Week 46 - In a Ditch

What the week! It was a good one, we have someone wanting to get baptized in... (wait for it) December  but it may take that long to get her ready anyways, and apparently her friend wants to get baptized that day as well! We'll see where that goes...

They both came to church Sunday, in fact we had technically 9 nonmembers there! Not bad for a little branch that usually has 20-30 people attend each week.  (It might have helped that I promised homemade cinnamon rolls.) Our recent convert Rita brought her nephew and his wife and 2 kids. She is such a good missionary! She just shares what she believes and has helped her with her friends and family. And usually she's not doing anything out of the ordinary she's just not HIDING her beliefs! All of us as members are the most powerful finding source. If we had knocked on her nephew's door the chance of him letting us come back are so much slimmer than someone he knows sharing what she believes. Members are the key! Please don't hide your beliefs under a bushel!

March 1st was Sister Mayer's birthday, so we got to celebrate at church and then with lots of fun goodies that she got from home and that the branch members and our new senior couple, the Purcell's, provided for us.  

Our new senior couple, the Purcell's, from Tremonton, Utah
 (he's an eye doc just like my Dad!).

Happy Birthday, Sister Mayer!

Also this week we had MLC in Liverpool, NY which is about a 3 hour drive. I met up with Sister Snow to do a companion swap and then head to Liverpool.  Well, in a tiny strip of NY near Watertown they got dumped on. Literally, they got 48 inches of white fluffy stuff, and we had to drive through it . We may have slid into a ditch (even with using 4-wheel drive) and got really stuck in 4 ft of snow. It was such a whiteout that we couldn't even see that we had slid right next to a fire station!  

After about an hour of hand shoveling snow from around our car (without a shovel or any instrument besides our hands) a guy from the fire station comes over and gets his big tractor plow to pull us out. Well he ends up sliding into a ditch too! Soo then a second one had to come and pull the first tractor out THEN pull us out. It was a mess! And because we were literally hand shoveling snow we were completely soaked and frozen--we were a mess. The craziest thing is that this was the only part of our travels that had this much snow--we left with NO snow, and right after Watertown, there was no snow again.  It was just this unique little stretch of New York.  But we got a conquering hero's cheer when we made it to MLC two hours late! Haha. There was NO snow anywhere except that one city and of course we got stuck there. I think the real miracle is that Heavenly Father kept me calm and collected. Everyone kept asking me if it was scary or if I was worried about driving after something like that and I was honestly okay! I think he had something to do with that because I'm definitely a freak out-er. I've definitely learned how to go with the flow a LOT more since coming on a mission!

Proof we made it to MLC!

It was definitely one for the books, Sister Snow! 
We made it to MLC looking like drowned rats, but what an adventure!

Hope everyone has a great week and is getting excited for SPRING! This next week is going to be an exciting one so stay tuned....

Ready to get to work in Massena again :)

Love, Sister Potts 

FUN FACTS:

1. Shortly after the three and the 8 witnesses, the translation was complete! The last thing to be translated was actually the title page. 

2. It was done around the end of June and then they had to find a printer.

3. They contracted with EB Grandin to print the Book of Mormon in August, and printing started soon after.

4. The first copies of the Book of Mormon were put for sale about 7 months later, on March 26 and.....

5. 10 days later everyone was BACK at the Whitmer farm for next week's topic- the Organization of the Church!