So any guesses on what happened?! Sister Haws and I got our call so late last night we almost went to bed. It was so nerve-wracking because anything could happen. There are more young sisters now than senior sisters and next transfer we're getting new ones. There is one trio, but it could get crazy next transfer. Sister Haws and I are both staying in E. Wenatchee! I'm so relieved and excited. I was scared she would leave, but not anymore :) 6 more weeks of teasing, knocking, and teaching. I'm super excited.

I am now an official missionary. I have worn out a pair of boots. The souls are wearing thin and one detached from the rest of the boot. Being the experts in Shoe-Goo that we are, because Sister Haws always has holes in her boots, we shoe-gooed it up and it's holding together pretty well. But I'll probably buy a new pair soon because I have one more winter to go through and these probably won't last :( Yep I'm a missionary.

So this wekk was pretty slow until the weekend. We actually had 6 lessons in a row! It was amazing! Maria y Eutiquio Lopez: we were really worried because they had major marital problems and were not really progressing. Last week they got a real talking to from Brother Ramos and it has turned them completely around. They aren't fighting, he's not drinking, we asked them to read Ether 12 together and they did and chapters 13, 14, and 15. We were so amazed. Of course they were all the nasty gorey chapters, but they read! The members are going to be huge in helping them.

Alberto y Mari: These two hadn't been progressing either and we again were worried about them. Last lesson we talked about the Sabbath day again, they haven't been to church in a while, and Mari told us she's really confused. She's staunch Catholic, but now she doesn't know which church is true. She really love our Church, but she was raised Catholic and it's everything she knows. We shared with her Moroni 10:3-5 and promised that she would get her answer. We were so excited because we know why she's confused. She knows this is the true church, but she's scared to change. I'm so excited!

Garrett Minski: He is getting baptized this Saturday! My first baptism! He's so awesome. He knows and learns so much and the lessons have really helped his mom who has been struggling.

We tracted into a ton of Atheists and Agnostics this week. I really do not understand them. I cannot even imagine how somehow could not believe there is a God. God is in everything! We actually got to teach one named Jeff. He fought in Vietnam, had a stroke and is partially paralized, he is separated, and doesn't ever get to see his daughter. He has the saddest life ever. He said he doesn't know if there is a God because if there was why didn't He love him. Why did He cause him so much pain. It was the saddest thing ever. But we gave him a Book of Mormon and promised him he would find happiness. He said he would read it and if he found any happiness we could come back. So sad.

Well life is good, this transfer is going to be great, my companion is the best, and I love you all. This church is so true. Everything is evidence of that.

Write please :)

Love Sister Probst

Yes, it is once again snowing. It had been an absolutely glorious week up into the 60s and we had plans to go up to Chelan today to go to a Lake and it had to snow :( I feel like the weather here is just as bipolar as in Utah. Weird.

So I was thinking everyone must have lost my address because of the lack of letters so I'm going to give it to you again :) Because I may be transferred soon this is the best address to write to because it is the mission office and they will forward any mail I might happen to get to me from there.
Hermana Probst
820 S. Pines Rd. Ste. 101
Spokane Valley, WA 99206

So this also happens to mark the last P-day of this transfer and that I am done with training! Woohoo! I am no longer a greeny. Who knows where I could go next or if I stay here, but Sister Haws and I are pretty sure one of us is going to leave. Which is sad because I will miss her. Everybody thinks we're actual sisters which gets pretty fun. We definitely finish each others' thoughts now which is kind of creepy so maybe it's a good thing we could be separated.

Last Wednesday we had the first ever Sisters Training in Spokane. They've never done one in this mission before and it was pretty awesome. We got to wake up at 4 in the morning to leave to get there by 9. Yes, it was a long drive and a long day but so worth it. We got to know all the other sisters in the mission which is 39. Sister Palmer trained us on how to work with Less Actives which was so helpful. It's always confusing to know how to treat less Actives - like investigators or members? We're supposed to treat them like investigators and give them commitments and everything. They talked a lot about making sure we have a purpose with every visit we have and to be bold. It was so great and so helpful. They had the mission director of counseling and whatnot come and talk to us about how to deal with stress. Probably the most useful bit was that when people try to dump their problems (compared to a jelly fish) on us and make us solve them just point out what an interesting problem they have and ask what they're going to do with their problem. It was so helpful! Because so many times all the people we teach just dump all their problems and sins and everything on us. It's hard not to get overwhelmed sometimes. But all we can do is teach the doctrine and let men govern themselves. We can't do it for them. I'll take care of my jelly fish they can take care of theirs. Our ride got lost on the way home and so a 3 hour drive turned into over 4 hours! We were pretty stir crazy, but it definitely gave us plenty of time to contemplate what we had learned.

Investigators: Maria and Eutiquio: we were feeling pretty overwhelmed with these two until after the training. We realized we had taken all their drinking and marital problems on ourselves and weren't letting them take care of their own jelly fish. They are super anti-social and so they don't like us to bring over ward members very often. So we did anyway and it was great because Hermano Ramoz really stuck it to them. He said they both are creating problems in their marriage, Tiquio is being dumb for thinking he can just drink anytime, and that they are ruining their family. It was so bold and so great because they actually listened. We could never say anything like that to them. It was such a relief to let the ward members help them with their problems so that we could just teach.

Alberto y Mari: we felt like we were really stuck in a rut with them. They haven't been coming to church or really progressing. Last lesson we asked about their reading and Mari said that she was in Jacob, but decided to go back and reread 2 Nephi 31 because she didn't understand it. Golden! That chapter is all about the need to be baptized! So we said we would read through it with them. The spirit was so strong the whole time and we knew that they knew they needed to get baptized. At the end we were just bold and told them this. They finally both said they would be baptized, but they weren't sure about a date yet. It was so awesome! Amazing what happens when we're bold.

Garrett Minski is our only on-date. He just turned 13 and is amazing. He was so excited about his baptism that he told his school counselor and she gave him this Bible comic book that he has just eaten up. We tried to teach him the 10 Commandments, but he taught us. He didn't know what Easter was and so we had a great lesson about Christ and the resurrection. It was so cool. He is learning so much and he really cares about what he is learning. He's great!

So we've been being pretty bold with all our less0actives and it has been amazing! instead of trying to just be nice and friendly to them we jump right into the issue: why aren't you coming to church anymore? Why do you feel uncomfortable with that class? It has been so amazing! We have been working with some of these less actives for months and have had absolutely no progress, but suddenly we know all their concerns and problems with the church so that we can finally help them work through them. It has been great. We still do it in a loving manner, but the best way we as missionaries can show our love is to call people to repentance. This is what the Savior did and he healed everyone!

I gave my first talk in Spanish yesterday. Not too bad especially considering I had written it all out :) I got to go to a Spanish b-day party yesterday. It was pretty exciting and I definitely cried over the spicy stuff, but it was fun.

Well I love you all and I miss you! Thank you so much for your support. I wish Asherly the best of luck as you go to the MTC this week - I lobe you!

Love
Sister Probst

ps don't forget to write :)

Happy Birthday to the Lukey Duke! I thought about you all day and had to tell everyone it was your birthday. Did you like the card? I liked it and would randomly play just to freak Sister Haws out. It was fun. Luckily there are a few more birthdays I can do that with.

So this was a pretty spirit filled week. We spent a ton of time knocking doors and meeting new people. Didn't really get any contacts out of it, but some pretty funny stories. The stories some people tell to get out of talking to us can get pretty interesting sometimes. Alberto y Mari are doing pretty good. They are still reading in the Book of Mormon, but not coming to church. We meet with them often, but she still believes the Catholics are right and he believes that any church is right. We may have some hard lessons coming up.

But on with the Spirit stories. So in Preach My Gospel it teaches us that it doesn't matter how good of teachers we are or how smart we are or how well we do anything, if we don't have the Spirit than we are never going to have sucess. We were doing a focus 5 lesson with a less active member named Sister Chicola. She has MS and so she thinks she can't do anything or go anywhere. Last lesson we taught her we were so fed up with her talking about how stupid that everyone was that we shared 3 Nephi 14 and talked about judge not, beams and motes, and used all our intense scriptures. We hadn't been back since and so we thought we had offended her. It didn't even phase her. She started right out talking about how her husband and sons were so dumb and then she started going into evil spirits. She said she wouldn't have us over before because there were too many evil spirits that were going to hurt us. She kept going on and on about seeing them and we could not get a word in to change the subject. The feeling in the room changed so drastically it was tangible. There were no good feelings whatsoever in that room and it kind of scared us. We finally were able to teach the lesson, but we couldn't really teach. We went from memory and just said the words. We couldn't think of any questions or any way to relate it to her. There were no thoughts or feelings or impressions or anything. It was the worst feeling in the world. We got out of there as fast as we could and felt horrible. We decided to pray and beg to have the spirit back with us. As soon as Sister Haws said the words we immediately could feel it. There was warmth and light and every good feeling back again. It made me so so grateful to have the gift of the Holy Ghost. I know that as a missionary I would not be able to do anything without it. I know in life we would not be able to do any good thing without it. We truly invite the kind of light we want into our lives by our actions. If we speak of bad things or do bad things than we cannot feel goodness, but if we speak of good and do good than we can. The Spirit does everything.

Story 2: At Christmas time we found a man named Miguel. He was golden we knew he was going to be baptized, but he left to go fish in Alaska for 2 months. We taught his wife for a little bit, but she got anti-mormon material and would never let us come back. We knew that Miguel would come back soon, but we had no idea how we would be able to see him. If we went to the house she would turn us away. Last night we were driving by their apartment and talking about if we would ever see him again when we drove right by him and his family walking down the road! We went around the corner and told Sister Haws to pull over. She said it would be so obvious that we were creeping on them. I told her that we would just get out and start tracting and they would run right into us. So she finally pulled over and we got out and we "just happened" to run into them. His wife and kids were cordial, but kept on walking. He stopped and talked to us for 10 minutes. He had just gotten back, but just found out he had to leave again on Tuesday. He still had our number and was actually going to call us until he found out he had to leave again. He had started reading the Book of Mormon and really liked it. He promised he would give us a call when he came back in 3 weeks. It was so awesome! We were so excited! We knew we would never be able to see him again if he wasn't put in our path because we couldn't go back to his house. So the Lord put him in our path. If we had not taken the slightly awkward creepy opportunity to talk to him we would never have been able to see him. Sometimes we are given answers to prayers that may involve some work on our part. The Lord places these opportunities in our laps and just waits for us to overcome our own insecurities so that we can take part of them. If Sister Haws and I had been overcome by our feeling of how awkward the situation was and how creepy we looked we would never have been able to talk to him. Ah! The Lord knows all!

Story 3: Last night we got to go with a recent convert move-in family named the Robinsons. This family was living in a mini-trailer that barely had room for one person let alone a family of 5 when they were found by the missionaries. After the baptism they were kicked out of the trailer and were homeless for the last 6 months living on the living room floor of some "acquaintances." Neither of the parents had graduated from high school and he kept getting laid off. They literally had nothing. They lived across the river and one of the members of the ward would give them rides to church and work. One day that member could not give them a ride and the person he had asked to give them a ride forgot and so Brother Robinson took his kids and walked several miles through a huge snowstorm to make it to church because he knew it was a commandment and it was where he wanted his family to be. This last week the ward found them an apartment and furnished it with some beds a table and a couch. When we walked in last night it looked very empty and compared to our standards there was basically nothing there. But the whole family was so proud of what we considered to be nothing. The dad asked us to sit on their brand new couch ( a couch donated by a family that had had it for years and it had random holes and stains on it) and made us eat pizza because they had a whole pizza and so it was a lot. The kids kept telling us that they actually had mattresses to sleep on and that they didn't have to share a bed. They wanted to show us their new home. The mattresses were old and well used with stains. The blankets were thin and ragged. The two mini dressers had drawers that couldn't open very well. There wasn't enough bedrooms for everyone so the parents still slept on the living room floor. But they were so proud of everything they had because to them they were living like kings. They wanted to share what little food they had with us and made sure we had the best of the best. They told us if we ever needed anything we could come over and they would give us whatever they had. When we left Sister Haws and I were in tears. These people had literally nothing and yet they were so happy because they felt like they had so much and they were willing to give it all to us. I felt so selfish. We had just spent several hours in a super wealthy part of town where every house had a pool and several sports cars and the people living there were bored out of the minds and didn't feel like they had very nice stuff to the most humble of homes where they felt like they had everything. It was truly a humbling experience. We have so much and yet so many suffer needlessly. I began to think if every one of those wealthy homes had donated just one thing to this little family then their house could be fully furnished, but as it was the majority of their furniture came from another very poor family that had almost nothing. We are so blessed to have what we have, but there are so many out there that could benefit from all we have.

Sometimes I wish that everybody could see what we get to see everyday. I love the Lord and I know that He knows all and that through Him is the only way to salvation.

Have a good week!

Sister Probst

Interesting discovery this morning. . . MUSHROOMS! Apparently we are now growing mushrooms in the basement of the home we live at. Interesting discovery while doing laundry, who knew ;) That was random. Maybe the spiders will eat the mushrooms.

Pretty good week. It started with an AWESOME Zone Conference in Moses Lake. The entire conference was on the Book of Mormon. President Palmer said that "our testimonies are only as deep or as fragile as our study of the Book of Mormon is." It was super powerful. Elder Holland told us that our mission will only succeed to the degree that us as missionaries are in the Book of Mormon. He said that everything we teach should be based on the Book of Mormon. If our lessons to our investigators are not based on the Book of Mormon than they will not progress or succeed. President also quoted a general authority saying "if our testimonies of the Gospel are not based upon the Book of Mormon than they are built upon a very unsure foundation." It is so true! The more I read the Book of Mormon the more I know his words are true. The Book of Mormon testifies of every truth and so much of Christ. If we don't base everything upon the Book of Mormon than we don't know very much for certain. I can definitely see this in the investigators that we teach. We also did a scripture chase on the questions of the soul. The Book of Mormon can answer just about every question. Sister Haws and I won for our age groups so we got to compete against each other and two others for the big candy bar. It was pretty fun. We also found out who our new mission president will be in July. His name is Mullen from Orem, Utah. They have 5 kids and their two youngest twin boys who are 17 will be coming out with them. It was sad to think of the Palmers leaving, but they said they felt comfortable handing us off to the Mullens because they said they were awesome. They'll definitely have some big shoes to fill. President Palmer will be a general authority someday, we all know it ;) He also issued us a challenge to read the Book of Mormon by Mother's Day and mark all the references to Christ, His attributes, and anytime He speaks. I did that the last time I read the Book of Mormon, but it's so fun to do it again. It really is amazing!

One of our recent converts of 6 months ago had started smoking again. We did the 15-step quit smoking program that the church has and he has completely stopped! It's the most phenomenal thing ever! The Church has a program for everything and they actually work. He's one of our favorite converts to teach because he's so excited to do what is right and feels so horrible that he started smoking again. But now he's done for life!

We had to "discontinue teaching" (we're not supposed to say "dropped" anymore) one of our investigators. She wasn't doing any of the reading or coming to church. She mostly just enjoyed the company. We thought we did it in a very loving way and she seemed okay, but then she called us later furious that we would do that to her. It reminded me of the scripture that says that the guilty taketh the truth to be hard. So true and so sad. I have definitely learned that those who feel guilty have a very hard time accepting the truth because they know it's true and they know they're not doing it.

Another hard, bitter-sweet moment was with Maria y Eutiquio. He is the one that has been alcohol free for an entire month. We went to see her this last weekend and she was weeping. Tiquio had relapsed, pretty bad. She locked him out of the house and he tried breaking in. She was worried someone would call the cops on him and he would be deported so she let him back in. It's so sad because they are both so ready for baptism and have such strong testimonies, but apparently he's struggling more than we had hoped. We haven't seen him since. It's so hard to know how to help in these situations, but luckily the Lord knows all. She spent a half hour telling us all that had happened and we were dumbfounded. We couldn't say anything because it was such a shock from the entire last month of him completely turning around. So we turned to the scriptures. We had assigned her to read Enos 1 and she had. Being typical Maria and doing the opposite of anything we would expect her to do she started talking about how there were cows and horses during that day, but no pigs. We couldn't imagine that this was all she got out of this chapter, but finally she went to the doctrine verses. She was so excited about praying with real intent and she knew she hadn't been. The spirit was so strong and we knew she had her answer. She was so excited about what she read that she said "give me another chapter to read, I can't wait to see what it says." Wow! This is the true power of the Book of Mormon.

Our newlyweds are doing pretty good. Mari has read all the way through Jacob now. She can't put it down. She reads during her breaks at work and until 3 in the morning because she can't sleep. She not only reads, but she studies and reads all the footnotes too! We don't even do that! She'll be asking us to be baptized before we can ask her before too long. Her son that was missing has finally been found. He's in jail and he was staying with her sister. She was pretty upset that everybody knew where he was, but nobody would tell her. It's so sad to see how the choices of one person can affect another so much.

Well I better get running, but I love you all! Thank you so much for all of your support. The Church is true and the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It's undeniable

Love,
Herman Probst