Email: Prayers answered for Rain

Dear family,

Well I sure hope you all had as good of a week as me. Things out here are still going great. We have been seeing miracles and great things out here. Anyways so let me get into the week a little bit for you.

So last Sunday all of California was authorized by the first presidency to fast for rain. Everyone was very strongly encouraged to do that because we are witnessing one of the worst droughts in California's history. It went almost 60 days without any rain! All of this in the middle of what is supposed to be the wet season. A lot of the smaller communities were getting really scared because many of them were going to be out of water in approximately 60 days or so. So as you can see things were getting pretty bad. Then we fasted and prayed for what we needed. The weather forecast for the week on Sunday showed nothing just sun and a few clouds, then Monday what was the forecast...rain! And rain it did. It drizzled just a little the first part of the week then about Thursday it really opened up. It was amazing to see the miracle that was taking place. It pretty much rained from Thursday to Sunday evening. Everyone was just so ecstatic with what was taking place. Sunday was really fun because of all of the prayers and gratitude that everyone was giving to our Heavenly Father for the moisture that we were receiving. This past weeks fast and the rain we got will forever be a great testimony builder to me. It is amazing to see how much our Heavenly Father cares for all of his children. A lot of the parents out here were saying how much this meant for their kids and how that now their kids can see that prayer really does work.

Anyways so as far as working with people recently we are still really working on getting more people to teach and finding more new investigators. We were able to pick up one new investigator last night. We have been working with this lady named Sandina Rice. We usually just talk with her outside her house but then she started telling us how she wants us to come in and teach her son, Darius. He is 13 years old and a real good kid. She was telling us how that a lot of her kids have kind of chosen the wrong paths in life and that she
wants him to go down a better path. So we are going to do our best to help him.

We are still working with a lot of returning members. One of them is a guy named Cody. He is really cool, he likes guns and sports and stuff so Elder Harman and I have a lot of stuff to talk with him about. He has come to church for the last 2 weeks in a row. I will make sure and keep you updated.

Well I love you all so very much. It looks like everyone back home changing so much it is crazy. I don't know what to think about it all. Well you are all in my prayers.

Love Elder Payne