Happy Valentine's Day (A Day late, oh well)

You would think that there was no way that missionaries have dates on Valentine's day. False! Sister Hart and I had a date last night! We ate with the Potter's! They're this super cute couple and they're so hilarious. They made dinner all fancy for us and they even gave us little Valentine's treats. We drank sparkling cider out of fancy glasses and they had Mormon Tabernacle Choir playing softly in the background haha. It was great!

This past week has been SO good! We were so busy all week and we never had to stop and ask ourselves, "what do we do now?" Best. Feeling. Ever! We went tracting a lot this week. I've started to keep a list of all the funny/weird/sad stuff that happens to us while we're knocking on doors. So on Thursday, the first door we knocked on was a disaster. It's something that we laugh about now, but in the moment, it was ridiculous. We knocked on this lady's door and introduced ourselves, and right off the bat this lady was not interested. Which that was nothing new that happens to us all the time, but we at least try and get to know the person a bit, ask about their beliefs, that way we at least leave a good impression and possibly plant a seed. So we asked her what some of her religious beliefs were and her first response was that she was a Christian. Cool, so are Mormons...(there are TONS of people who believe that Mormons aren't Christians). Well, we continued to carry on the conversation, and it quickly turned into a bashing session. This lady was so disrespectful and rude to us that we walked away from her on the verge of tears. She flat out said that we were brainwashed and that we didn't believe in Christ and that the whole of the LDS church has been deceived by the adversary. At first I was angry at the lady, but then I just felt so sad because she was turning away something so amazing, and she wouldn't even give it a chance. As we were walking away from that house, this scripture came to my mind: "Now when our hearts we depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: 'Go amongst thy brethren and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success.'" -Alma 26:27. The promise in that scripture is so real! For the next few days, Sister Hart and I returned to that same neighborhood and we were able to talk to SO many people who were nice and willing to talk to us! None of them turned into new investigators, but that doesn't matter, because we were able to teach and testify of Christ, and in doing so we were successful. Okay so here's the funny part about that lady; she told us that she would pray for our freedom from this religion that has bound us! She told us that we're still young so there's hope for us and for our freedom! People crack me up! Another guy that we ran into while we were tracting said something so funny! We asked him if he had ever met missionaries before and he said, "Ya, but it was post-rager so I was super hungover." #collegestudents. It was so funny! We also met another guy named Harry. He's a geology major at the university, so he started asking us all these questions about the church's standpoint was on a bunch of different sciency things. He asked us what the church's view was on evolution, and also what their view was on stem cell reproduction from jellyfish used in humans...or something really weird like that. We had no idea what to tell the dude. After all of that weird stuff, we told him about the Book of Mormon and gave him a copy. As soon as I handed him the book he took it and shoved it into his face and started to intensely smell it! It was SO weird haha. Tracting is probably the worst/funnest thing to do as a missionary.

So I can't remember if I've ever talked about Kendra before! We found her while we were trying to contact a former investigator. She is super sweet and is already very close to God. We taught her the first lesson on Saturday and she accepted the challenge to be baptized on March 26th! She told us that she feels like God sent her two angels and that she's finally at a point in her life where she's ready to receive what God has for her. Kendra is super awesome, and we are super excited for her!

Being a missionary is so awesome! I'm so happy that I decided to serve. It has changed my life and will forever be grateful that God called me here to Oregon. I love you all!

Love,

Sister Hanna

Here's the message we have been sharing since it was Valentine's Day.

1 John 4:7-12