He Loves Everyone and So Should You

Dearest Mother,

This week has been so amazing!!!! There is so much I want to email you about and I probably wont even get to most of it because there is so much!

Jazlyn is the one that got baptized:) She is the one in the blue skirt:):):):) The rest of them are her sister and her mom and the member family they are good friends with:):)

First things first. Jazlyn was baptized on Saturday!!! It was so exciting! She asked us not to tell to many people about the baptism because she didn't want a whole lot of people there.. It was surprising pretty full though, and when the rest of the Ward found out the next day that she had gotten baptized many of them came up to us and told us they were disappointed they weren't able to go because they would have loved to come!! I thought that was super sweet of them, and I feel a little bad I didn't tell them about the baptism, but I also know she is a very shy person. Her nonmember family came and the Bishop and the Young Women's president and her family and the main member family that had been fellowshipping. Which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you put together all the extended families in those, then it was a full room (plus 6 missionaries and our Ward mission leader) oh and an investigator of the Elders. The best part was before the baptism when I was talking to her mom who we are also teaching, and she told us that when she gets baptized, the water had better be hot. I thought it was cool, because even if she isn't ready now, she can envision herself doing it sometime in the future!! It made me so happy! And then! Her mom's boyfriend is a less active that hasn't been to church in years and years and years, and since we have been teaching this family, he has been coming to church with them when he can, and he has joined us in most of our discussions, and of course was there at the baptism. Afterwards he thanked me for all that I have done for him and for Jazlyn and her family, and I told him it was completely worth it. And for him not to worry. That even though Jazlyn was baptized, and we have gone through all the discussions with them, we weren't going to forget him, and his own family. We have been, and will continue to work with this family for a while, and I loved seeing the steps that each of them are taking to be closer to Christ and each other. I love all of them so much!!!

Yesterday at church was also super awesome!! Mostly because the missionaries basically made up most of the program. All 6 of us spoke, and I played the organ. Yes Mother. I actually played the organ in church. This I think is the first time I have played the organ (or the piano for that matter) in Sacrament meeting.. It was super nerve wracking.. also don't think I really thought it through very much because I had to play the intermediate hymn right after I spoke, and of course I was crying and so I couldn't really see the music. Needless to say, that hymn wasn't the best, but the ward members thought it was very touching.. so at least there is that! I will be playing next Sunday as well. I don't know what the songs are yet though.. I will have to call the music person to find out today so that I can practice.. haha.

Three of the Elders were new to Albany so they each just bore their testimony to the ward. (One elder was replacing another, and the other two were opening an Elders car area here to help us with the vast amount of people we have to see) The other three of us spoke on the phrase "What would Jesus do?" I was surprised that no scriptures were repeated, and the thoughts were so different. Mine was a lot more focused on the Character of Christ, since before you can answer that question, you have to know who Christ is, and how He reacts to different situations. In a nutshell I said that when things get hard for us, many of us will ask why me? Why now? Why is it so hard? I need a break.. etc. We focus inward. We focus on ourselves. When Christ suffered, He focused outward. He focused on others. When He was being tempted in the wilderness (when He was fasting for 40 days) He did end up calling angels to Him, but not for Himself, instead He sent them to His cousin John who was suffering in prison. Later after He had just suffered the effects of the suffering in the Garden, and was very likely still feeling some of the after affects of it, and then on top of it, one of His closest companions betrays Him to the very people that seek His life, but when Peter cuts off the ear of the soldier who is trying to take Christ prisoner, His first thought is not, you deserved it, but rather to just reach out and heal Him. Because He could not stand to see the soldier suffer. How many of us could do that? How many of us will reach out to the people who hurt us, or whom we know intend us harm, and love them? All Christ has asked for us to do is love everyone. He never said we had to like them, but that we had to love them. Everyone in this world I am sure has felt at some moment in their life that they are utterly alone. Many times they seem to be the most alone in the middle of a huge crowd. We will all feel worthless, unworthy, and ashamed of who we are. We will each feel discouraged and down. I plead with you, just as I did the the ward here to never forget that if you ever feel like that, remember there is at least one person who loves you! That is Christ. He loves you unconditionally!! 

He is always there ready to give you a hug when you need it. And if you can't remember that, and you need a more physically there person, you can know that I love you. I may not like you, but I will love you. One of the things I have been most grateful for in my mission, is the love that I have been able to feel for so many people! I know it would be ten times harder to love these people if I wasn't here on my mission, but I am so glad I have been able to learn to love them here. Many of my favorite people here are those who many look at and will walk across the street to avoid. I might have even done the same. There are many people who I see who others will tell me to stop seeing because they look scary, or they aren't worth my time.. I can tell you that everyone is worth my time. I wish I had more time to see all of them!! It is true that many people are scary looking, look rough or dangerous. Many times people who come to church have very large visible stains on their reputations and image. Visible or not, is it my place to judge? Nope. Its not. I love everyone. That is what I am supposed to do, and that is what I will try to do for the rest of my life. In no way am I perfect at it, and I don't think I will be perfect at it in this lifetime, but I can find as many people as I can to let them know how much I love them, and hopefully help change their life for the better. If they have no one else, they have me. I don't want anyone to be alone. Ever. It makes my heart hurt to much. However, I know that I am only one person. And I am in no way near as powerful or as awesome as our Savior Jesus Christ. He could do all this work if He wanted to all by Himself. But He has allowed me to be a teeny tiny part of it. So that I can feel His love for these people. I feel so blessed to be able to have that part, and I feel that responsibility weigh heavily on my shoulders. If He needs me to, I will continue to do this for the rest of my life. That's how much I love each and every one of you. I'm not sure I can convey my sincerity as well over email, but I really do believe this, and I have made this my life goal. I am excited to see where it leads me!

Anyway.. Then I cried, and shared some more stories, and the whole ward was crying too, and three or four came up to me after and said that talk was meant for them, and one person told me that it was General Authority status.. Which I thought was a very nice compliment. :) Not sure if it was that good, but maybe to him it was since it was so personal and it touched him greatly. At least that meant that the Spirit was there:) I really do love giving talks!

Oh! and then after church the best thing happened, this 10 year old girl came up to me and said "Excuse me, but I'm going to get baptized, and the Bishop said I needed to talk to you" It was the cutest thing ever.. Her dad is a member but has only been recently coming back to church. She decided she was going to get baptized, and later when we visited them, she asked if she could get baptized tomorrow, we told her she had to wait a little longer, so she immediately responded with "Ok, so I can get baptized in 2 days?" haha it made me think of me when I was younger and the things you would tell me when I thought 2 days was so long. Loved it. Turns out the Bishop had already talked to my companion about it, but since I didn't hear that conversation, I didn't know that it had gone on, and it had really surprised me when the little girl came up and told me she was going to get baptized but needed to talk with me first. So cute!

I love you lots! (sorry I had to leave out some of my week that I wanted to tell you, but this is a really long email already and now I am out of time). I hope you are having a wonderful week!!

Love your favorite child,

Sister Monica Walker

PS When does school/seminary start back up? The kids here start tomorrow..

Investigators

Dearest Mother,

It has been a wonderful week this week! We didn't end up having a Japanese Thanksgiving, which was both a relief and a disappointment. It was pretty delicious though. The Japanese sister that made us the food is an excellent cook and so all the food she gave us was really good, and then she sent us home with more, since our "dinner" was at 1. Funny story about that. We had called her earlier that week to ask her what time she wanted us there, so she said 3, that morning, she texted us and asked us if it would be ok if we came at 1:30, and then 20 mins later asked if we could come by at 1 instead, because she wanted us to meet her daughter, and she was going to leave at 2 to go to her boyfriends parents house for another Thanksgiving. So we agreed to be there at 1 to eat our "dinner". At 12:30 she texted us that the food was ready and that we could go over now. So we started over, and then at 12:40 she asks us where we were, that they were all waiting for us, and at 12:50 she sounded frantic as she asked us how far we were (her house is about 20 mins away from ours...) So pretty much she had wanted us there at 12:30 when she asked us to be there at 1.. even though the original time was 3. Crazy funny. It all worked out well though:)

These are some of the tanks on base that we wanted to get pictures by really quick after church.

So the baptism was of a recruit on base. He is going through training right now, and so they aren't allowed off base, so there is a branch for all the military recruits if they want to go to it or not, but since each of them have to have a battle buddy at all times (kinda like companions) there are a lot of non-members that come too, so the Senior couple teach Restoration to them every week, and if they want to learn more, the missionaries will be there to teach the rest of the lessons. This is what happened to that guy who got baptized, and now his wife is even getting the discussions back where ever she is. Super awesome! and the other guy is his battle buddy, and he wants to get baptized too, but he has only had the first lesson. Turns out he lives in Warner Robins though, which is super cool because that means that I was able to help him find the church over there so he knows where to go (because he asked us if we knew where it was) and I also know the missionaries that are in that area, so I knew who to call and what number to call to let them know that he was going to be going there in a few weeks for Christmas, and that he wants to be baptized while he is there for Christmas. Super awesome! I love going on base, and I really want to do it again, but it would mean that Sister Dayton and I don't have any investigators who go to church, because we would both have to go, as opposed to the other Elders who can go on splits with each other so one of them is at church to welcome their investigators. So its a bit of a struggle but we are trying to figure out a way for us to work this out because we want to continue to go to base if at all possible:) Because it's so cool!

Well I got to go, but I love you!

-Sister Monica Walker

The stain glass is a really awesome picture that kinda reminds me of a modern Captain Moroni. Its in the non-denomination church building where we had the baptism on base. Sorry its fuzzy, but UI thought it was cool and wanted to send it home.

The army men lining up are waiting to go into a Catholic mass, but I thought it was interesting because there hasn't been a whole lot of actual military stuff that we have seen, and this was pretty militaristic so we took a picture.

Miracle from Fasting

Dearest Mother:)

I really do love my mission!

Last Fast Sunday, our whole mission participated in a fast for everyone in our mission to be able to find new investigators and progress them to baptism. This week, President Cottle shared with us some of the stories he heard and received as a result of this fast. Here's one of the miracles I saw from this fast:

A few months ago, a member of our ward gave us a referral to this old man who he did some work for, who the member said cried when he heard about the Plan of Salvation. So we have been trying to go over and teach him a little more about what the member had said, but we never had caught him at home, or when he had a free moment until last Friday. Unfortunately he wasn't really interested, but we did leave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and told him we might try later. As we were walking back to the car, we saw a young teenage girl across the street who was watching us, and had been since we arrived. Sister Dietz said she wanted to go talk to her, so we went over and asked her if she wanted a picture of Jesus, she said yes, but then told us to hold on a minute, and she ran in to go tell her mother that we were there. The mother comes out about a minute later, and we tell her who we are and that we have a message for her from Jesus. She invites us in, and introduces us to her 3 children. One of her friends walks into the room, and the mom introduces her too, but it turns out we already know her because she is the best friend of the girl who just got baptized and we had met her the week prior. This was super unexpected because when we first met her, she was all the way on the other side of our area. Small world.. Anyway, we start talking about the baptism, and she asks us where our church is so we give her a card. We end up teaching the Restoration, but though the whole of it, the mom keeps telling her children that they have to pay attention because they were going to go to church that Sunday and she didn't want them to be confused. At the end of the lesson, we asked her and her family and the friend to pray about the things we taught and ask God if it was true. The mom looked at us and with a smile said, oh, I already know it is. I guess we looked a little confused, because she then added that she always prays about people who are coming to talk to her, either to sell things or to talk about religion, and God told her that we were messengers from Him. Crazy! That was pretty awesome and we are excited to go teach them again later in the week:) Unfortunately, they did not come to church, but we will try to get them there next week.

Those people that we meet randomly are sometimes the ones Heavenly Father has prepared the most for them to choose to receive the truths of the restored gospel. I really do love meeting them and sharing with them my testimony of Jesus Christ and our His and Our Father's love for us:)

We also had a baptism on Saturday of this 8 year-old kid we have been teaching. His name is Joey. It was technically a child-of-record baptism, so it wasn't a convert or anything, but the rest of his family, including his siblings, mom and grandparents are all converts so that was really awesome. He has been so excited to be baptized for months! His grandfather requested that we teach him the lessons that they were taught so that he can have a better understanding of what he needs to know when he is baptized. So we taught him all the lessons before being baptized. Last Sunday though he actually got up and bore his testimony on the Holy Ghost and how it helped in him class know what the answer was to a question he really truly did not know. It was the sweetest thing ever and it made me cry! He has been so great for his family, because they are all less-active, except for his grandparents, who they currently live with. The older sister ended up giving the talk for baptism, and they were all there for most of the lessons, as well as for the baptism. This family has gone through some really rough things this summer, but Joey's testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel, as well as his effort in reading his scriptures every single day, praying all the time, and going to church for all three hours has really blessed his family to be closer together and even a little happier than they were at the beginning of the summer when I met them.

Love you lots!

Your favorite child:)

-Sister Walker

PS. Sister Cottle loves that she has had both Ben and I as her missionaries. She asks me all the time how he's doing:) and tells me all the time that she can definitely tell we are related by the Spirit we both have. I thought that was cool.

PSS. Favorite thing about Georgia is the rims on peoples cars. It seriously is super funny how much money is spent here on rims. There is even a place where you can rent rims for a day to put on your car. Rent-a-rims. Seriously though, there are some super crazy ones..

I do have a cool recipe you should make, its for this really good cornbread, but I forgot it at home.. I will send it to you though and you should try it. Its super good, and it isn't dry like most peoples corn bread here. (its not deep fried either)

Baptisms Galore

To the Greatest Mother in the Whole Wide World!

I'm glad you liked my birthday card:) I put a lot of thought into not only writing it, but getting it too:) Just so you know, I don't really think you are old.. You can never be old to me, because you are my mother:) Also I'm glad you figured out that the letter was addressed to you, and not some other mother somewhere out there. How often do you check the mail? Because that letter should have gotten there quite a bit before your birthday. I actually wrote it at the beginning of August and then hung on to it for a week, and then sent it so that it would arrive closer to your birthday:)

This week has been absolutely amazing!! We have another baptism this Saturday for our investigator Tonieshia. We have been teaching her since I got here, and she is finally ready for baptism! We are so excited for her! It really has been a work in progress, and there is still a lot of things we have to do for the baptism, but we are working hard to maker sure that it can run smoothly when the day comes:)

Last Friday was one of the best days I have ever had on my entire mission. It was the day we try to set aside so we can plan for the following week, and so most of the day was taken up by making those plans, and we only had a few hours at the end of the day to actually go and talk with people and share the Gospel. So when we finished planning it was about three in the afternoon, and we had to go because we were being picked up by one of our new ward missionaries (who had never gone out with us before). The first person we saw was Evon, who was the lady who had been in the hospital a few weeks ago because she almost died. We scheduled an appointment with her and we went and talked with her about baptism a little bit more. Last time we had seen her, we asked her to pray about being baptized on the 26th of Sept. So we followed up with that, and she told us that it felt really good, and that she wanted to do it. One of the concerns we had with her was that every other week she would attend "her church" and then she would come to "our church" when she was asked. Long story short, she basically realized that she can't keep doing that, and she understands that if she really does want to be baptized she can't continue to go to another church. It has finally clicked with her the importance of Priesthood, or the Authority of God, and where it comes from.

We then went to go see a lady by the name of Virginia and her daughter Danielle, who has actually come to church 3 times in a row, and who decided she wanted to join the choir, and one of those Sundays actually sang in choir. We had asked her before to be baptized, and she agreed at first, but then a few days later called us and told us that she wasn't ready for that commitment yet. However, when we went to them and talked with them about baptism again (after about another month and a half of teaching) they agreed to pray about being baptized on the 3rd of October, which they said they were pretty sure would be a good day for them, because it still gives them time to learn more about what we have been teaching them.

Then we went home, and ate dinner.

THEN we went and visited this awesome lady named Endora, and her kids Unique (9), Quanaisa (11), and Princess (1). We taught them the pan of Salvation and then invited them to also be baptized on the 10th of October. They all looked us in the eyes, and not only said yes, but said with firmness, that they promise that they will do what is needed to be baptized by that day.

Anyway, that was a pretty awesome day because not only did we put 6 people on date for baptism, but they all understand the importance of what they are promising, and all of them are pretty solid in their willingness to be baptized.:)

Super excited for the weeks that are to come!

Sending all my love

-Sister Monica Walker

PS next week is a holiday, so I wont be able to email Monday, and will probably do so on Tues.

Be Like Little Children

Dearest Madre,

CHARLES IS TOO CUTE!! Oh that boy! I'm sad I missed out on his major walking habits. I really only saw it for one day before I left for my mission. 

I do think it is really awesome that you have been thinking about how we are supposed to be like little children! I don't remember if I said something about that in my last letter or not, but the past few weeks, that has been what is on my mind as I talk to members. Usually after we eat with them, we leave them with a scripture, and since I got to 3 Nephi, where Christ is talking to the people, I have been stuck on the scripture that tells them to let the little ones come to Him, and then they are ministered unto by angels. So often now we are forgetting who we are actually praying to, and how we are supposed to pray, that a lot of time our prayers, as sincere as they may be, say the same things over and over. While that is not bad, when we do that, we tend to forget the little things in the day, so the invitation we extend to members is to listen to the prayers of their children, hear what they are thankful for, and asking for, and then say prayers along those same lines. It makes our prayers more simple and direct and we start to think more about how maybe we don't need this really big thing because look at all the little things we have! Or whatever.. Anyways. I just thought it was cool that our thoughts were kinda on the same line. Like mother like daughter right?

Evon is still in the hospital in Macon, but should be out on Thursday, and we plan on seeing her after that. We call her every few days to make sure she is still ok and healing, and she really enjoys our phone calls:)

Dad and Robert are the Chapman's home teachers right? That must have been really fun for everyone:) I'm sure they enjoyed having Ben and Josh there too. Especially since it has been a long time since they have really seen them.

I hope they all had fun on the hike! Do you know if any of them jumped off a cliff? When I went to Girl's Camp and did that hike, Dad told me that I should jump off the cliff because all my friends were doing it. Aren't parents usually the ones that tell you not to jump off a cliff when your friends do? I hope he told all of them that too.. Also tell Michael I said hi!

So crazy things happened this week. The craziest was actually on Saturday. We are so stoked and excited for that night because Nina (one of our investigators) was getting baptized. So we are driving around trying to go to all of our appointments, when Sister Applegate does a u-turn at one of the 3 way stops. We do this all the time because other wise I have to get out of the car and back her every time she needs to turn around. So anyways, we are actually on the phone with a member because we were heading to her house to walk with her to an appointment we had, who was her neighbor, but suddenly, my side of the car suddenly dips, and we are stuck. I tell the member we will call her back later and get out, and lo and behold! The right front tire fell into a sewer drain that was kinda hidden, and there was pretty much no way we were going to get out, because the bottom of the car is resting on the top of the drain.. So we run to a nearby house to ask for help, and they came outside and told us not to try to move it because it will probably ruin the car, so we called Elder Cole (Our vehicle coordinator) to get a tow truck for us to get out car out. This family let us come stay in their home (that they were moving into). They were all super nice people, and I learned that one for the couples had just gotten back from a mission for their church from Scotland. They had been there for 20 years!! So crazy. Her name was actually Kathy too, which was cool:) So anyways, we hang out for a while waiting for Elder Cole to call us back and tell us what to do, because they were actually on their way to a baptism, and he needed to go back for all the information. Whoops. Also, we had to call the member back and tell her the lesson was cancelled for the time being, because we had "run into some problems". Haha get it? So we talked with this family, and they were actually house sitting for another couple who had just left for Cambodia, and they were cleaning everything out. They people that actually owned the house had about a million of those dolls, china, porcelain, fabric, etc, and it was kinda creepy. We didn't really teach them anything, because we each got the impression that they wouldn't be very happy with us if we tried to, but we did tell them about missions in general, and we had a wonderful conversation about Jesus, police officers, and cars. Its was pretty fun:) The tow truck got our car out without any hassle and without any damage to the car so we were able to drive it away. It would have been awkward of there had been damage though because we had a baptism that night that President and Sister Cottle were going to, and they wouldn't have been very happy about it.

Oh! The baptism was pretty funny too, because we let Nina pick the songs, and she picked the songs that she liked the words to, so we sang hymn #25 and #32, which basically no one knew. And I had the lead the music. That was scary too, because President Cottle is a fanatic about leading correctly for music, and one of the first things he taught us when we arrived was how to lead music. It was a pretty interesting night. No one really looked at me though, because no one knew the song, so all their eyes were glued to the page. Haha that part was nice.

I love being a missionary! You get some pretty awesome stories:)

Love y'all!!

-Sister Monica Walker

He is Aware of All of Our Struggles

Dearest Mother:)

I really do love the letters you send me every week. They make me cry:) Although, I am your daughter, so I guess its expected. I'm glad Robert and Dad got my letters, and that the boys are home now. I do have to say thought that this will be the first time in your life, that you have only sons in the home considering both your daughters are currently elsewhere in the United States.. Haha

Jonathan and Ashley on her baptism day!

This week has been an extremely spiritual week for my companion and I. As you aware from last weeks letter, one of our investigators Ashley got baptized last Saturday. Her boyfriend Jonathan, despite the car breaking down, and being irreparable, managed to make it Friday night home from BYU-I and was able to baptize her the next day. This baptism was so awesome! I was able to be a part of her being taught from the beginning, and since then have been working really hard for her to be prepared for her baptism. I watched Ashley start to cry because of the overwhelming feeling that the Spirit brought in to the room. I then turned to look at the mother and she was silently sobbing on the side of the room. I knew then that the Spirit was testifying to her of the truthfulness and rightness of the teachings we share and Ashley's commitment to it and the Lord. I'm so grateful I got to be a part of it, even for these short few months that I have been in Warner Robins.

We have this investigator named Evon. (Well actually she introduced herself as Evelyn at church one week, so I think that's her actual name, but she tells us to call her Evon). She is the strongest lady I have ever met. She goes into dialysis 3 times a week, and on two of those days, she has us come over and teach her. She told us once that even if she is in extreme pain, she will tell people that she is fine because she doesn't want them to worry about her. It is only when the pain is more than she can handle that she will tell us otherwise. She has also since I met her been through 3 surgeries. We saw her after one of them, and she told us that she was not feeling great at all, which made us worried because she never complained, but we let her rest. The last two weeks we have been trying to see her and her car has been there, but she never answered the door. We knew she loved us coming by, and she is the type of person who if she had wanted to stop the discussions would frankly tell us not to come back, and that she would never leave us hanging. Day after day we would try her, but no one would answer. It made me sad and a little worried as the days turned into weeks. Yesterday our phone rang, but we didn't answer since we were in a teaching appointment. We didn't recognize the number, and so we listened to the voicemail that was left. The voice was very weak, and even on speaker phone we could hardly hear, so we pulled over so we could concentrate on listening to the voice. It was Evon! She started out by telling us who it was, and where she lived, and then apologized to us for being MIA for so long. We later found out, that she had very nearly died, and that it was only the grace of God that keeps her heart beating. Her last surgery had many complications, and she ended up in ICU for a while. As soon as she was able, she got our number and called us to let us know that she was still alive, and that she was sorry she hadn't been in touch since. She was still in the hospital in Macon, so we couldn't go see her. We called the APs in Macon and asked if they could go visit her for us, which was a problem at first, because we didn't know what room number she was in, and all we had was her name. They were able to find her though, and they left a Book of Mormon with her so that she could read it while she was in the hospital, since her Book of Mormon was here at home. She was very grateful for that. After our dinner appointment, we were finally able to get a hold of her ourselves, and we talked to her for a little bit and got more of the information of what actually happened. She was very grateful that we sent the missionaries to go see her when we couldn't, and she even told us that she had prayed about the Book of Mormon, and that she is only getting good feelings from it. That was something we were trying to get her to do last time we talked with her, and I'm so glad she was able to recognize the importance of the Book of Mormon. I know that she has great potential to recognize the Spirit and the truthfulness of the things we are sharing with her. I know that even though she has a hard life dealt her, that even if she were to pass away before she was able to be baptized, I know with a certainty that she would accept it later. I hope I can be here when she does take that step for her eternal progression, and I'm glad Heavenly Father has allowed her a little more time on Earth so that we could continue to share with her our testimonies of the truthfulness of His plan for her.

There is this other family that we try to visit (I've only shared something with them once). They are an in-active family, and the mother is very bitter towards God. She has three sons, and all of them have a disease that has something to do with genetic blindness, and they have all undergone surgeries to prevent it (the oldest is 9 and the youngest is 2). She tries to help them, and there are times that because they are in pain, and she is restraining them from hurting themselves, that they get angry towards her, and it breaks her heart to see them in so much pain. She is mad at God for their pain, and she hates the idea that their suffering is her trial. However, she will still accept blessings for her children before their surgeries, but she expects them to be healed completely rather than relying on the will of God. Her youngest was scheduled for a surgery a few weeks ago, to fix the cataract in his eyes. When they went in for the surgery (after the blessing) the cataract had disappeared! I know that it was God's hand in the healing, because things like that just don't happen on their own, especially since the cataract was huge just the week before. We haven't yet been able to see the mother, we just spoke to the father briefly, but I know that God is aware of this family, and that He knows their struggles, and is right there with them trying to help them overcome it. 

I know my Father in Heaven loves all of these people. I know He knows their struggles even more than I do. I know He is trying to help them in every manner that he can. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to be an instrument in His hands to help them, even when I won't know the outcome. 

He Lives! He Loves! And He is aware of all of our struggles! Nothing escapes His notice, and if we but turn to Him, He has this beautiful plan for me, for you, and for everyone to be the happiest we have ever been forever and ever. 

I love my Savior and this Gospel. The peace it brings me is awe inspiring. He is Hope.

I love you all!

-Sister Monica Lyn Walker

PS We found this really cool apartment complex that we didn't know existed, and we already have 5 investigators there, and about 6 good potentials. And we haven't even finished tracting the area!

These are ninja blackbelt gingerbread cookies.. my district found out I'm a 2nd Degree black belt, and now they are all obsessed over it, so some of the Elders made us these. 

 P.S.S. This was my training I did! It was super fun:) I had an obstacle course in which I blindfolded three Elders and told them to make their way through it. One companion I told to guide him step by step through it, another I had yell from across the room, and the last I told not to say anything. It was supposed to represent the three kinds of companions you could have. One who takes them step by step through the process, another who just tells them the end goal, and the last who doesn't tell them anything at all. The first made it through with still a few bruises, but very little, the second ran into two tables, 5 chairs, a trashcan, and some other items, the last wandered around lost until he finally, but very slowly made it to the end, long after everyone else. It was awesome:)

Remember the "Kit-KAT"

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN SO AWESOME!!!

We have had the craziest week this week! We had three baptisms on Saturday, which went super awesome. Sister Kozak was the speaker and she gave the baptism talk for the Vazquezes (those being baptized, aka Rhonda, Eric, and Carlos). She said that the Kit-Kat candy bar perfectly represents baptism. She said it is a Baptism Kit that tells you what you are about to promise to do. First, Keep the commandments. When we are baptized, we promise to keep all of God's commandments. Second, Always remember Jesus Christ. Like it says in the sacrament prayers, we need to always remember our Savior so that we can do our best to resist temptations. Last, Take His name upon you. It is important that when we are member's of Christ's church, that we are doing our best to represent Him. Our example is what people will see when they see The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we need to being doing all that we can to be a good example and exemplify Christ as best as we can so that others may be uplifted and brought to the gospel. Therefore, its a baptism Kit-KAT. Get it? I thought it was an awesome analogy. I wrote that down in my journal too so I can remember it forever.

We also had three of our investigators at the baptism, none of whom who had ever come to church before! Which is saying something since we have had at one point 7 of our investigators at church at one time. It has been super awesome in the week leading up to those baptisms. Every day, so that we could keep in contact with them and make sure they knew they had our support, we texted them, or they texted us so that we could get to know each other better. One of the first questions was "if you were left on a deserted island all by yourself, what three things would you bring?" My answer? My Kindle, my pillow, and an axe. <- Basically so I could build myself a shelter and relax all day long reading. My companions answer? Ice cream, her phone, and a helicopter. Her goal? To get off the island. Haha I thought that was really funny, and definitely shows the differences between our personalities.

We not only had three baptisms on Saturday, but three of the families in the morning ended up moving as well. One moved to a different ward, but the other two just moved into different homes in the same ward boundaries. There were apparently so many people to help, that they finished all three moves about 30 mins before they were even supposed to show up to the last one. They finished right before 11, which is when My companion and I showed up to help the Groves move their daughter in with them. We were able to help organize stuff though, which was super useful for them. The Groves just so you know are an awesome family where everyone but the grandmother was baptized a year ago. Sister Grove (the grandmother) was baptized later because of some Word of Wisdom issues she had to fix before she could be baptized. Brother Grove is a biblical scholar and he basically knows the entire Bible front to back. So everything we tell him he already seems to know. He is however enjoying having the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine of Covenants to decipher.. 

We worked really hard this week to achieve all of our goals, and we did! that was super awesome:) We even had 14 lessons where members came with us! That was super awesome too. The members here really are nice and have really good testimonies that they are willing to share.

The investigator was going to be baptized on Sunday? That's pretty unusual considering they'd have to wait a week before being confirmed, since that usually happens in the following Sacrament Meeting. I assume it had to do with the fact that she was near delivery though? That's too bad though, then the baby could say that he was baptized twice.. Haha, not really, but it would be funny.

I love that you shared that experience with me with the Sacrament Mom:) Its been hard sometimes to focus on the talks that are being given because we are so worried about the investigators that we have with us. For example, last week we had a less active who came to church for the first time in years, who has a issue with the Law of Chastity (She doesn't really understand that you can't just say sometimes is ok to not follow it and other times its not) and every single talk was on the Law of Chastity.. And then there was another investigator who was an shy 19 year-old who we hadn't taught the Law of Chastity to yet, and she probably thought that it was the weirdest church ever considering her first Sunday at church was Stake Conference, and then the next time she comes its about chastity.. haha oh well. Anyway, my point is though, that this actually happens a lot, and while I'm sure it is important for these people to hear this, and it will probably be the thing they need to hear, we get the fall back, and some people aren't very happy with us. We are still teaching both of them though, and the boy friend of the less active we are also teaching, and he is super open about the whole thing.

Oh! That reminds me, we were teaching the boyfriend the other day, with a member, and we were teaching the Plan of Salvation. He was raised Baptist, and he said that he didn't like being forced to go to church when he was younger so he quit going, but as we were teaching the Plan, we were discussing how it was different from what any other church believes, and he said that what we had shown him was what he had always thought he believed, but he never had it all concretely laid out before. So basically, he said he remembered this plan from the Pre-exsistance. That was super awesome:) It also made my day, because I always wanted someone to tell that to me.

This was my Zone last transfer:)

Oh! Other crazy thing I almost forgot to tell you. We have this investigator named Ashley who we have been teaching for the past few weeks. She actually attended church for a while with her member boyfriend's family, and then I met her at church (not knowing she wasn't a member, because I didn't know anyone) and we ended starting the discussions that week. Her boyfriend goes to school at BYU-I, and since she wants him to baptize her, we have all been counting down the days until he comes home from school, which is this Saturday. (side note, this means Ben and Josh are finishing their semester this week, so good luck on your Finals!) We asked her to be baptized that first week we had met her, and set her date to be the 25th of July. A few weeks later, we pushed the date because we weren't sure when her boyfriend would be getting home that Saturday so we just decided to be safe we would move it, but then they will be out of town the weekend of the 1st of August, so we scheduled it for the 8th. Yesterday, we finished lesson four with her, and because of the rules now, we have to teach all 5 lessons before they are interviewed for baptism, so our plan was to finish the 5 lesson this week, go over the questions with her to make sure that our mission president wouldn't have to interview her, and then interview her next Sunday (which would be 2 weeks in advance) for her baptism. Yesterday, she found out that her boyfriend's grandfather would be leaving to go home on the 1st, and because she doesn't have a whole lot of support at home, and she really likes this family, she asked if it were possible for her to be baptized on the 25th. THIS SATURDAY.. They are supposed to be interviewed a week in advance, and we still hadn't finished the lessons, so we made about 6 phone calls last night to all of our leaders to ask if it were first of all feasible for it to happen, and number two, if we should do it. We were told to pray about it for ourselves, so we did, and after talking to Ashley on the phone (because she had texted us this) we had decided to go ahead with the baptism this Saturday. She is definitely ready, and has been for a while, but it was a stressful hour since we found this out at about 9 last night, and our curfew was 9, and we had to be off the phone by 10:30. We called the Bishop, the ward mission leader, and his assistant, our district leader, Ashley, and all these other people to get this going. We have to cram a lot of stuff into one lesson tonight so that she can be interviewed right after. We have paperwork we need to work out, we have to schedule the building (and pick out a time fro the baptism), figure out who is giving each talk, praying, playing the piano, etc. So its going to be pretty awesome I think. This does mean though that for three weeks in a row we will be having a baptism every Saturday, because Nina, another of our investigators is being baptized on the 1st of August next week:)

We are so super excited!!

Love you all!

Sister Monica Walker

PS I'm still Mom's favorite

PPS Dad's too:)

PPPS Thanks for the camera!! The pictures will be sent in another email:)