April 28

Hello family,

I hope you are doing well, I know this week was a blessing for me.
Sister Gunther are going to have to work extra hard on building trust
with our ward and specifically the leadership to repair damage done by
others but this week we learned a very valuable lesson from our ward
mission leader. He reminded us that missions are hard, but if they
were not hard it would not help carry us to salvation. And we need to
remember why we are out here and what we are doing whether or not we
have the support of the ward. Also, we must not forget that there are
a lot of people running on fumes spiritually right now - everyone can
do something we just need to help them figure out what they can
contribute.

This week I taught my first stop smoking lesson (Amber just wanted to
do it on her own- more power to her I guess). We went over it with
Sherman and Venita who had it before but wanted to go over it again,
and we walked out of that lesson feeling good and uplifted..... But
two hours after our lesson which they committed at they were cleaning
and found a pack of cigarettes under the bed and smoked it! :(
Disappointing. And they no showed to church twice now. We might have
to give them a good break for a while.... We love them but they are
tripping over their own shoelaces stunting their own progression.
Amber is still going strong on not smoking and suddenly has gotten
back to exercising (no coincidence there ;) ) and she wants to do one
of those color 5k runs and us to do it with her. We think that would
be way fun but we have to see if it is approved. Our RS ward run was
postponed a whole month!
Sorry, not much else new this week. Transfers is tomorrow and they are
taking out the sisters we live with and one set of elders out of our
ward. But Sister Gunther and I are not moving anywhere and I am very
happy about that. :) We will be alone in our apartment, which will be
very weird for me but I think it will be better for those other
sisters because their area was a hard one for them. We will have 2
missionaries in the room now but still 5 beds! Not sure how the car
situation will go now because we car shared with them but no one is
coming in.
We still are having little adventures all the time, like when I caught
a frog with my hands and we named him Pahoran and we took off our
shoes and cut across a creek because it would save us a mile or two on
the greenway home. Most of the time we aren't that crazy though -
probably just one out of seven days. ;)
Ok, I think I don't have anything else to write about. Have a good
week and enjoy your cool weather. I heard it is still snowing
occasionally back in Utah? Here it is mildly hot and humid just
getting ready for the big stuff. Our apartment is so humid though that
mold was growing on the outside of my shoes and they weren't stuffed
in a corner behind anything but out in the open!

Love,
Sister Rust

Pahoran the frog we caught at our complex