A Promise Fulfilled

This week has been spiritually draining, yet boosting at the same time. There has been a lot going on and I'm loving it :) So last week we had an awesome P day! There is a lady in our ward that has 3 missionaries out right now and she took us to get pedicures! Man, that was so lovely. We got to relax in a massage chair and get our toes all cute. THEN, she took us out to dinner too! It was SO fun. It was nice to just relax and to get to know her better as well. She is always looking for ways to help us. Our ward has a lot of sister missionaries out, so their families love that they have sister missionaries now. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but we are the first sisters in this area for at least 7 years. No one here can ever remember having sisters. Hopefully we haven't ruined their idea of what a sister missionary should be ;)

 

Anyway we had zone conference this week and it was super good. It was all about faith and how we need to exercise faith. President gave us a promise at the beginning of the transfer that every companionship would get a baptism. We looked outside ourselves and prayed for another companionship all transfer. We had zone conference and we further expounded on that promise. We should change the word baptism, to a converting experience instead. President wanted us to do something that would increase our faith so that when we go home and we need to call down the powers of heaven to have our own little miracle (whatever it may be) that we would have the faith necessary to do so. So he said at zone conference that it wasn't about the actual baptisms, but more about the conversions in ourselves and others. However, he said even if our miracle isn't that someone enters into the waters of baptism this transfer, we will all have a converting experience and the Lord will be kind enough to have our baptisms average to everyone having a baptism. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but anyway, we have been trying super hard to have the faith necessary to get a baptism/conversion this transfer, yet the days are running out. Miracles can happen though and you just never know, so we press on. Well, this week, our miracle took place.

 

When Sister A first got on her mission she started talking to a kid that she went to elementary school with at a Born Again Christian School. He first talked to her on facebook just to humor her. Then we had a skype lesson with him and he continued to just do things to make us happy. However, along the way he began to feel something. We taught him the first 3 lessons and then got permission to call his missionaries in Washington so they could take over and take him to church and such. We continued to teach him here and there and support him in what he was doing for 2 months. He told us when we were skyping him that he wanted to be baptized. He immediately called his missionaries, while still on skype with us, and told them that is what he wanted to work towards. However, he has many word of wisdom and chastity problems and has been working on getting rid of those addictions slowly. We knew he would get baptized, but it was going to be a long process. Well we hadn't been able to skype him for about 2 weeks and finally caught up with him on Wednesday night. He told us that he was getting baptized on FRIDAY!!! What!? He had fallen short the week prior and they were going to have to push the baptism back 2 weeks (which would have fallen after this transfer), yet a MIRACLE occurred and they gave him special permission to be baptized this week! AMAZING!!!!! We had our conversion, even though it wasn't in our area, I have no doubt that it was the faith of the companionship praying for us and our faith as well that led to that miracle. We got permission to skype into the baptism as well! It has been an amazing experience to be able to be a part of his conversion. He bore his testimony to us on Wednesday and it was so powerful.

It has been a great lesson to me about what faith can do and to be able to experience a miracle that was brought about by our missions faith. There have been so many miracles taking place in our mission this month, and I know that it is because President T is an inspired leader of our mission.

We have had other amazing street contacts this week that have brought us some potential investigators in the future. We also taught our referral this week and brought a couple with us that was converted 50 years ago. The self referral even brought his friend to come listen as well! We taught them about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. The members that came bore their testimonies and it was so powerful! It was an awesome lesson for sure and we are excited to see where these investigators go. We also started to teach a man in England that I found on Facebook. He was anti-ing the Book of Mormon on a Christian Chat page and so I messaged him and asked him if he had even ever read it. He hadn't and so we started talking about it and other things we believe. We skyped him for the first time this week and it was awesome. he thinks Mormons are better than regular Christians and said he used to think that we weren't Christian, but now he isn't so sure. He is reading the Book of Mormon currently and wants to continue to talk with us! :) It is so amazing the miracles that we have over technology. It CAN be used for good! Anyway he was so funny, plus, let's be honest, everything sounds better in a British accent ;)

Also, one of our investigator's came to church again this week and seems to be slowly progressing. Our woman investigator was supposed to come to church but never answered the door and she also hasn't answered her phone. We have tried calling her a million times and she hasn't answered so we are getting really worried that she is hurt or something happened. She isn't the type to not call back and explain herself and apologize so we don't really know what to do because we don't know who we could call. So her member fellowship is going to try to figure something out so we can make sure she is ok.. Anyway it has been an awesome week. I went on exchanges to the Spanish area this week so that was fun. I have been studying the New Testament and I have really loved it. I have finally found a system that works for me in marking my scriptures. It is effective for me and has helped me a lot so I'm excited about that. I also bought a binder for my study journal so my notes can be more organized and effective because I feel like when they are in a bound notebook everything is so scattered for me and I never look at it again. So I'm learning new things about what works best for ME and that is really nice. It has been a great week and this transfer has flown by SO quickly. Transfer calls are this weekend so we will see what will happen! I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to be a missionary and to be changed by the Atonement. I know that this church is true and I'm glad I can help share this happy message. :)