Jan. 25, 2016

It has been a crazy week!

Monday we had dinner with one of Hermie Browns family friends. He and his two kids took us out to Red Robin (Yuuummm) and it was fun to hear more about her family and stuff :)

Tuesday we had our lesson with David and then he and his Dad went to boy scouts!!! :) We had a meeting at the church too so it was awesome to see them there!!! They are doing so great!!!

Wednesday we had a missionary broadcast from 10-12. It was SOOOO amazing. Our Zone met up with another Zone and a half at a church building to watch it and President and Sister Hancock showed up!!! In every talk "We teach Repentance and Baptize converts", was said at least once. I guess it is kind of the new theme/slogan thing. President Hancock asked us to email him about it and prepare to discuss it in MLC with him!! This is what I emailed him today...

 "I think this zero's in on exactly what is so easily overlooked, but necessary for someones true and lasting conversion. We are here to help others come unto Christ and to do that we have to ask people to CHANGE through the Atonement. Repentance is something that we have that is different and necessary for others to come unto Christ. When people understand Repentance and what that means to them and their personal Salvation, when they truly understand this and Christ's role and have a desire to change they begin to convert themselves. So we teach Repentance and then we can baptize the converts that they already have become. We don't just go through teaching so we can Baptize these investigators and hope they become converted. Of course we all continue growing our testimonies as members, but we don't just want to Baptize someone who will just go inactive immediately because they weren't committed and converted to the covenant they were making. It happens too much and I think we need to focus more on helping them truly become converted, through repentance before we help them to the next step of baptism."

We were also on exchanges that day and so I was with Sister Stephens in her area!!

Thursday we attempted weekly planning and struggled through it. Knowing we weren't getting calls until Saturday was soooo hard!! That night we had our last lesson (in the lessons needed for Baptism) with David!!!! We got a call from one of our Sisters right after because she was strugglin and needed to talk about some stuff so we went on splits and I was with her the rest of the night. She is doing great now though!! :)

Friday we had our first "trial" Noche de Hogar (FHE) with a member of the Spanish Branch! We were there with the Elders and one of the Ward Missionaries. We are starting this new thing where we do two NDH con las familias en nuestra rama cada semana! We are super excited to see how it goes. We are really trying to focus on building up the branch.

Saturday was soooooo stressful!!! We did a pretty big service project run for a family who just moved into the trailer court from El Salvador. They have NOTHING at all. All us missionaries and the same Ward Missionary went over to scope it out and then throughout the day we were asking around and picking up things for them. 

We got calls at about 7pm (TORTURE) and YES SISTA BROWN AND I ARE STAYING TOGETHER!!!!! We are ALSO going to be in ONLY SPANISH WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am soooooo beyond excited. President made an entire Spanish Zone!! It goes from Pocatello up to Manann (I don't know how to spell it). But all the missionaries with in the Spanish Zone are only in Spanish work!!! Woot wooooooot!!! Awesome!! Vargas is going to be training as well!!!!!!

Sunday we endured our 5 hours of church and then had another AMAZING lesson with the Olivers. We taught the plan of Salvation with Brother Wride (our ward mission leader for the 9th ward). We let them know that Elders were going to be coming in 

Anywaaay!! That was our week!!! Kinda crazy and lots happened. I am loving it though and I cannot complain about anything!!! So many blessings and miracles have been falling from the sky and I feel soooo beyond blessed to be here. Thank you for all of your support and love!!