hello loving family! another week come and gone i don't understand how it happens. did i say that last week? probably. i don't remember. this week was awesome of course. every week is the best. every night i collapse in bed and every morning....mornings are a struggle. but don't worry dad i'm obedient. just an obedient zombie that has to keep jake's wedding in the back of my mind in order to go running and exercise throughout the week...

anyway. miracles of the week!

went on an exchange with a sister from our zone and saw a miracle while proselyting that reminded us of the reason why we "talk to everyone" as missionaries. we were walking on the street just on our way to drop something off at a less actives house and we said hi to a lady walking the opposite direction as us. something about her was different so instead of just passing by i turned around and tried to keep talking to her. she turned back around too and we introduced ourself as missionaries. she asked me if i had something to give her and i said well actually we teach about this book called the Book of Mormon and she said oh you're the Mormon church? I've been wondering about what you believe. do you have time right now? do you want to go get some coffee and talk? Trying to hide our excitement we said of course (don't worry once we got to the cafe we told her we don't drink coffee and we got hot chocolate instead) and went to the nearest cafe where we taught her the first lesson! Got her contact information and set an appointment for Saturday. But we ran into a stumbling block: we called the number and it wasn't her. it was some man that had no idea what i was talking about. We were disappointed but no need to fear! she told us where she lives. except she didn't tell us the apartment number. we knew the apartment name and the building and the floor but not the actually apartment number. So we went finding!! there were 6 different apartments on her floor. Friday we went and three people answered that weren't her and the other ones didn't answer. I was freaking out because I was like what the heck where is this woman??? So we went to try again last night the three other houses that didn't answer and the first one we rang at was her house!! So we met with her again last night and she's the greatest! :) Has great potential. Her name is Sister Shin.

another miracle. sister stout and i did a TON of less active finding (we have a lot of old addresses for less actives and we don't know if they actually live them. yeah the records here are a little....yeah. anyway) so one night we headed out to do that and then we were going to visit a potential investigator later that night. but Sister stout ended up getting a little lost and we ended up near the potential investigators house first. it wasn't our plan but we just decided we were there so we should go with the flow and visit her first. good thing we did because she was home!!! she said she was just planning on going out to exercise and if we didn't come just then we would have missed her because she wouldn't have been home. uhm miracle? yes. (coincidence? I think NOT!) so we taught kind of a lesson and picked her up as an investigator! her name is Sister Seo

We haven't met Luleka again. We text her but she doesn't text back so....yeah we'll keep trying with her. Our Catholic investigator (Sister Jeong) is super Catholic and fed us a really weird lunch so we're not sure if we should keep going back...

We had a special sacrament meeting yesterday. I got to perform a musical number with a famous Russian celloist! yeah i'm legit. thanks mom for keeping me in piano lessons. Anyway like a ton of less actives came to church yesterday and it was a really good day! ate lunch with our ward after church and had a grand ole time.

Lastly, I just wanted to share with you a few thoughts about what I thought about this week in personal study. I've started studying the chapter about Christlike Attibutes in PMG and the other day I studied about virtue. I was looking in the TG and it led me to read the story of Ruth. It says that Boaz was happy to marry her because everyone knew she was a virtuous woman. So I read about her and thought about her dedication to her family and her willingness to help Naomi because she loved her so much. She served her mother in law and wanted to keep serving her. Virtue is something that comes from inside and can be reflected by our actions. What are our thoughts and our desires and what do they lead us to DO? It's important who we are but it's also important that who we are leads us to DO things that reflect that. It's important that we are like the Savior but we need to ACT like the Savior. Do as He would do. I was studying faith this morning and I feel like I have learned the most about faith on my mission. I don't have perfect faith but I feel like I understand faith and I understand what we need to do help our faith grow. That's a really important lesson I'm learned on my mission. My MTC teacher had us write a letter in the MTC to ourself that she would send to us when we had 3 months left on our mission. Well believe it or not that time has come so I got the letter a couple of weeks ago. she told us to write something we didn't want to forget. So this is what I wrote:

Caitlin never forget the lessons the Spirit taught you about faith in the MTC. Your faith will carry you through the darkest of times IF you choose to exercise it. Your faith will bring you many blessings IF you choose to exercise. Your faith will bring you hope IF you choose to exercise it. Caitlin exercise your faith in every way you know how. Now and for the rest of your life. Know that Christ is your Savior. He has and WILL save you always. Every promise will be fulfilled if you are faithful.

faith is so important. and it is SO important that we actively work to strengthen our faith in our Savior. I hope you are doing things in your daily life to strengthen your faith! and I hope you are doing your part in helping the Lord in the work of salvation, whatever that may be. Help the missionaries in your area! Love you so much!! Til next week :))

 Pic 1: yeah eaten alive.

2: my dress broke in the middle of the day

3: after our miracle lesson!

4: sister stout and i pigging out

Sister Blick