March 21st

To All:
8 months! guess who has been out for 8 months? That seems like such a short amount of time, yet I'm almost to the half way point of my mission. It is going by so fast. This past week was good, we didn't accomplish everything I wanted to, but knowing that we did our best was satisfaction enough. We had zone conference this week and it was awesome. I love the trainings and the motivation to do the work that comes from the trainings. We now have sisters in our zone! hooray! The PEI sisters came and spent the night before zone conference the next day and it was so much fun. They are opening an area and just moved into an apartment with absolutely nothing, and no investigators or anything. It made me think of when I first came to Truro and I was opposite, our apartment was cluttered with Junk, mold, and dust, but like them we didn't really have any investigators. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. I grew so much in that period of time and it helped me be a better person. I think they'll be great, their branch has about 22 active people in it. I'm excited for them to see it grow just like I've been able to see Truro grow.
Our investigators are doing great. A neat experience happened with Greg. On Wednesday night we had an appointment with him and we were trying to get an answer from him whether he was going to come to church or not. We only have 2 lessons left to teach him, he's done with the Book of Mormon but he still won't come. We joke a lot with Greg, well he jokes a lot with us, but we told him we were serious about this yet he still wouldn't give an answer. He told us it was time to pray so he got on his knees, we didn't. We stayed where we were, I just felt like I shouldn't let him get off of the hook so easily. It was so frustrating, we finally just got on our knees prayed and left. The next day he called and said he had done some praying and that his answer was he was being too hard of heart and should be easier on us.That was a miracle right there! He was sick this Sunday and didn't come to church, but hopefully this means he'll come this week. He's stubborn, but so are we :) And he knows it, so hopefully he'll just give up his fears and come.
Heather, Jolene, and Wanda all came to church on Sunday. It was Jolene's first time at young women's and I think she liked it. I love seeing them learn. We go slower with them, because of some learning dissabilities, but I love seeing them understand and really grasp a concept. The other day we came in and Wanda said, "I was just reading here and I was thinking how cool it would have been to see the gold plates! I just wish I could have been there." It was something so small, but she really is enjoying reading from the Book of Mormon, I love it!
We had our relief society dinner on St. Patrick's day. That was a lot of fun. I love it because #1 there is always a lot of good food and #2 I love talking with the women of the branch. Wanda, Heather, and Jolene all came to that as well and they had a really good time. We each were assigned a General Relief Society president of the past and were given a brief biography to recite to the rest of the group. I was Eliza R. Snow. I was so excited because I learned a bit about her in my LDS history class with Sister Black. I have such respect for these women, they really did a lot and their lives were not easy.It was neat to learn more about them.
Yesterday we took a member out tracting with us. It was so fun. We took her to an appointment but it fell through and so instead she just came out knocking doors with us for 2 hours. She loved it. We kept knocking into people she knew too. Although we didn't get into a door, it was really neat to see her like it. We met one lady, Tammy, and Sister Mingo kept saying, "I felt something about her, maybe she'll check out the website and then get baptized!" It's so fun to see members enjoy missionary work. We also had branch council this week and I'm so excited for our new branch president, President Mahoney. He really has the vision of missionary work, we talked about less actives, our investigators, and recent converts and talked about how we can help them. It's nice to see the branch even more on board with helping us in the work.
Well I hope you all have a wonderful week! Thank you for all of the birthday wishes too! The gospel is true and we do have a living prophet on the earth today!

Love,
Sister Crane