It's My Birthday!

HELLO

I don't know how I got so lucky for my Birthday to end up on a Monday, but I am so happy that it did!! Thank you so much for all the birthday wishes, packages, and letters! It has seriously been the best! 

So now I'm 20. That is weird to say. I can remember last year's birthday so perfectly. I got my mission call just two days before a year ago! Can you believe that? Time flies so fast. Today has been a great day so far and we have a fun activity planned with the whole zone as well. A member is feeding us tonight and another family took us to get sushi on Saturday! #blessed 

Next to it being my birthday we also had a fantastic week! Started out last Monday when we had a great lesson with Mike and Angela Perry.  Angela is a less active member and Mike is not. Mike agreed to baptism on April 23rd! They are totally prepared. All they needed is a little nudge in the right direction from the spirit. Tuesday was a crazy busy day. We actually went out tracting! We don't do a ton of tracting in this area cause it's not the most effective. But we decided to try it out in an area further out in the country where maybe there would be less Baptists. WRONG. The baptists are everywhere. However we did find a new investigator!!! His name is Emerson and he is 18. Super open, friendly, and NOT baptist. Aka Golden! We also got in touch with Diamond and Melissa again which was great! 

Friday I went on exchange and stayed here with Sister Pouliot.  I got to drive the car! I am getting a little rusty. I didn't realize how windy the roads here are, but thankfully we survived.  We were able to find another new investigator on Friday as well!  Sister McGannon told us to try one of their neighbors who had just moved in back on Tuesday so we did and we met the husband, Michael who told us we could come back, we came by Friday evening and met his wife who was also interested!  Working through the members people, it really works! 

Saturday we did some more service at Karen's and had a lesson with her at the McGannons.  They are some talkers so we ended up being there most of the day haha we then had the adult session of Stake Conference that night!  Tender Mercy of the week: We are on our way to the adult session of Stake Conference when we get a text from the Zone Leaders that we can't go unless we have an investigator or a Less Active there.  We're just like Uhh thanks for the reminder we are literally already on the way!  We had invited Alton, but we weren't 100% he would be there.  So we are out waiting in the foyer and he shows up!!  Just after that our Mission President and his wife come over and introduce themselves to him and then Elder Kapishke, the member of the seventy, comes up as well!! haha I think Alton was a little overwhelmed by that one.  Anyways, the adult session was amazing!!  Instead of Elder Kapishke giving a talk we had a discussion where members of the congregation participated and answered questions.  It was SO good. The overall theme of the discussion was how we can become unspotted from the world by increasing our faith in Jesus Christ and committing to follow the prophet.  At the end he invited anyone who had learned something or had decided on something they were going to do based on what they had learned to come up and share. 

I learned a lot about increasing my faith.  I recognized that of course I already have faith and a testimony, but that I can do a lot more to be increasing it and working on it.  He talked about the verse in Alma 32:27 where it talks about "experimenting" on the word.  He said to increase your faith you have to agree on an experiment do something out of your comfort zone, test something out, and to always have little projects going on.  He said "Increasing your faith is actually fun!  If your journey in the church is not a joyous one then you are missing something."  I decided I need to start on more little projects and I indeed can "move mountains" just by taking a shovel and a pick and starting to work.  There is so much I could share with you that I learned from the discussion. One last thing that he said, 

 "Enduring to the end is just enduring from one sacrament meeting to the next!"

Oh so true.  Sunday we were able to see not only Emerson, but his 16 year old brother as well!  We had an awesome lesson with them. They both believe in a God more like the possibility of a God but don't have a sure faith and understanding. Their mom also came in at the end so we now are teaching the family! Super exciting stuff. 

Just know how much I love and miss ya'll. I'm so grateful for everything, it's those little things that keep me going, so thank you!

Aloha,

Sister Dearden