It finally happened.....it's just too hot :C Even for the tiny one I made that just has a pendant and a clasp in the back like a necklace.....oh well, I'll pull them back out in September or something :C
But on the bright side, miracles still work in 108F weather, so it's all good! C:
It was such an awesome week....it was those kinds of weeks where everything you plan falls through and nothing goes the way you planned it, and because that's happening you see like ten times as many miracles and it's clear that everything went how God planned it. It was awesome. It doesn't look like it on paper, but in reality, it was a very successful week!
it was also STAKE CONFERENCE!!! Which was awesome!!! Maybe it's just because I'm a missionary, but every church meeting (and conference especially was just so amazing) has just been so amazing and spiritual. I guess if you go in looking for the Spirit and prepared to record things with a pen and paper, it's easier to get what you need.
The people we're teaching are so awesome! C: Vince is still eager to get baptized, haha. He went to another one to see what it was like. Because he has seizures and his sister was the only one home, she reluctantly went with him. And they both looooooved it!! It was one of the most spiritual baptisms I've been to. She started out a little grumpy her brother dragged her to church, but she ended up really, really enjoying it. She said she'd never felt like that before. "I should be getting back into the church thing," she said. She's been kinda scared of us before....hopefully now she'd be a little more open to us teaching her, haha.
Their mom has been nervous around us too, but something happened and she's suddenly super welcoming and nice. She brings out gatorade or stuff like that and makes sure we're comfortable. At one point she said she might sit in on one of Vince's lessons.....Families are awesome, and families are forever, let's just get that whole family back to God! C:
We're still trying to work with Jose.....things keep coming up in his life, and he doesn't have a phone or computer or any way to communicate with us or people he's met from church, So we've really only been able to rely on the Spirit to know when to go and make sure everything's okay. :C He's baptized, but it never ends there. It's a new beginning, and for a lot of people it's a whole new life. Which can be both refreshing and hard. It's worth it, though. He has a powerful testimony, and he knows it's true, and he's had miracles and blessings and he's not letting go of those just because of some hard times. He's awesome.
I don't remember if I gave him a name, but Seph? The guy who let us in and read the introduction to the BoM with us a few weeks ago? Turns out we showed up about the same time his family was starting their own church....and they want him to get baptized in their church, not ours....so it was a rough/perfect time to meet him, haha. Perfect, because his friend also started a church, and then the day we met him he'd gone to a Catholic church, and he was so confused by all these churches and the fact that anyone can start one and, even crazier, they all had the same textbook, the Holy Bible. Basically, the same questions Joseph Smith had. He expressed a strong desire to ask God for truth long before we had suggested anything of the sort or told him the Joseph Smith story. We met with him once since then, and we gave him the Restoration pamphlet...and he pulled out a pen and started marking it up like a college textbook, making notes and circling things. I've never seen anyone do that before, haha! And those pamphlets have study questions, which I never really had much faith in because who actually does those....but when we checked up on him he said he had pulled out his Bible and Book of Mormon and was doing the study questions.
We haven't been able to meet with him since then because his family's been giving him some flack, and he's really having it rough. We text him a scripture reference every night, though. And he takes a lot of courage from Nephi, who endured a lot from his family. There's a reason Nephi's story is the first in the BoM.
My favorite stranger this week was a woman who was unpacking camping stuff. She rejected our offer to help (everyone does thaaaaat....is it because we're in skirts? :C the elders don't have this problem!) and when we tried to talk to her, she got really defensive, "I don't know who you are or what you want, you can't come in the gate!" We told her we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and she was like, "ohhh Mormons, I hate Mormons, every Mormon I've ever met has been a horrible person" on and on (she could only name one Mormon she knew, haha.) But as we went on talking to her about God and her family, we could literally watch her change right in front of us. Seriously, it was like her skin changed color, it was that drastic, but I can't describe it. She totally opened us and talked a ton. After a while we asked if she was familiar with what we believed, and she admitted, "I've heard some, most of it's probably not true though." She didn't want to learn about what we believed, but it was really cool to watch that change.
Missions are still awesome, and I keep saying that, but every week I relearn how awesome missions are and learn a new reason why. This is the Lord's work! And it's awesome! C:
I love you all!!
-Sister Stratford
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