Fall Begins in Cortez

Hello again family,
This week has been a pretty good week. We've had a lot of members available to join us for our lessons, which is a thing we really try to strive for. The more members the merrier. Although some appointments have fallen through with J---'s brother, D----who is having trouble quitting smoking but he thinks he'll be able to do it. Unfortunately, we will have to push back his baptism date, so now we only have one person on date for baptism. That's ok though. The elders had to help us with our care the other night because the tire pressure light wouldn't go away and we checked all the tires and they were fine so we were stumped. The elders came and took a look, didn't find a solution to that problem but helped flip over the spare tire under our truck so that way we wouldn't lose points on its next inspection.


We got to sing with the special needs today and one of the boys kissed my hand, such an honor.


Also our house is infested with earwigs so that's actually awful. I guess they really do crawl in your ears? That's what people keep saying. Way nasty. OH MY GOSH we had the crazies day yesterday. Friday's is when we spend the whole morning reviewing the lessons we gave the past week and planning for the lessons we will giving for the upcoming week, as well as set goals and such. Anyway we had all that done, we went to bingo and the next thing on the agenda was tracting a trailer home. We went there a couple days earlier and found a hidden less active member and gave away some Books of Mormon. So we decided to go back. We met a guy named G--- who sure liked to talk about Trump and other extremely political things for small talk, but he accepted a Book of Mormon.


We got some rejections and we were approaching the next door that we almost walked past cause there was no car but then there was a cute kitty so we knocked anyway. A Navajo woman, probably in her 30s answer the door and just kind of looks at us. We introduce ourselves and she just mumbles "I'm house sitting..." then another Navajo lady walks up to the door and just looks at us. We tell her we share a message about Jesus Christ and she explains how she is mad at God because her daughter  committed suicide 3 weeks ago. Of course both our hearts sink for her and we start trying to say words of comfort but next thing I know she is in Sister Stringham's arms crying. Bawling actually. Asking us why Heavenly Father would do this and then telling us how she has been trying to commit suicide herself. Of course Sister Stringham and I are extremely taken by surprise here but we do our best to comfort her. lots of hugging and wet shoulders, then we try to explain that she will see her daughter again and that her daughter made a choice and Heavenly Father couldn't take away her agency and intervene that situation. After she calmed down she said "come in, I want to talk to you" so all of the sudden we were sitting on her couch. Her name is J--- and her sister is I----. J--- shows us where to sit then takes a huge swig of vodka, then comes and sits next to us. She's pretty durnk. She tells us about how she basically drinks all the time. Her sister has had to stop her from drinking bleach and other harmful chemicals. Then she shows us where she has been shooting heroine. Her sister then explained how 10 minutes before we showed up, she had been praying for J---. They were both amazed how we came so shortly after her prayer. J--- cried to us a good amount. Told us the story of her daughter's suicide, then worked herself back up and stood up, walked over to the table, and shoved everything onto the floor. I was a little scared but mostly just so sad for the poor lady. S She kept telling us "I need help" and we know the gospel will help her. Well another unfortunate thing is, she hates Mormons because of bad past experiences. So Sister Stringham and I are lost as how to teach her but I just want to help her so bad. We helped her calm down and told her the message we share and what we could teach will provide comfort, as well as time and patience. We prayed and then after the prayer J--- said she wants us to come back. We left the trailer wide eyed and with no words.


 We are fasting today because we have no idea what to do, we called our zone leaders today and they gave us some good ideas. We are just praying that J--- is more open to Mormons and will start associating us with good things.


K--- got baptized today! I played the piano and even our zone leaders came.


(this is a summary of Sister Nilsson's week as her emails are about a mile long)