Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Mircales

Dearest Mother,
I love you!! And everyone else in our family:) It's strange to not be there for all the fun things you guys do, but it's pretty cool to hear about it from all of you and also to have all the fun adventures here too. For example here's something that I told my mission president today about last week. It's a pretty crazy story, even if you don't have all the details.

So a miracle that happened this week, but it requires a bit of back story. When we were on exchanges a few weeks ago (Sister Dayton and I) Sister Dayton went to go try to visit a referral we had been given by the Elders, and happened to stop and talk to a lady named Vicky. They got talking, and at some point during the conversation it came about that this lady has great faith in the Lord. She told Sister Dayton that she had just lost her car, but it was ok because God would take care of her, and that she had enough faith that the Lord would give her another car, since she really needed one. But not any car, but a brand new one. She told Sister Dayton to come back, gave her her number, and her address on a piece of paper, and then they left. When Sister Dayton left, she handed me the piece of paper, which I then promptly lost, and freaked out about for about two weeks because I couldn't find it. So New Year's Eve rolled around and Sister Maher and I were reading our scriptures and the Ensign when we get a call from an unknown number, and it was Vicky! She had dug through her trash to find our number because she really wanted us to visit her. She also told us to guess what was sitting outside her apartment. "What?" We asked. "A new car!" Stunned silence for a few moments. It was an absolute miracle how she got it, and I don't really understand all the details, but suffice it to say that she got the car for a lot less then she should have. We went to visit her the next day and taught her the Restoration, which she loved. When we invited her to be baptized, she said as of right now, no, but if God tells her to then she will. We then told her a little bit of what we were going to teach her the next time (The Pan of Salvation), but didn't really tell her everything, just told her that it would answer a lot of the questions she had, and then told her we had to leave, she said "You can't leave now! You have to tell me what comes next!" She's so excited for our next appointment. She's pretty amazing though. And we are super stoked to teach her:)

I love that about every member being a witness. It is so true though. We actually have an investigator that is going back and forth on when she wants to be baptized, but she knows she wants to be eventually, its just the when that is iffy. We had her go over to a member's home for a lesson (the member family is really close to her already) and we basically had a testimony meeting where everyone was bearing their testimony of the things that they knew. We went through the baptismal questions (which I will list in a second) and after each question I asked them what it meant to them, or how it would change their lives, or why they thought that way. It was pretty amazing to listen to their answers, and I found out later that one of the girl's boyfriend who was there was a recent convert, which surprised me because more often than not he was the first to answer to the why. It made me wonder how often each of us asked these questions for ourselves, and not only would answer the way that was expected but really thought about WHY we answered the way we did.
  1. Do you believe that God is your Heavenly Father?
  2. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Brother and your Savior?
  3. Do you believe you have repented of all of your transgressions/sins?
  4. Do you believe that the Church and the gospel of Jesus Christ have been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith?
  5. Do you believe that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God?
  6. When we are baptized, we promise our Heavenly Father that we will take upon the Name of His Son, Jesus Christ. What does that mean to you?

After each of these questions I always followed up with what does your answer mean to you? It was pretty amazing to feel the Spirit that was there as we were talking and how strongly we were each testifying of the truthfulness of everything we were talking about. It was so powerful mostly because each of us really had to think about the answers we gave, and couldn't just say yes. It's something I'd encourage each of you to do for yourselves, with or without other people it doesn't really matter, but it is amazing to see the change that can happen because of it:)

I love what I do here! It makes me so happy to see somebody making further covenants with Heavenly Father, because I know how much He loves each and every one of these people. It's crazy how blessed we are. 

Thank you for all that you have done for me and for how you have prepared me for this. I would not be here if not for you and the rest of my family. You guys show me what it is like to be in a loving family and thats the best part about you:) It makes me super sad to see all the broken families here and how most of them grew up in single parent homes. I have been blessed to have a family like you and I love you for it! Thank you for being such a great example for me:)

Love you all,

Sister Monica Walker

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