Last P-day was a ball! After we were all done emailing, our whole district got together and played basketball! Well, really just our district leader and his companion drove up, because our district consists of the zone leaders, the elders in Carlton, and us. It was fun! We took some great pictures.
One of the zone leaders let us borrow a couple of his Insanity DVDs!!!!!!!! (If you aren’t familiar with Insanity, they’re workout videos, like P90X on steroids. “Dig deeper!!”) The day we got them, I kept saying, “Sister Gotchy, guess what?! We get to do INSANITY tomorrow!!” Going to bed that night was like Christmas Eve. Bless Sister Gotchy’s heart, she actually got up with me! At the end of the workout, she said that it looked pretty intense. I told her that she had only stayed awake for the warm-up. She committed to doing it with me the next day. The next morning, she said, “You’re too sore to do Insanity this morning, right?” I told her not at all! She did catch me limp/waddling, but we did it anyway! Then we had to rest for a couple days so we’d be able to play basketball on Saturday.
Having established our efforts at staying in shape, I feel like I can dedicate this next paragraph to chocolate. I think I mentioned that we do eat a lot of chocolate. One night, we got home late and were hungry. Setting my stuff down, I said, “So now I’m going to eat all the chocolate that I can find.” I heard a sort of laugh, and looked over into the living room to see Sister Gotchy gnawing on a chocolate bunny. That cracked me up. We got a call from a member letting us know that he and his wife had a service project they’d like some help with. We hadn’t seen this member in a little while, in fact, the last time we visited, we’d almost eaten the entire Whitman’s Sampler chocolate box they put out on their coffee table, and I was a little concerned that maybe they were bothered by those sister missionaries who ate all their chocolate. (Not that this is a unique episode; some other families we visit seem to fill their candy bowls before we come knowing we will empty them by the time we leave . . . and if we don’t, they dump the rest into a ziploc bag for us to take home!) Well, this brother let us know that the service wouldn’t take long, and we would be able to do it in our proselyting clothes. So we found an evening to go over, chatted a bit, and then the brother asked his wife, “Well, did you tell them about the service?” Then he pulled out a box of chocolates. “We need you to help us eat this,” he said. We laughed and laughed! They people in this ward definitely know how to get the sisters to come visit!!
Another quick story about the sweet, thoughtful members here: one of the older members in the ward saw us in the church building one day and asked how we were doing. “You looked like something was wrong the other day, and I’ve been worried about you.” We had been pretty stressed on the day he was referring to. He told us that he knew missions are hard and told us a couple stories from his mission years ago. Then on Sunday, he called us over and said he had something for us. He gave us each a bag of goodies: candies (chocolate, of course), and a big frosted sugar cookie with the lift bridge and the word “Duluth” in icing. He gave us a gift certificate to a local restaurant, and –“This is gold,” he said–contact info for his neighbor who would like to meet with us! As a missionary, that is the best thing a ward member can give us!
Oh, and now one about our zone leaders. They had to go up to Thunder Bay, Canada for part of the week. When they got back, they left a grocery sack hanging from one of our car door handles. Inside was a Wunderbar, another (gluten-free) candy bar, and two Kinder eggs. Kinder eggs are, as I understand, illegal in the U.S. because of the small, choking-hazardous parts in the chocolate shell. So, naturally, they are the cool thing for missionaries to bring back from Canada. I thought about trying to send it home, but then it started breaking apart in my bag, so I opened it . . . and now I have an awesome mini plastic toy!! (I’m not quite sure what it is exactly).
We got to visit a member at his biochem lab at UMD one evening — I felt kind of nostalgic. I kind of wanted to pipette something.
I wanted to share something that has made me feel happy and grateful. We have had a couple experiences that could potentially feel daunting: one of our investigators told us that a friend has been showing her anti-mormon literature, and another individual we have been working with has a family member who wanted to ask us some questions–she did not seem very supportive. In both these situations, I felt very calm and confident. Paul says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ”(Romans 1:16), and that’s how I feel. I feel confident in the gospel and confident that the Spirit will help me teach as I listen and do not do anything that would bring contention. 2 Timothy 1:7 “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
One of my favorite lessons this week was with an investigator who, until very recently, considered himself atheist. It was awesome to be able to teach about our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, why we need him, and what His Atonement and Resurrection means for us. We also taught about prayer and our relationship with our Father in Heaven. His prayer at the end of the lesson was really neat. It is so wonderful to remember who we are, why our lives are significant, and that we matter to God.
P.S. Please note that the picture last week was of Sister Gotchy and me with ROOT beer bottles.
Sister Winters 
Love it!!!
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