Fasting With a Purpose

Laguna Niguel 

It's been a pretty crazy cool week! I will just get down to the nitty gritty of it all. 

We have had about 6 people just completely ready to get baptized forever. There are 2 kids that love the church and their mom is a super awesome lady. She is probs my favorite person out here. But her 2 kids from a previous marriage can't get baptized cause their dad won't let them. Also, if you recall the Peridot family (same situation as the last family) they have a daughter that has just opened up and has loved coming to church and reading the BoM and coming to Young Womens and stuff. Also Don and Gavin. 

Anyway, so for all of these names we had a ward fast and a few others. We had the ward council come up with a date of when all these people could get baptized so we settled on August 22nd. We have just had an amazing experience. 

So randomly, a less active guy we have been working with forever brought his son (who isn't baptized) to church. He ended up going to the temple with another family to do a tour and they commited him to be baptized this Saturday! It is nuts! I have taught the kid a few times and he was going to get baptized some months ago but just stuff with the family stopped it. 

Then we talked to Don the other night and taught him about the Plan of Salvation and he loved it. We invited him to be baptized on August 22nd. He isn't going to be here for that day so we are going to teach him all the stuff and he is going to be baptized in September! 

Then, last night, we went over to the Peridots' and we invited Morgan to be baptized on August 22nd. Well she wasn't ready to answer right then but she is thinking about it. The cool story about that one is that we were super hesitant to invite her but as the night went on we just felt that it was the right thing to do. It was just a crazy week. We had about 6 nonmembers at church yesterday. 

I am sure none of that made sense, but the moral of the story is that as we showed the Lord that we were willing to do all we could to progress the work, He blessed us with opportunities to bless His sons and daughters. 

So much has been happening that I can't really keep it straight in my mind. So I am just going to answer your questions. There is no manual for District Meetings. They are just what ever I feel the district needs. Cool story: on my first lesson I was super unsure about my training and didn't believe it was very good, but we had a guy from another district come in to even out the sisters to elders ratio. In his own district he told them what an awesome miracle it was that he was able to come into my group and hear exactly what it was that he needed to hear. It just blew me away. I was certain when I started preparing that it was inspired but when it got down to it, I started to doubt. But the Lord knows what His children need and it's awesome to be a leader in the field cause He uses us to strengthen others. 

Our youth is my favorite thing in the world. They are so strong. Especially the Young Womens. They had 4 nonmember girls go to Girls Camp and they just bossed it up! They taught the girls about the gospel and the church and just made them feel like part of the group. Two of those girls are now interested in learning more. Not from us yet, but soon :) We are planning on joining in on the youth group activites and maybe host a few to help get involved in their groups. 

We listened to 2 talks this week that just kinda got my mind turning a bit more on why I am on a mission and how to help others want to do missionary work. The first talk was called "Conversion of a Catholic". It's only on Youtube, I think, but we got it on a CD. The other talk was called "The Missionary Next Door". This one was about how a girl's family was just the perfect example of member missionary work. I would love to hear about your insights into both talks.

I am super glad to hear that you guys had such an awesome summer! Mom sounds like she has only been home for like two days out of the whole thing. We have our temple day this week on Friday! It's like my favorite thing in the whole world. I will hopefully be able to do all the work for one of my own names. Doing family history work is kinda fun! 

Anyways, I love you all so much and your prayers are helping out so much! I am so glad I am out here. It is seriously the greatest experience. More than I ever could have imagined!