Sister Kirsten Leslie: Livin' Life on the Edge

Helllooooo again! It seems like a while since I've written to you to tell you of all our adventures. Get prepared: there were some good ones this week!!

Tuesday I felt a bit better, which was nice because in the morning, we went to the Interpretive Historic Trails Center (we cut our P-day short on Monday so we could go to this. Our Mission President really wanted us to go check it out.). The Center is all about the 3 trails that went through Casper, the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail (woohooooo!!!), and the California trail. It was pretty cool. It was fun to learn about all those trails. It wasn't like the most exciting thing I've ever seen, but it was cool. Later that afternoon we went on exchanges. I went with Sister Willis, and I stayed in my area. For those of you who don't know what exchanges are, exchanges are when we switch companions with another companionship for a period of 24 hours. This helps us to learn from other sisters and to break up the monotony of life. (Elders have exchanges with elders). Because my companion, Sister Burt, is the Sister Training Leader, Me and her do exchanges with all other companionships of sisters in our zone (which comprises of Casper, Douglas,Glenrock and Lusk), which is 3 other sets. So we do 3 exchanges! So Tuesday was the first of the 3 of these for us. I stayed in my area with Sister Willis and Sister Burt went to the other area with Sister Jackson. I hope that makes sense. It was an okay exchange. Both the appointments we had set up for the exchange fell through, so we did a bunch of tracting. This week, it's been really hot, so it was kinda miserable. But not bad. We didn't find a huge tone of success, but we did find some people, namely a cool potential named Steven. So overall, it went fairly well.

Wednesday, Sister Burt and I were together for like 3 hours before we started another exchange. This time I was with Sister Bentley, again in my area. This exchange was AWESOME!! We had 5 appointments on Thursday, which is the most appointments I've ever had in one day on my whole mission so far. It was so cool!!! We even got like an hour and a half of tracting in as well. It was super sweet. We met with Teresa again, and that was pretty good. We're still trying to determine her interest level, but for now she treats us nicely and likes meeting with us. We also met with the Watsons, and it was the least distracting lesson I've ever had with them! It was awesome! Sister Watson and Sarah were very involved and not distracted at all pretty much, which was great. Sarah was on fire, she had just gone on a girl's camp hike and she had felt the Spirit so much! She was glowing, and that was good to see. She's been struggling lately, so it was awesome to see her so happy. Next we met with Lisa, and it went really well. She was also really happy and laughing a lot. We had an appointment with the Winterton family that night, and we wanted to meet at a member's home. We didn't have the right phone number for the Wintertons, so we couldn't call them about it, so we needed to stop by. We got a ride form a member, and while we were waiting for her to get there, we took a picture in front of the Poplar Church Building (There are 3 here in Casper). AT the Winterton's door, it was quite the adventure because the 4 year old and the 3 year old answered the door, and both parents were sleeping, so we tried to convince the kids to bring us a crayon or something so we could write the parents a note. After about 10 minutes, we wrote the note and left, a bit worried if the appointment was going to go through. We came home, ate dinner, and then went to the Farrer's, the member family. The Winterton's were there!! It was a good lesson, not my best ever, but good. We talked about keeping the Sabbath Day Holy and it went pretty good. But out best appointment was with the Kler's right after. Brother Kler was baptized almost a year ago and he wants to get to the temple, so we are helping him with that. And to all new converts, we have the discussions with them again to help them continuing to build their faith and endure to the end. We taught the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it was powerful. His wife and her son were very involved, and they bore powerful testimony of The Book of Mormon and how they know it's true. The Spirit was so strong in the lesson and it helped the family, I believe. Thursday was a great day.

Friday was the 4th of July and our Mission President, President Anderson, gave all missionaries permission to watch the fireworks that night! Because of our missionary schedule, we are always in by 9, or if we are in an appointment, 9:30, so getting permission to stay out later than that was weird. We went to the fireworks with Elder Wilkinson and Elder Telford, and it was cool. We took the truck up and backed it into a spot and then all sat there to watch the show. Awesomely and randomly enough, we sat by members. Cool! We watched them from Casper College, so we didn't have to brave the crowds and traffic of the events center. It was really fun! Sister Burt got to a little bit of tracting before the fireworks, and it was quite interesting. It was the first time I have been cussed out on my mission and told by some Born Again Christian lady that Sister Burt needed to"find Jesus and be saved". She didn't like our approach that we must have works with our faith in order to be saved. I always think it's funny when people believe in the Bible and yet don't understand when Christ says, "Faith without works is dead."

So this week it has been like a MILLION degrees, and it's really weird for me to get used to after such a long, cold, winter. Saturday it was about 95 degrees and Sister Burt and I went tracting for 3 hours. We went in 2 separate hour and a half sections separated by a 45 minute crash session at the Poplar Church Building. I'm pretty sure I got heat exhaustion. Yuck. But we made it and I got a sweet tan! We didn't see as much success as we wanted to, but it felt good to be out working our hardest. Since I was sick last week, we haven't been able to work our hardest because I've been recovering.

So this week was pretty cool and full of fun adventures!! I hope I successfully communicated all of them to you. Thank you all for your prayers and help!

sister leslie.