This has been a great week! My new area is tough, but a lot of our hard work and faith was rewarded by miracles!
This week we also had a super great district meeting about happiness, which I think did a lot to pump us up to continue working. A scripture that our district leader shared and asked us to study is Mosiah 4:9-12, and I would definitely recommend studying it because it’s one of my favorites!
After district meeting we had our first miracle of the week! We found a new investigator named Dave and then taught him the next day with an awesome young woman from our ward!
The next day was pretty great as well, because we went on a mini exchange with the STLs to help them get to all of their appointments on time. It was super fun to spend some time with Sister Davis (She was my STL in Portland, and she followed me here to Vancouver!). After we got home, Sister Hansen and I were exhausted and really hungry for some reason haha. So the member we live with, Sister Schott, drove to Chick-Fil-A for us (She’s the bomb!) and we used our personal time before bed to hang out and play card games with her.
The next day was nuts, though! We blamed it on it being Friday the 13th, but all of the times we tried to talk to people, they were in awkward or weird situations! It was okay though haha, it’s good for us to be able to work through the awkward and keep trying to teach people!
And, the rest of the weekend was full of miracles! We got a call from a lady who was visiting her non-member friend and wanted to bring her to church! We informed her that it was stake conference, but they came anyway and her friend had a great time! Last night we brought her a Book of Mormon, and we’re going to start meeting with her every Friday! That means we got TWO new investigators this week, in an area where everyone is seemingly happy with their lives. What a miracle to see our hard work paying off already.
The other awesome thing that happened this week was, drumroll……………………..
ALI GOT BAPTIZED!!!! It was such a special moment and I am so so grateful for the privilege I had to find and teach him while I was serving in Alameda. He is going to be an incredible member of the church, and I can tell that his life has truly been changed. If I don’t have any more success the whole rest of my mission, all of it would be worth it, just to see that one special soul join the church and bear his testimony of all that that means to him. I cannot adequately describe just how fulfilling and joyful it is to see one of your best friends join the covenant path!
The rest of the weekend was just so good as well. I loved getting to see Hermana Vazquez and members from the Spanish group at the baptism. AND, we had stake conference! I learned a lot, but I just wanted to share one simple thought with all of you. One sister got up and talked about how to help families study the BoM and learn from it. She said:
1) Read it
2) Liken it
3) Live it
I LOVED her message because as we like the BoM to ourselves, or in other words, think about how it applies to us, it becomes so much more real and interesting, and so much easier to apply its teachings in our lives. Hold tight to the scriptures, brothers and sisters, they are the foundation of our testimonies and they contain the sure and certain way to return to our Heavenly Father. Have a fabulous week!!!!
Love,
Hermana O’Barr
Hopefully people will send me more pictures from the baptism soon.
