Salamanders In The Stream

Well hello. I figured I'd start on my email a little bit earlier because of the disaster that was last weeks email. I was almost not able to send it so I'm going to be more diligent about it now. We're teaching a new person! We met him while he was playing basketball and he said he wanted to get closer to God and Jesus Christ and on thursday we had our first appointment with him. And this is one of the things i've been really enjoying about my mission so far is to see the principles click in their minds. This man gobbled up everything we had to say. It was incredible. We committed him to start reading the book of Mormon, we showed him a few chapters in 3 Nephi 11-16 where Christ was on the earth and ministered to the people of the americas. We were driving out and we say him reading it as he was walking. It brought me and my companion Sister Taylor a lot of joy.


It hasn't been all joyful though. Thursday was a rough day. I was feeling kind of homesick and anxious to begin with and then we went tracting. I've found tracting to be very difficult for me as I was always the kind of person thinking 'please don't answer, please don't answer'. And it was conflicting with my desire to find new people to get to know and teach. Then, we went to do facebook work, and my lovely comanion noticed my distress and suggested we pray for strength. So we did and I didn't toughen up like I wanted. Quite the opposite in fact. I bawled my eyes out. 


There's a reason God doesn't have us be alone. My companion listened to me spill my guts for a moment and then brought me back to earth. Had me make a pros and cons list. Made me zoom out and see the bigger picture. The cons now seem a little trivial with worries of what ifs and fears of being hurt. It's part of being human though, and I can't give myself too much grief over it since everyone gets them. The pros though, if they are able to come to pass, I think, would bring any missionary great joy. I've found that most of the pros revolved around being able to bring someone to christ and watch them find joy in the gospel like it's brought to me. Now that's something that definitely outweighs the cons. So I tore that side of the paper off and missed the trashcan. 


Today was my Preparation day. So my district went on a hike. A lot of my pictures are from it. Elder Burkhart caught a bunch of salamanders and threw rocks at a rattlesnake. Which made the rest of us want to leave him there. No one got hurt though which is a miracle. Stay away from rattlesnakes people. 



I really appreciate the emails I've been getting. It brings me joy when I get a stable enough connection to the internet. My appartment has no wifi and no service, which is kind of annoying but It's something I can live without for the time being. We do our facebook work at the church anyways. I've loved recieving them and I do read all of them even if I don't reply. Thank you for all of your support! Let me know if someone else wants to be on the list and I can add them. I know I've had to fix some of them already haha. 



-Love, Sister Reynolds



Me and Sister Taylor on the hike

Chalking. An artsy way to find. No one found yet though unfortunately. 

Me holding a salamander

The view on the hike


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