Another smashing week in Irvine!

Hiya!
This week we did exchanges with the Beith sisters.  Me and Sister Birch went with Sister Francis in Beith and Sister Ashdown went with Sister Passey in Irvine.  I loved Beith! To me, it's the epitome of a wee traditional Scottish village.  Narrow cobblestone streets and old wee shops.  Very hilly.  The Beith sisters opened that area 12 weeks ago so basically all they do is finding.  It's crazy--they only have 20 people come to church on a good day! I realized how lucky we are to have a ward of 120ish in Irvine.  We did a lot of chapping and street contacting while we were there.  A couple funny stories from that.  One door we chapped this really tall lady with big red hair opened the door and as soon as she saw our name tags flung her arms out wide and shouted, "Hail fellow worshippers of Jesus, halelujah!" It was pretty funny and I almost started laughing. After we started to talk to her we learned that she'd been taught by the missionaries before but that she's not interested because she has her own religion--Born Again Christian.  She was very polite though.  Another time we chapped this door and met a lady who was a Jehovah's Witness.  She wasn't interested in our message at all and she believed in some very strange things but she was probably one of the nicest persons I've met!  And we did find some common things between our religions.  Oh, also we leave a mormon.org card in people's chapping boxes with our number on it when they don't answer.  Usually nothing happens from this but we actually got a text from someone who says they are atheist but is curious about our beliefs.  Hopefully something happens from this!

Another funny thing is when the Beith sisters opened the area the ward was so excited to have missionaries that they put this big announcement about it in the newspaper.  It said "The Sisters are Here!" or something like that. Anyway, ever since then they've kind of been treated like celebrities and they'll have random people as they drive by honk at them and wave.  We had a few people do that to us while we were there. I felt pretty cool.:)

We had transfer calls yesterday and me, Sister Birch, and Sister Passey are staying together for another 6 weeks! I was excited about that.  Our new district leader is Elder Crosby, who is actually friends with a girl I worked with at Jamba Juice.  Our new zone leaders are Elder Thompson and Elder James.  We're having 25 new missionaries coming in with only 19 leaving.  So there's now about 180ish missionaries in Scotland and Ireland!

Something really cool happened this week.  We talked to a man on the street and he said that many years ago he met with the missionaries.  One of them gave his wife a Book of Mormon that a family (who were members) from his home town had written their name and address in.  They asked that whoever got the Book of Mormon would write them a letter just so they would know where it had ended up.  So his wife wrote the family and they ended up being pen pals for over 30 years! They never joined the church but I think that's such a cool story.  And now they have these good friends that are members!

Yesterday President Brown and his wife spoke at our Sacrament meeting.  That was really neat although they didn't mention missionary work at all which surprised me.  They both talked about the importance of families and it was really good to hear--especially because of how much the family is being attacked and degraded in society today. 

So this Wednesday we're having our P-day (besides emailing) since none of us are moving and I'm really excited because a member  is taking us around to see some historical sites in Irvine and we're also probably going to see the beach and the castles there! Should be fun!

Sister Jackson