Of Miracles and Sugar Sand

Hey Family!

Goodness, this week has been insane. It felt like the longest week of my life, but at the same time, it flew by! We have been so busy! Its so glorious!

So an update on our miracle investigator! He is right on track to be baptized on Saturday and he is so excited. As we teach him the commandments, even those that are new to him, he just accepts it. He says, "Well that is God's law so we have to live it." He is so easy. He always asks what we are going to be teaching the next time we come and then studies up on it so that he basically teaches the lesson to us! On Sunday, he came up to us in church with a big grin on his face and said, "There's my two favorite people!" It melted my heart. We feel so blessed to be able to work with this guy. He is so incredible. And he is just the miracle that this ward needs to strengthen their faith.

He is pretty much our only investigator so we spent the majority of our week working with members and helping them be missionaries. I think that the ward is really catching the wave. Things are getting exciting!

On Saturday, we had a hog roast. And we had almost as many nonmembers here as we did members. One of the couples in the ward invited eleven of their neighbors and nine of them came!! It was so exciting! And Saturday just continued to get more and more exciting...

First of all we went to teach this little girl in the ward. Her mom is a member but hasn't been to church pretty much since she was baptized as a teenager. So this little girl is nine, and she really wants to be baptized! Her mom is working on coming back to church and they have been coming quite a bit. We have been trying to teach this girl for months, but her moms schedule is so hectic we haven't been able to. So Saturday, we decided to just stop by and see if we could catch them home. The little girl had spent the day with her grandma, but pulled in shortly after we got there! YES! We were so excited. This little girl has energy like no other, and wanted us to jump on her trampoline with her. So we did! It was probably quite a sight and it sure wasn't easy to jump in a skirt... my skirt was white too, but not for long! So we taught her the first lesson, jumping on her trampoline and it was so much fun! She is such a sweetheart, and understands it so well for only being nine. Hopefully, we will be able to help her be baptized soon!

Saturday's adventures just kept getting better and better... my next story, I hesitate to share. But as a disclaimer, Heavenly Father really does watch over and protect his missionaries:) Curious yet?

Well, Sebring is a pretty redneck place. And a lot of the roads in the neighborhoods aren't paved. There are a lot of wooded areas. So, after we finished our trampoline lesson, we were headed to visit one of the members. So we plugged her address into the GPS and trusted Garmin to get us where we needed to go. Before long, we found ourselves on a pretty rough dirt road. We didn't feel good about it, so we started to look for a good place to turn around but there weren't any! So we just kept going straight and praying hard! Then we hit a two-wheel drive car's worst nightmare... sugar sand. Sugar sand is very very fine, soft sand. And you definitely don't want to drive in it. My skid-car experience in drivers ed came in handy as we fishtailed our way through the sand. The first rule of driving in sugar sand is you can't stop, or else you are stuck. So we just kept going and kept praying. And the sand just kept getting deeper... Pretty soon we bottomed out and were completely stuck. The only thing that kept us from panicking was laughing hysterically at our stupidity and the hopelessness of the situation we were in.

So Sister Schaumkel got out and tried to push as I tried to reverse, but nothing happened.... More hysterical laughter. She tries pushing again and breaks her sandal. Hysterical laughter continues... So i put the car in neutral and go out to help her push. Nothing. So we laughed some more and decided to pray. We prayed and asked Heavenly Father forgiveness for our stupidity, and asked for His help to get us out of this situation. Right as we said amen we saw headlights coming down the trail to our left. Now, we are in the middle of the woods, there are a few houses nearby, but picture it more like our cabin area in Manor Lands. So we wave and get the headlights attention and they make their way over. It was a guy and his wife on a golf-cart. We told him our dilemma and he said, "Don't worry, we will get you out of here." And he headed up the road to get his brother who has a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Long story short, they came and towed our car out of the sand, sent us in the direction of the main road and told us not to worry about it, that thing happens all the time. Last week it was a Semi!

We headed to our meeting with our ward mission leader and the elders, and boy! were we a sight to see! We were a mess. We were covered in dirt from head to toe from our attempts to push the car. Sister Schaumkel was missing a shoe and an earing, my hair looked like a rat was living in it. And we were still laughing hysterically. Not as hysterically as Brother Leicht and the Elders when they saw us walk into the room though... Goodness!

Moral of the story... stay away from sugar sand. Also, Heavenly Father looks out for us and He answers prayers!

But I tell you these things because miracles are happening here on every side! And we are so excited for things to come. Heavenly Father is blessing us so much!

Well, love you!

Sister Rowland