Feb. 17, 2014 Bethel, Maine

A Wintry Day...Continues

Dear, dear family!!                            Feb. 17,  2014

Hello!  I hope that you have had a fantastic past week!  Is there snow in Utah?  If so, I hope that you are enjoying it!!  There is nothing but snow here, and it is beautiful!!  We got soo much!  What is hard is that as a missionary I can't really do any winter sports.  Not that I did any in Utah, but that is going to change.  My new goal is to learn how to ski.  It will happen.  Everyone up here ski's and we go up to Sunday River (the best ski resort in Maine) at least once every week.  We see people skiing down the mountain and it looks so much fun!  So yes. 

Anyways, this week has been great!  We went on exchanges, which is always super fun!  I love those things quite a lot!  We have to drive a long way to get there though.  So, we enlist the help of our wonderful members.  We have one member who is probably the best member missionary I have ever met.  She helps us out like three times a week and goes so out of her way to do everything she can for us.  We have great conversations in the car with her, and on the way back from exchange we had such a great talk.  Gotta love feeling the spirit!! :)  

So, I love this area, and I love being with Sister Smedley!  She is amazing and I have learned so much from her.  She is so enthusiastic and happy and she teaching the gospel so creatively while also being time and rule conscious.  We have such a great time together, and I am so blessed to be her companion!!  I really can't believe that we have been together for five weeks already.  Crazy.  Yes, the dreaded transfer calls are coming this Saturday.  I can't believe it, and I hope that nothing changes, but you never know.  Sis. Smedley is a Joseph Smith Memorial sister, so her turn might be coming up soon.  We'll just have to wait and see, but we're going to make this next week the best one yet!! :)

It will be hard though because this one was really good.  Although it seems like all of our investigators have been having massive challenges heaped up on them, we had some great lessons, and we found a potential new investigator!  We just need to set up a solid appointment with her.  So, pretty much we gave her a Book of Mormon two weeks ago and when we came to follow up with her she had read to the book of Ether.  She loves the Book of Mormon!!  We had a great conversation with her and she wants us to come back and teach her the lessons!  Hooray!  I love teaching people about the gospel because it really does bring joy and comfort, especially in times of trial.

Then it was Friday, Valentines Day!  We kinda let our one treat a day rule go out the window, but don't worry, we got right back on track!  It pretty much snowed all evening Thursday and all of Friday, so we were grounded.  I don't know if I've ever seen so much snow in my life!  It was sooo much fun :)  Sad that our 6 lessons we had planned for Thursday night and Friday all fell through, but we did our best to stay positive!  We went out and saw Fern who lives right by us, which was awesome, and on the way back we played in the snow a bit.  One of our snowbanks is so high I climbed to the top of it and rolled down sideways.  It was pretty fun!  More than a foot is outside right now and we are expected to get more tomorrow.  The skiers are practically coming in truckloads.  Our little town of Bethel is pretty busy!  

So, for our district meeting we talked about prayer, and I had an experience come to mind that I didn't really think too much about before.  It was really small, but I thought it was a sweet miracle.  So, I lost my watch about three weeks ago and I didn't know where it was.  I looked and looked, but couldn't find it.  One night I was praying and thought to pray to have help to find it.  It was a small thing, but I did.   After two weeks, I decided I was just going to buy a new one, but we got a text from some less-actives who asked if either one of us had lost a watch.  Apparently, he decided to go and shovel snow where he usually doesn't and he saw a small black thing poking out of the snowbank.  My watch! Covered in ice, but still working!  When we went and got it, I explained how I had the thought to pray to find it, and they were pretty amazed as was I. As I thought about this little experience during district meeting I felt the spirit really strong.  It was a very small thing, but all of our testimonies of prayer were strengthened.  I know that Heavenly Father really does care about the details of our lives.  

I hope that you have a great week!  I love you sooo much!!

Don't forget to pray!

Sister Bergeson :)