Hello Everybody!

:D Its been a great week in Dothan, I love this place. There are some awesome families. We have lots of potential. We have located a few part member familes in the area. We intend to work with them alot! This week our car was taken away and given to another set of missionaries, so now we are in a car trade with the other ward we share our building with. This week we get the bikes so it will be another hot one! Oh and last night I decided to somehow pop my tube as well, so I don't even have a bike until later today. :D Good thing we have awesome members. lots of youth who are close to going on missions. Anyways since we found out we were losing the car we had a couple hundred miles left to use in 3 days, so we traveled to the outskirts of our area that day and found alot of people that haven't been contacted in a long time. We also had some crazy experiences.

-one was we went to see this less active guy and ended up finding his sister, the house was a little run down and the yard had a few little dogs in it, we walked up and she was sweeping inside so she came out said hi, we chatted for a min and we asked if she needed help with anything and she asked us to help her move this really heavy couch. We said sure and went inside to grab it, this thing was a little heavy. But we managed to pick it up and walk it out to the pavement. Due to the large size of the couch our chests and face and arms were pressesd up against it the whole time, and it smelt of years worth of urine and animals. When Elder Franchino flipped it over onto the sidewalk for the garbage guys to pick up we were shocked and terrified to see what was right underneath the couch.......at least 12 brown recluse spiders and nests all over where our hands were. They were crawling around the whole time we were carrying it. The lady very casually said, yeah my husband almost had to get his leg amputated a little while back cause he got bit by one. Then she got up close and looked at them! UNBELIEVEABLE!! haha after that we said well ya know we gotta go. I think the lady was worried she scared us or something. hahaha!!! We were definately protected by divine powers. We didn't get bit at all. It sure shook us up a little bit though.

- I am going to be giving a talk at the end of the month we are having a missionary sacrament meeting. The ward mission leader and I will be speaking along with a youth speaker. I realized something special the other day, that sank deeper in my heart than it has before, that is, that the whole purpose of this earth is to learn, share and live the gospel. It was profound to me. In the big scheme of things nothing else matters. Living the gospel should be the #1 priority in each of our lives. Thats the biggest point. President Jensen recently went over with us the "big picture" and showed us how we each fit into that plan. We are each special and hold different gifts and talents to bless others. If only we really knew who we were before this life, we would be shocked. We were valiant there. We must be valiant here.

Awesome week, lots of great things learned and work done. Thank you for your support! Love you all!

-Elder West