Hello one and all!
LA LOVE:
It's summer, so a lot of families and people have been out and about! Super exciting finding time for missionaries.
Last week in sacrament meeting our bishop announced the rules to the Relief Society and Elder quorum about feeding us dinners, so a TON of people have been feeding us lately.
Yes it is summer, yes it is super hot, but yet Sister Along and I also drink hot chocolate just about every day. So there's that.
EVENTS OF THE WEEK:
We went to the stake's empty nesters family home evening! It was a good time getting to talk to all our friends from the stake and also get to discuss with them some people we/they need to visit.
Operation Gratitude this week preparing bear skins to be shipped, featuring Sister Pender, Sister Ruvalcaba, Elder Burt, and Elder Lee!
Exchanges were this week! I stayed in the area with Sister Despain while Sister Along went to the El Camino Real area with Sister Pace. I love Sister Despain so much. She helped me do a lot of good work, taught me a lot, and helped me get some stuff worked out. Sister training leaders are the best.
District council this week was amazing, featuring a training about staying motivated by Elder Evans, a talk on faith by Sister Along, and a training about having "the faith to reap" by Elder Burt. (More on that in a bit.)
Dori was baptized! It was a beautiful baptismal service and we are so happy for her. We are so grateful to all the amazing people that helped us prepare for this baptism. I was a little nervous for it because it was my first baptism as a senior companion, but everything went swimmingly, and we had a lot of support from our mission leaders, so that was great. I think the most exciting part about Dori's baptism is that it is a very conscious first step for her. She believes strongly in the gospel of Jesus Christ and knows that keeping the covenants made at baptism will cleanse her from her sins, and that receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost will guide her through her life as she remains worthy of it, but Dori's goal extends beyond even those remarkable and extraordinary blessings. Next year Dori plans to enter God's holy temple to make even more covenants and receive even more blessings, and then she will be sealed to her family for time and eternity. That means that as they make and keep covenants with Heavenly Father, they will live as a family FOREVER, even after death, thanks to the priesthood authority of God. I am so happy for them. There is no better thought than knowing that we can live forever with our families.
FRIENDS:
After someone gets baptized, us missionaries review all the lessons they learned with them, so we started that with Trinity this week. I am inspired by her testimony. Her love for God is incredible and she is a very strong young woman, who has started reading the Book of Mormon. We are so proud of her!
We had many miracles with Sukki this week. We taught her about the spirit world and how we get taught the gospel there if we didn't accept it, and at first she was only half convinced. The next time we came to see her, she told us that she was reading in the Bible and she read that angels preach the gospel to us in the spirit world, and she said we are so lucky to have the gospel preached to us in the spirit world! We taught about the resurrection and the three kingdoms and she was really curious about the celestial kingdom, and best of all, she told us how Jesus Christ died for our sins and Joseph Smith is a prophet. We are so excited to see her testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ growing.
We met with Steve and talked with him about why going to church is so important and how the sacrament blesses our lives. We saw him at Dori's baptism!
We visited the H. family! It has been awhile since we visited them so that was awesome. The kids weren't home so we just spent the night talking to Shane and Carolyn. I love them so much.
As I said earlier, this week Elder Burt gave us a training based on an awesome talk by Elder Wilford W. Andersen, "The Faith to Reap". It's about how it's good to have the faith to try something, but it's an entirely different thing to have the faith to actually have success. Faith to try involves believing in ourselves, but the faith to reap means believing in God and Jesus Christ, KNOWING that what He promises WILL actually happen, so much so that it's as if it has happened already. We often feel inadequate when faced with hardships or things that we have to do, that we know the Lord wants us to do, but we don't seem to measure up. But with the faith to reap, we'll realize we don't need to do it, because if we work our very hardest, God will make what needs to happen happen. As Elder Andersen was told, "He has the power to do His work, and if you will be worthy and work hard, He will do it. You will see."
Keep working hard. Keep seeking after your righteous desires. "He will do it. You will see."
Thanks and much love!
--Sister Day
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