November 1st, 2015

Happy belated Halloween!!!! It's been a good week out here in Michigan!

Transfer calls were last Friday and it looks like I will be spending another transfer here in Bay City with Sister Chatman as my companion! We are more than excited! She goes home in December so it's looking like I will kill her off, which we are both grateful for because we love each other! Another  transfer together was needed. At the end of October things seemed to be falling apart and we needed an opportunity to set some new goals and standards for ourselves. So hopefully this next transfer will end a little better. It was weird writing December down in our calendars! Where has the year gone!?

At the beginning of the week Mario, the really golden Hispanic investigator, dropped us. We were both pretty bummed about that, but it just wasn't the right time for him. At least we were able to plant some good seeds. A lot of the time people will say to us on door steps, "You are wasting your time" but time is never wasted when you are doing the Lord's work. And when one door closes the Lord always opens another one. That night we got a call from Kalle Martinez. She is 16 years old and has been in and out of lessons with missionaries. She called us to ask if we wanted to play basketball with her and her family on Halloween. Of course we said yes, sister Chatman was beyond excited. Kalle's father was excommunicated and his working on being re-baptized and his girlfriend and their kids are all wanting to take discussions and be baptized as well. All last transfer we were trying to build a relationship with this family and had zero luck. The basketball invite was a total breakthrough!

So Halloween rolls around and we are getting pretty pumped to play. I haven't played basketball since freshman year, so you could say I was feeling a bit rusty. Well a bit rusty was an UNDERSTATEMENT!  We show up to play at Kalle's high school and her and her family are all warming up and look like pros...Here I am with my leggings and Nike Frees looking like a complete idiot while Sister Chatman whips our her BYU gear she was sent and new basketball high tops. I couldn't help but think that this was about to get realllll embarrassing. So they split up the teams and there's a missionary rule where comps have to guard each other so I was guarding Sis Chatman who is 5'11". She was stomping ALLLL over me! And my team was full of Martinez's who were pulling out all these plays and sneaky passes. I literally was running around in circles trying not to get in their way. The game was wayyyyy too fast paced for me and soooo hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing and ran away from the passes thrown at me because the dad was CHUCKING THEM at me! Good times though and we built some pretty good relationships. I swear the things missionaries do for people...We will bend over backwards and humiliate ourselves for people.

Last night I held a tarantula!  For those of you who don't know I am soooo scared of spiders so this was very uncharacteristic of me. The spider belonged to a 22 year old in our ward and he practically forced me into it. The tarantula was huge, soft, fuzzy, named cuddles, I was sweating and crying and screaming, and will never do I again.

Love you all, God is Good, and have a good week!

Sister Viehweg

Investigator Sherry

Tarantual