I wondered if Sandy was going to get you guys. Mama Rose was talking about it and Chicago, but from what I heard it wasn't going to be too bad for it. (Sans the wind I guess.) She was telling us about how Wall St. was closed for the first time in history, and they were just talking about how it's a fat, slow-moving storm.

@Radio: be safe out there! You too Don, you're likely to get after-effects too!

Anyway, HI! I had heard those statistics, yeah! One of the mission president's counselors lives in our boundary, so we had a chance to talk to him and hear about that. So cool! I'm definitely expecting to see a lot more Sisters come January, unfortunately that means my likelihood of training just about tripled. Aah! I'm not super excited about that. *does not want*

Tell Holly I said hi! I met the ASL sisters out here briefly last Saturday, and I was telling them about the ASL ward out in Wheaton (right? I don't remember exactly). They were impressed :) Except now I'm going to be keeping an eye out for other deaf people to help them out. Plenty of work for them too, just harder to find for them O-o

I'm sure they're related; Sister Pulsipher said she has a ton of family out there. That's her side though... I dunno about his. Tell her hi for me, too! n_n

Soooooo this week was really awesome!! We had transfers again and my companion scooted, so I have a new companion! Her name is Sister Ripplinger, and she's from Idaho. It's only been a couple of days since we started together but there's already a lot of miracles happening!! For example, yesterday we got one of our new investigators, Jacqline, to come to church with us! Yay! But after sacrament she was asking us about if her son (he's 16) could go on a mission. I started off saying "Well he has to be a baptized member..." and she said he already was! That caught us off-guard for sure. XD So we asked her why she hadn't been, and she invited us over later to talk about it. So we talked about baptism and the Holy Ghost and all that awesome stuff, and we invited her to be baptized. She accepted! Woooo! So basically awesome things are happening and my companion is enthusiastic and great things are going to be happening here in the next little while. Thank you for your prayers! They are so effective in helping us realize OUR potential, too! They can only change if we invite them to.

Also, I'm so happy that our ward is super excited about doing missionary work! We can always count on them to help us out in a bind. Sometimes I wonder what my life would've been like if I'd seen more of the missionaries growing up, but I guess that can't be helped. Have you seen a lot of the Sisters at home? Have you invited anyone to take the discussions? Something to pray and ponder. <3

The other day I was looking at 2N 31:20, and it was pointed out to me a phrase that occurs twice: press forward. Now at first glance it's all, "oh, endure to the end, blah long blah." but the interesting thing to me is especially the word press, cos it means there's some resistance involved. So of course it's going to be hard to keep on the path and keep moving, but it's all by design. God created us to grow! Just by two words we can learn all that. I love it! It also makes me think of the movie Meet the Robinsons, just the quote by Walt Disney at the end. I don't remember what it is exactly, just something like "around here we don't stay still for very long, and we keep moving forward!" Definitely the same with us that we can keep pressing forward and work hard in every aspect of life :)

Anyway I love you all! I hope things go well with the hurricane, I pray for you always. <3

LOVELOVELOVE,

Sister Nelson

P.S. It's really weird to live in a place where they can count on their baseball team to win anything.