We had a miracle occur in our mission this past week.  Anna, a young woman from China was baptized in December.  She is here going to school for a doctorate degree.  Her husband came to visit and he doesn't speak any English.  She wasn't sure how to translate our 'church' terms into China and so it was hard to explain things to her.  Well, it just so happened that a new sister missionary from the MTC because she speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, was assigned to our mission until her visa comes.  The mission president assigned her to the Historic sites and guess what????  The sisters were able to spend some time with Anna's husband and also get him books and pamphlets so he could study.  He has already read over 100 pages in the Book of Mormon.  Just chance that she was assigned here so that she could meet with him?  Another interesting fact is that she had lived in his community in China for 4 months. Truly a blessing and a miracle.
            We also had zone conference this week in Youngstown.  Never been that direction before so it was new country for us.  Was a snowy day but we didn't have trouble with the roads but those coming from Cleveland and Kirtland did.  In fact our mission president was 45 minutes late.  Was a great day and we learned lots and had a spiritual feast as we learned and shared testimonies.  There was the usual 'keep your apartments clean,' 'stay healthy', 'drive safe', then a nice luncheon.  In the afternoon we studied the pamphlet on the Law of Chastity.  It was really good as we were taught by the young missionaries, shared our testimonies and taught them.  Three elders in our group said they never had a real testimony of Chastity until they had studied it this week.  OOPS...  It really was good and we enjoyed the day.  We loved being with all of the missionaries and feeling of their spirit.
           Our mission president gave us some statistics on the 'new' missionaries.  We have 29 new missionaries coming in the first week of March and will be opening up 13 new areas.  Then six weeks later we will be getting 22 new missionaries with 10 new areas.  We get 15 new cars and they are scrambling to find housing and of course trainers for that many.  We have had about 170 missionaries in our mission but that will climb to 250.  The work of the Lord is going forward.  Hopefully they will be able to touch those who are prepared and ready to accept the gospel.
         We had two men walk into the Johnson Home this afternoon.  They were non members but had seen the sign of the Historic Home and came to check us out.  We gave them history of the people and the home and also bore testimony of Joseph Smith, his revelations, and visitation of the Savior.  They felt the spirit and seemed quite open, even took some pamphlets.  We felt good about it and enjoyed sharing with them.