And Our Talents Improve....

Hello All!

Greetings from Orillia!  I hope that things are going well down south.  I hope that everybody is back into  the swing of things after the holidays (I mean, it's been a month....;).  Anyway….

We finally got an Investigator to come to church! And we had two of them! We have had 5 or more that have told us they were going to come for about a month, and somebody finally came through.  Jessica Haime came, and we, after church, went over to talk to her. She opened up a little bit about the two obstacles that she has to being baptized - Smoking and the Law of Chastity. She is cutting down on her smoking, and she wants to be done by the end of January. With the other, she is a little lost on what she should do about Andrew, her boyfriend, who is living with her. We advised her to keep reading from the scriptures and to keep praying. We suggested that she pray for understanding and direction, so she will know what to do. We will meet with her later this week and check on her progress. One of the problems that we have in meeting with her is the fact that she works in Barrie from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM. The only time she has at home is the weekend, and she spends a lot of that doing schoolwork. So it has been a little difficult to meet with her, but we are still trying to make it work, and praying that things will work out.

The other investigator that came to church is Kim Bell. She is the girlfriend of a less active member,  Justinn Coombs. They said they would come to church, and we arranged a ride for them, only to have them call us at 7:30 Sunday morning and say that they were taking their baby boy, Deacon, to the hospital. We tried to call and cancel the ride, but we were not able to get a hold of President and Sister Barber. So the ride went to pick them up anyway. Kim had just gotten back from the hospital (everything was fine) and so she came to church with their baby. Justinn didn't come, though. Kim liked the meeting and Deacon slept through the whole thing. That was one of her biggest worries, and he was absolutely fine. We went over there last night and talked about getting them married and Justinn said that he is
working on that. So hopefully in the near future....

We also met with Steve and Brittany yesterday. Brittany has read through 1 Nephi 15 and she prayed about it. She said that she "hasn't seen God or anything," but she "just feels that it is true." We taught them the Plan of Salvation and that sparked Steve's interest and he told us that he would start reading. That was good. We are meeting with them again on Friday. It has been a good week.

Things are going well here in Orillia. We are working on finding more people to teach, and that is a bit of a struggle, but that is how the work goes.  It is difficult to tract in this type of weather (Your nose falls off because it gets too cold), and there are not too many people out on the streets (small town + cold   weather = barren streets).  So we do what we can. How is everybody doing?  You know, I wouldn't have to ask this question if you had already told me....but anyway, here I sit....waiting for some piece of correspondence to come my way....(Thank you to those who have sent, by the way.  I severely enjoy it!)  But anyway....I love you and miss you all! Have a wonderful Week!

Your Obedient Servant,
Elder Austin James Ashcraft