Happy Leap Year

Hello again my loved ones!

Wow is it seriously already Monday?? And it's a leap year! One extra day in the mission haha. And happy birthday to Erick! I hear that it is your 9th birthday today...so happy day of birth brother-in-law! 

Well what a week it has been. Earlier in the week we went on exchanges! I went to Montrose with Sister Martinez and Sister Shaffer stayed in Wilkes-Barre with Sister Payne. And we had a good time in Montrose it was so beautiful there!! It's very very rural and so they have a truck too because they need it, and I swear all of Montrose is just dirt roads...because that's pretty much all we drove on. It was fun driving up there because from where we are we just had to follow the Susquehanna River all the way up there. It was gorgeous! We had fun, and we did some service at a convalescent home where we got to call out Bingo Cards for the old ladies that lived there haha. It was fun! They kept commenting on my hair and how long and blonde it was it was funny. They asked me about 50 times if I've ever cut it before haha. They were great. Well and then later that night we were driving in this horrible thunder storm but we had to go back and exchange and so we had to get out and pull trees out of the road but we were okay and safe :) Heavenly Father protected us for sure! But there were these awful sirens going off and I thought that meant that maybe a tornado was coming but I had no idea...all I know is that we were kept safe :)

Then on Thursday after district meeting we had a cool miracle. Sister Shaffer and I went to go visit a less active woman in the ward but she said she wasn't feeling well. So we decided knock on a few doors around. And ever door we knocked on no body answered. But i told Sister Shaffer we were not leaving until at least one person answered the door. So the last house we knocked and this nice man answered and let us inside. We offered to share a video with him and his daughter and so that's exactly what we did. After the video they told us that it was weird how we stopped by at that time because they had something hard happens that day. We shared a scriptures with them in The Book of Mormon about how God is mindful of every people and how He is mindful of them and he sent us to let them know that He loves them. By the time we left his daughter was in tears, and she said this makes me want to go to church! We left them with a copy of The Book of Mormon and said a prayer with them. And it just helped me to remember that Heavenly Father is mindful of all of us no matter what. 

Then Thursday evening we had to drive with the Zone Leaders two and a half hours down to Broomall for MLC (Mission Leadership Council) it's where all the missionary leaders go to be instructed to help the other missionaries we are over. MLC was on Friday but we spent the night with some other sisters Thursday and went to MLC on Friday. And oh. My. Goodness. MLC was amazing. I loved it SO much. We talked a lot about The Book of Mormon and how we as missionaries need to use it better in our teaching. The spirit was so strong the entire time. I am just so grateful for the opportunity that I have to be an STL. I'm not a perfect missionary's by any means but I am so grateful for this opportunity I have to learn from other missionaries in so many ways. Heavenly Father is truly merciful. I'm so grateful and humbled at all the opportunities he has given me over the course of my mission and my life. 

Then Sunday Sister Shaffer and I spoke in Sacrament meeting. And Sister Shaffer totally threw me under the bus and told the bishopric that I would like to speak first...but I spoke on Charity, or the pure love of Christ. One of my favorite things to talk about! And with my talk I had the opportunity to share my testimony about the atonement and missionary work. There is so much that went on this week that I just can't put it all into words!!-I wish I could transfer everything in my brain into an email without having to type it out myself. But for a spiritual thought I quickly wanted to share an awesome quote by cs Lewis that basically sums up my testimony of agency...

"“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means."

I'm sorry but I don't have much more time! I love you all and I know that this gospel is true! The gospel is true but we MUST be true to the gospel.

Love you all!! Until next week! 

~Sister Amy Callaway~

A random picture from Christmas Conference and a random dirt road in our area...sorry I didn't take pictures this week!