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Words cannot describe how great this week was!!!!! The Lord is so good!!!!!!! So last week, we set a goal to beat the mission record in lessons, which was 52 in one week. Well.... Here's how the week went:

Mon. - 2 lessons, one of them was with a worker at the bank that my companion was working with. Haha the other was dinner.

Tues. - What a crazy day! We went on splits for 6 hours at different times of the day and we accomplished a lot!! By lunch time, we already had 2 hours of service and 4 lessons. We got 10 more lessons throughout the day for a total of 14.

The service we did was for the Patrick family. Their neighbors, who are members, referred us to them and they have had the missionary discussions in the past. Well, we offered service and they took us up on it. It was really good! They are golden!

We met a wonderful lady named Karen as we were walking around contacting. She was lovely. She is working on becoming a Christian counselor for children and we talked for a little while about God and she was so nice! She appreciated the work we are doing and was commenting about how exhausting it can be when we are serving the Lord full time and both me and Sister Gregerson were thinking, "You have no idea lady!" Haha but it was a really good chat and it was really uplifting too. We got her number and she said to text her and let her know about activities that are church is having and she'd love to come to some when she can.

Wed. - We did service all morning and afternoon and had 0 lessons by 5pm... Our goal was 9 for the day. So we kept praying and praying and we reached 9 lessons exactly by the end of the night!

One of the services we did was mucking out a horse stall!!! it was so fun!!! It brought back good memories. I've been wanting to muck out stalls for service my entire mission, and never got the chance till now! We were in the stall and I told my companions, "Sisters, this is what heaven will be like." It made my day! 

Wednesday is when we really started our new and wonderful thing. Drumroll...... We've started singing to everyone!! EVERYONE!!! It's so great! People we contact, we ask if we can practice our singing with them and then we talk about the song we sang and pray with them at the end. And they feel the spirit super strong! We've been told about 4 times this week that we should make a record. Haha

Thurs. - We had Zone Training Meeting in the morning, but after that, we went to the Veteran's Hospital to visit a member we go see every week, Glen, but when we got there, he was in the middle of a procedure and would be for another 15 mins. So we asked the nurses if there was anyone we could visit that would like company and maybe a song. She was going through list of guys and then she said, "oh! I got it! You should go see Mr. Tullis!" Well, we did and it turns out that he is a less active member of the church! Miracle! He was born in Utah and he quite going to church when he was younger. He was so sweet! And we sang to him and got to know him and he even agreed to let us come back next week!

We also met a few other guys there too and sang to them and asked if we could come visit them again. That place is a gold mine! And Glen was looking so much better this week! It was so good.

We ended up with 11 lessons by the end of the day. 

Fri. - We met with Effie, the Greek Orthodox investigator. It went very well! We talked a little bit about the Plan of Salvation. She's so cool. I think the only problem with her and her husband is going to be when it comes down to it is the culture. They already believe a lot of the same things we are sharing with them.

We got 7 lessons on Friday.

My MTC companion, who was serving here in the Livermore zone with me, called me Friday night and told me that she was going home the next day. :( It was a very sad night. She had to go home because she's been having problems with her jaw and they needed to do an emergency surgery, but she only had 4 weeks left till she went home, so they just sent her home to get it done. I was so sad. I won't even be able to spend my last night in the mission field with my MTC companion. 

Sat. - We had dinner with a member of the stake presidency and I was so close to convincing him that I'd only been out a little over a year. No luck! My companions ratted me out. But it was good. He's so cool. After dinner, we went on splits with the STLs because they needed our help. It's a long story, but I got to go to Pleasanton! They cover the sisters there too and they were having a meeting with them and I was talking to the sisters that are working with my recent convert, maybe you remember her, Grandma Shirley. Well, sad news. She doesn't claim she's a mormon anymore. :( the sisters told me that she told them that she "Found herself in her cross." It broke my heart. I was going to ask her to speak at my outgoing fireside, but the sisters told me that she was at least going to the outgoing. So I've decided that when I speak at it, I will be focusing on her. I don't understand how people can come to know that this church is true and then fall away so fast! But at least Shirley is still meeting with the sisters. They are reading the Book of Mormon with her. So hopefully that works!

We ended Saturday with a total of 8 lessons.

Sun. - Well Sunday was great! My companions each got their own sacrament cups. We went on splits for church so it wasn't as crazy as last week. Which was great! We accomplished a lot and got home at 9:15 with 11 lessons for the day! Which, if you haven't been keeping track, is a total of 62 lessons for the week!!!!!!!! We beat and exceeded the mission record!!!! Not only did we do that, but all of our other numbers were bomb too! We got the standards of excellence in every single category of key indicators!

As you can see, it was an amazing week! But, you know, we could not have done it without the Lord. We prayed so hard this week and we saw several of our prayers answered. We even prayed to have a car full time one day, and we got it the next. It was sad circumstances that we got it under, but it happened. We have seen so many miracles this week and I know that it is because the Lord is blessing us for our hard work! This transfer has been the best and it will continue to be, but I will be sad when it's done.

I love being a missionary so much! It's the best thing in the world! This work is so good and so true! I wish everyone in the whole world would just do what so many people have done and ask God if it's true! Life would be so much easier for them!

Well, I love you all! And go out and have a wonderful week!

Love,
Sister Swapp