Lexington

9-9-13 

Dear Family,

So it's been a very exciting week and kinda crazy. I am now here in Lexington, SC (just outside Columbia) with my 2 new companions Sister Patterson (English) and Sister Gearheart (Visa-waiter to Curitiba as well!). They are both so awesome and I'm completely convinced I get spoiled with the best companions in the mission every time. They are both just good, humble, hard-working missionaries, which is such a blessing especially since there are 3 of us and there is a lot of work to do in this area. I actually knew Sister Gearheart at BYU - we had a class together and were partners and we have a lot of mutual friends. She told me she got called to Curitiba but I wasn't expecting to see her at our training meeting here in South Carolina - so that was a fun surprise!

Lexington is a really great area, not as high class as Summerville, but not quite as humble as Gaston. The ward is REALLY small. I went into sacrament meeting waiting the whole time for everyone to walk in late, but nope it's just an incredibly small ward, but the few families that come are great and I'm excited to work with them! It's pretty crazy starting from scratch all over again. We don't have a GPS, just a beat up map, and not a lot to work with so we've had quite an adventure getting around here. There are so many good people in this area. It's so weird after being in Summerville that it seems like almost everyone is willing to talk to us!  There are a lot of less-actives, so just really so much potential here, it's great!

It was pretty cool that our very first day, our first investigator we found doesn't speak very good English so we taught her in Portuguese. She's an exchange student from Bolivia, but her mom always spoke Portuguese so she loved having Sis. G and I teach her in Portuguese. It was really fun for us too. We got her a Spanish BofM and she has just soaked it up! She came to churchSunday and started showing us all her notes.  She's studying both the Spanish and English BofM and She LOVES it! She started ‘going to town’ in Spanish about how much she loves it (which was interesting because even though we understand a lot of Spanish, we are definitely not even fluent in Portuguese, let alone Spanish so it was funny to try to understand.) But that was awesome and I'm getting to practice a LOT more now that I have a Portuguese -spkg companion.

One of the saddest things I am finding here is this theme of a lot of less-actives who are even returned missionaries who have just fallen away. Often times the wife or kids are still active. But we have a lot of adults who grew up in the church, served missions and fell away. It has been a bit mind-blowing for me. I don't understand how someone can have the experiences you have on a mission, and then even consider thinking it's okay to just sit out of church and not fulfill your callings when you see how crucially important it is!  It's amazing to me how pretty much every time, it starts with them getting busy and not making time to do the little things like reading the Book of Mormon and praying each day. By small and simple means are great things brought to pass. Sometimes small things have the opposite effect as well; just a downhill spiral. Usually they remember that life was so much better when they lived the way they were supposed to, but they just have a really hard time doing those tough things - making changes. So we're focusing on getting our Less-actives to start reading the Book of Mormon again, because that's where it starts. It's amazing to me how we really are asked to do such small simple things and we are promised so much. Anyway the gospel is true and it really does bless families SO, SO much. We just have to do the simple things to let it do so!

I love yall!

Sister Lewis