March 21

Happy Spring, It is a lovely spring day here in Cleveland. There is greenery and flowers starting to bloom everywhere. Oh how I love it. A record of 91 degrees. Woohhooo it has been really warm here. In the 80's all week. It has been an interesting week for sure. So besides being the first day of spring and it being our Pday we also got a new car. YAY us. It's okay if you did a little shout of joy too. Our old car sounded like it was going to die, I thought the tires were going to fall off on more than one occasion and it wasn't even that old. But our new car is a 2012 Chevy Cruz with about 50 miles on it. It is so nice. The church really does take good care of it's missionaries. So the cars have to be dedicated and the two elders that were assigned to our car were telling us that they thought it was weird "it's like giving a blessing to a car." Which is exactly what they were doing. They did look a little funny. Two grown men in a car blessing it :) No wonder people think Mormons are strange. Oh I love it here. So this week seemed to just fly right on by. The other day we had a member lesson, I think it was Sunday. But anyway so I was wearing that longer black and white pock-a-dot skirt anyway I got out of the car and i felt a little breeze where I don't normally( meaning the rear). So I put my hand back to see what it was. Turns out my skirt had huge holes all down the seem of one of the pleats. All of severance tower got a nice look at my garments. I was just showing everything off to the world, no big deal. It was great, but since we were on our way to the appointment I didn't have time to go change so I tried to keep it together until we got to Sister Bynum's apartment. There we asked for string and a needle. My companion made me stripe in the middle of the living room so she could so it. Sister B. found me a sheet to wrap around myself. So that was the time I taught the restoration in a sheet! It's a good thing I don't get embarrassed easily. There other day we were tracting down by one of our less actives and some guy yelled at us to see if we were Jehovah Witnesses. We quickly told him no and asked if he would like to hear a message we are sharing. His name is Oz we gave him a pass along card and in reply he was like "ah man, I really needed this, I got shot last night!" uhh ooh well that's not good. He said he found strength in Jesus though so that was good. But anyway so we were down tracting again on Sunday and we ran into his cousin George, but he refers to himself as Jesus because that is what his name means in Hebrew. He was weird, but we gave him a mormon.org card and he said he would look at the website. I went on exchanges with one of the sisters from South Euclid. Sister Spring she is from Texas. That was fun It was nice to see a different area.


So as far as missionary work is going. It is slow. Everyone here is happy, Jew and Catholic. They don't want to hear our message. But we go down to South Euclid and Cleveland Heights its where all the black poor people live and they have a much stronger faith in Christ. We have a new investigator and we are hoping to pick up another one tonight. Her name is Tamika. We found her contacting in the park, and she kept asking us if God could really hear her or if He cared. Good thing we had an answer for that! Oh there are so many people here that the Lord has prepared to receive us. We just have to make sure we are living our lives in order to be in the right place at the right time. We need to have the spirit with us so we know where we need to be! The work goes on, I really do love it. The gospel changes lives, and brings eternal happiness. We have been giving copies of the Book of Mormon away like crazy. We have already gone through a box of 40 this transfer. I encourage all of you to always carry a copy with you. Share with everyone, pray for opportunities to share what you know. It is such an amazing book and those who read it will find peace and know of God's love. You never know who God will place in your path. Every member a missionary! I wish I would have taken that more to heart when I was home! As for the VC it has been pretty slow but it is picking up. We only give about 1 tour a day, the tour is about 2 hours, but there have been a couple of days lately that we have given 2 a day. It's spring break for people out here so I am guessing it will start picking up shortly. I love taking people on tour. Really I love everything about Kirtland. Can we come back after I get home? There is so much I want you to see.

So my district is sooo amazing there are 8 of us. 4 Elders and 4 Sisters. We are the only companionship who don't hold a leadership position. We have the Zone Leaders and the training sisters and then of course our district leader, who tells us the most hilarious stories. But we spend time all over our area not just Mayfield heights. I live in Mayfield.Cleveland is not apart of our area. The Elders in our district serve in parts of East Cleve. But only a little section. I love downtown Cleveland. I really love everything about Ohio. Bah, this is the best mission ever.

Sister Hillman