Hey family!!!

I'm glad you all had a fun week! Happy Birthday again to Conner and Kimball! I love you both and I hope you got my presents. Sad to hear about BYU losing... Oh well I guess there are more important things in life ;) I always loved this time of year with the kids playing their games! Send me some pictures of Hope and the boys with their teams! (Hope, I know you are probably the best soccer player on the field, Keep it Up ) We have a new YW presidency! That's big news! I know the new presidency will do well. My leaders had a huge impact on me in helping me become who I am today and I Love them to pieces! It's cool how much of an affect the Leaders of the youth have and I was blessed to have some of the best!

So this week we went to a cider mill and it was a lot of fun!! We picked raspberries and got pumpkins. We had a member take us and it we got some homemade cider. It really is good and the orchards are just HUGE!! It's kind of the thing to do here in Michigan. We drink cider, and eat doughnuts, and walk around, and there's music playing. They also have a haunted house, but we apparently aren't allowed to go in those.... Who would have thought? :)

We had some great things happen this week with less-actives. Sometimes it doesn't seem like we are making a difference but we heard some of their testimonies and how by us visiting them they have started to feel that spirit again in their lives that they have been missing. We were able to have a few of them say the prayer with us (which they have always refused to pray). It was really exciting! Prayer shows that we love our heavenly father and trust him and believe in him!

We had a neat experience as we were biking again. We saw this lady out on the porch taking a smoke break, so we went and talked to her. She works at a group home and loves to read. We shared our testimonies of the gospel and we told her she should get the Book of Mormon on her kindle (because she LOVES to read). She told us how her parents both were diagnosed with cancer and her grandmother just passed away. She said when she see's butterfly's it is her grandmother helping her through life. As we were talking, a butterfly flew up and she told us that this was no coincidence, that it had to be a sign. It was really neat! And we will talk with her again soon :)

Tuesday we had Zone Conference which is always great!! We really focused on the WHY behind everything we do. Why do we read our scriptures, why do we pray, why do we go to church? Think about your lives and why we do these things. First of all we are commanded to do these things and the blessings that come are AMAZING!!! There's a newer Mormon message called Daily Bread. It talks about how the people of Israel had to gather manna and how we need daily sustenance. If we don't feed ourselves our bodies will die. It is the same thing with our spirits. They need to be "fed" daily. We need to read our scriptures and pray EVERY day. When we don't we are killing our spirits. We need to remember if we want to be strong we have to think of the necessities, which are these little things that keep us alive, CPR (church, pray, read). We also had a great talk by our Stake President. We talked about how we are afraid to fail. The truth is that if we understand the gospel of Jesus Christ and his atonement, There is NO NEED to be AFRAID to FAIL! We know that our Savior has died for us and it is because of his grace and power that we can fail. We will fail and we do fail everyday. But this failure is part of God's plan. When we fail we are able to learn from those failures and become better. The important thing to remember is to LEARN from our failures. We have to LEARN, then APPLY, then LIVE and BECOME! I'm so grateful for my Savior and the opportunity I do have to become like him and our Father in Heaven. Let us NEVER forget the gift we have been given to become!

I Love you all so much!!! Hope you are all doing well! Stay Safe and always do your best! I pray for you and think about how lucky I am to have you in my life :) Talk to you next week!

Love Always, Sister Tracy