupational Therapy. Sister Johnson tells Megan she now has a new trainer haha.

Last week we had a special zone meeting with President Ashton. It was all about Faith in Christ. Seeing the Johnson family and several other families in this ward with struggles and seeing their faith in Christ helps my testimony to grow so much. We really can move mountains in our lives if we exercise our faith in our Savior.

I had a cool experience happen last week as we took a young women out teaching with us. We only had about an hour with her and it was her first time to come teaching with the missionaries so we wanted to help her to have the best experience. When we knocked on our investigators door she wasn't there. I always get really stressed when we have a member with us and our appointments fall through, but we decided to go try a referral down the street. As we were walking down the street I was praying to Heavenly Father telling Him I wanted this young women to have an opportunity to share her testimony, and as I was praying I saw the lady we were going to try wasn't home. Right when I ended my prayer in my head a lady yells out from her front room window, "hey are y'all the church people?" I thought it was in my head for a second haha but we turned around and went up to her window. She asked us if we could pray with her cause she was really struggling in her life. We ended up teaching her the power of prayer and Kalani (the YW) was able to bare her testimony. It was such a tender mercy. I know that God hears and answers our prayers, we just have to believe He will.

Last week we were also able to go to YW because two of our investigators Ashley and Lauren (they are twins) went. They have developed good relationships with the YW and Lauren is going to San Antonio this weekend with the youth for youth conference! She is set to be baptized the next weekend. It'll be a great experience for her, we are just praying for her sister who is a little more reserved. But when we met with them this past week they had been reading the Book of Mormon and had TONS of questions. Lauren is also going to EARLY MORNING seminary! I couldn't believe it when she told us that. I love working with the youth, they seem to be so much more excited about learning the gospel.
Last night we met with two other youth aged kids, Olivia and Michael. They are investigators and we shared the Restoration DVD with them. After it was over they had millions of questions of things they have heard about Mormons. Olivia's mom wants to learn more too but she was at Bible study, so we are hoping to meet with them all this week. It's so cool to see how the Lord has prepared peoples hearts! We hardly do anything, we just have to follow the Spirit to go where the Lord has prepared people for us.

One last story then I've got to go, we were having a bit of a rough night finding people to teach on Friday (every Friday seems to be that way...) and so Sister Hinton prayed and she felt prompted to try this lady none of us had met. When we got there she had been crying cause it was her 40th wedding anniversary and her husband was sick so he had been asleep all day. She told us we were answers to her prayers. I love being a missionary! The Lord is aware of His Children.

I love you all so much! I pray for you lots and hope everything is going well. I want to hear of your missionary experiences!

Sister Avery :)