This Week I Made Worm Friends

Mom addition: 

1 Once again she didn't refer to her title in her post.  Her companion, Sister Shaffer, got some balloons from her mom.  Since they are shaped like worms, they named them all and Rachel loves them dearly. There is a picture at the bottom of this post.

2. For those of you who only read her updates here on the blog, I corrected her encouraging us all to smoke last week and the end of her letter.  So, you missed out on that one. I am pretty sure it was just a spell check thing.

Hello everyone!

Before anything else I would like to put into place a retraction from my last email. I would like to DISCOURAGE any smoking. Do not plan to smoke. All smiles no smoking! Replaces those smokes with smiles. That's officially my advice for this and last week, because smiles are good. Smoking is not. Thank you to everyone who expressed concern. :)

This has been quite the week, yet again.  We've been preparing for Sister Reed to go home, and just dropped her off today. We've spent a lot more time inside and packing than I would have liked, but we were able to get Sister agreed all packed and comfortable so it's all okay. :) We were also able to put aside a lot of time this week to do tracting. Besides planning tracting as a back up here and there I haven't really done any, so it was great getting the extra practice and we were able to meet a lot of really great people! We stopped by one potential, his name is Wes, and we talked to him for almost an hour in his front yard. As we left he said he had one final piece of marriage advice for us. And he then told us about his boys that he has in Trenton and his trailer of baseball bats and said that if any boy gives us trouble to call him and he'll take care of it. Hahahah, too good. :) We also today met a woman in the grocery store and I started talking to her and was able to give her a Book of Mormon! There are people everywhere that are waiting to receive the gospel! I promise and testify that when we open our mouths and are friendly then Heavenly Father will put words in our mouths that can touch these people! 

This upcoming week also marks my six months in the mission and boy, the time has flown by! I have loved every second of being out here. So in honor of my hitting six months and Sister Reed hitting 18 months, we had a fire and burnt our clothes. At six months Sisters burn tights, at a year it's a shirt, and at 18 months it's an outfit. Enjoy the pictures. :)

My mission president has also asked about miracles happening after 8:30. And since we're out of our area so much that time is typically just used for driving home. So I made it a goal to get into our area sooner so that we could end the day here. Friday night we had skipped dinner time so we were planning on just going in a little bit earlier and eating at home but I really felt like we needed to stay out until nine even though I didn't know what for, so I insisted and Sister Shaffer suggested we try a media referral who wasn't home the first time we tried him. We showed up with the requested Book of Mormon and I felt like we needed to add more to it, so I wrote a quick note, promising that it would bless his life, and placed it inside before heading to the door. He was home! And as we talked to him he told us that he was atheist but that he wanted to read and see what he thought about the Book of Mormon. He said he was curious and he gave us his email address and we should be teaching him really soon! It was such a testimony builder in the fact that first, miracles come after 8:30, and second, as we have the desire to be where He needs us, Heavenly Father will lead us to where we can do the most good. 

This upcoming week is also transfers! I am once again staying in the promised land of Philly 1st Ward. Five transfers here and I'm grateful for each one of them. :) It's actually super funny, I've been to every single transfer meeting (since the PPM is awesome and our transfers are a game show), but I haven't gone anywhere. I know that I'll be moving soon, but for now there must be a reason Heavenly Father needs me here so I'm going to do everything I can to make Him proud. :) 

I love you all! The Church is true! He Lives! And now it's time to share it!

Sister Petrick

Sister Reed and Sister Petrick burning their clothes

Sister Petrick, Sister Reed, Sister Shaffer tracting selfie

She didn't tell me about this one, but I like it still

Sister Petrick loving her "worm" friends, Sister Reed a little concerned