Sister Neel 3/22/21

 Hey ya'll!

I've almost been in North Carolina for a month! Time is going by so fast! Even though we are in a pretty slow area, missionary work is still my absolute favorite :)) a lot of mini miracles happened this week! We got a referral from SLC and when we called Janie she seemed SO excited to be able to talk to us and become better friends. She let us know she's been getting a lot of spam calls recently and hasn't been answering her phone to random numbers but happened to answer ours and is so glad she did! Sister Larsen and I didn't bring up any gospel topics, just spent 20 minutes getting to know her better. She opened up to us about a lot of her past and the trials she's been called upon to go through. She also shared some pretty amazing miracles she's been a part of and the faith that keeps her going each and everyday. We were so grateful for the time we had to just talk because it gave us SO much more background of what we can primarily focus on if she is receptive to us teaching her lessons! She wants us to call her back next Wednesday and we are hopeful that Janie will progress pretty well!

We also have been having some fun gospel discussions with the maintenance guys over our apartment complex. We've had a broken dryer since we've moved in and they've come and gone quite a bit to get this situation figured out. Because of this we've become pretty good friends! They aren't the average people I would normally talk too, one of the guys is an older gentleman that's a little rough around the edges and always smells strongly of cigarette smoke. The other guy is 6'4 and seems intimidating at first but is as kind as can be. While working on our dryer they've asked us quite a few questions about the gospel and we've had some neat conversations with them! Turns out one of the guys has gone to church several times but left when he found out our church doesn't believe in smoking or drinking. We enjoy their visits and LOVE hearing their own personal insight and relationship with God they've had in the past. Clevelan, the 6'4 dude actually studies the bible a lot and wants to know more about God and his purpose here. Sister Larsen and I feel strongly that our broken dryer was no coincidence ;) we see these guys quite a bit when we go on walks around our complex and it's great to have formed new friendships! We are hopeful that over time we could maybe have a legit gospel discussion with them when they aren't running around fixing everyone else's broken appliances ;)

Sister Larsen and I have spent a lot of time facebook tracting and cold calling. We've almost called 600 numbers and only 5 people answered...mainly because they're non working numbers, it'll be a business or it'll just keep ringing. It's been pretty frustrating but we feel this burning desire to keep doing the Lord's work each day and know that the fruits of our labors will be made known. A few of our lessons with a few people in area book fell through but we were able to get in contact with a few other people we've been trying to reach out to for the past couple weeks! One of them is a pastor named Jermiah. And yes you may be thinking the same thing as me...oh no XD. When we found out he was a pastor over a baptist church Sister Larsen wanted to drop him. She didn't want to have a bible bash after a pastor bashed us rather harshly over the phone a few days ago. But the strange thing was, it didn't feel right. Immediately President Maurer's words from zone conference entered my mind: "Everyone deserves to hear the gospel. No one should be exempt from the Lord's message because they may look or act differently than us." President Maurer invited us to pray more boldly and ask God to put people who need Him in our path everyday. I shared these feelings with Sister Larsen and how we should just give one lesson a shot. We reached out to him on Facebook this time rather than text and he surprisingly got right back and was willing to do a gospel discussion! Keep us and Jermiah in your prayers. ;)

This week has gone really well! I had a training interview with President Maurer and I must say I scored with the best mission president and wife to ever live. We had a mission wide meeting on Thursday where the social media specialists introduced that we would be merging all of our facebook pages into one and this would turn into a pretty big deal. They reached out to church headquarters as well as the missionary department to get this thing viral and they are all on board with helping us spread the gospel more effectively this way! We are hoping that by us as well as members from all over North Carolina, posting our day to day interactions or service projects will inspire people to want to learn more about us! I'm excited to see how this goes!

On Thursday we had a pretty bad storm hit most of the south coast but North Carolina especially. The mission had all missionaries go into lockdown at 12 and we weren't allowed to leave our apartments until the following day. There were 75 mph winds, egg sized hail, flood warnings, lots of rain, thunder, lightning and potential tornadoes. Luckily in Hillsborough we weren't hit too bad. We were under a tornado and flood watch for most of the day but survived a pretty severe storm. There was a tornado that touched down in Mebane as well as Durham and we are sandwiched in between those two cities which was a little scary but all is well! We survived XD

This email is pretty long so I'll end it out here but honestly there's just so many amazing things that happen as a missionary. I'm so very blessed to be here at this time and meeting so many new amazing people that I don't know where I would be without today. I've come to realize how much happier I am and how my testimony has grown! I'm learning so much about myself and pushing my desires to higher heights so that I might be the devoted servant the Lord needs me to be. I am oh so very grateful to be a missionary, my heart could burst! I hope you all are doing well and know that I love you!!

♡♡♡ Sister Neel