D&C 27:5

Dearest Family!

I am pretty spiritually exhausted right now! Today we had the opportunity to have what we call "Mission Tour." It is where a General Authority comes and does a training for all the missionaries and "tours the mission." We had Elder Yoon Hwan Choi and his wife come! He was great! Usually all the missionaries would meet together and they would do one big meeting but since our mission is the 3rd largest geographically in North America, they had like 4 different meetings. So today it was just two zones out of nine in my mission. That made it nice. More of a personal situation. He's able to focus more on the missionaries that are there instead of being spread real thin because there are 200 missionaries he is instructing. Today there was probably about 50-60 missionaries there. There were 4 sister missionaries there, including myself. So we sat down to have lunch and Elder Choi and his wife came and sat by us and ate lunch with us! We felt pretty special! It was really intimidating though because he is a General Authority! He said to ask him questions but we couldn't think of any because we were so scared that he was going to look in our eyes and see our deepest darkest secrets! But it was good. He has a son that is serving in the Sydney Australia Mission at the moment! So they know what it's like to have a child on a mission!

It is super amazing how Heavenly Father answers our prayers. Every month, we are encouraged to choose a Christlike attribute from Preach My Gospel and work on it. While I was praying the other night, I was considering what attribute I should work on for the month of September. I felt like I needed to work on faith. So I prayed that I would be able to work on my faith and build on what faith I do have. It's hard choosing an attribute because once you choose one, you know you are going to have some trials that are hard and they have everything to do with the attribute you are trying to work on. It's like you are signing your own death trap or something, saying you are willing to go through any trial that Heavenly Father sees fit to give us so we can work on the attribute we chose! So I've been praying that I can work on my faith and guess what Elder Choi instructed us on for 2 hours? Yep, faith! How perfect was that for me and it was a definite answer to my prayers!

I took lots of notes but for lack of time I'll just share the analogy he gave. So, he is Korean and they LOVE what is called kimchi. You might know what it is. I'd heard of it but I didn't know exactly what it was. It is boiled cabbage made with red peppers, garlic, and onion. It can be fermented and it makes it an anti-cancer food. It is really spicy! He said that it takes time to like it if you haven't grown up with it. So he applied this to growing our faith by mainly reading the word of God! Particularly to Alma 32:28 where it says it becomes delicious to me. So our faith can be built by reading the word of God and then it will become delicious to us. I didn't do a very good job at explaining how he did it! But it made sense in my head! :)

Now that that has been explained, I can tell you about our amazing week!!

Last week I told you about how Sister S whispered in Sister Knutson's ear that we need to ask him to be baptized again! Well, we were driving home from the church Wednesday night and we had a text from her! It said: "girls, Jim says give him a date and he'll do it...." WHAT??? We were SO excited!!! So we met with them on Saturday morning and we asked him what happened...little background if I didn't tell you already, Sister S told us to not push him and he would do it when he knows he needs to. They also pretty much told us that we could stop teaching them if we had more important things to do, like teach someone who is progressing. So we told them they were not wasting our time and since then we have really just been reading the Book of Mormon with them. SO he has been looking for a new job and he got one! Then a friend of his called him up and asked him if he wanted to do some consulting work. Brother S could see that he was being so blessed and that it was Heavenly Father blessing him and so he decided that he needed to do what God wanted him to do - be baptized! So that's what made him make his decision to be baptized! We are so excited! His baptism date is on the 28th of September. When they texted us saying that he wanted to be baptized, we told them that he needed to be living the Word of Wisdom 3 weeks before his baptism and he stopped drinking coffee right then and there! He used to have a cup every morning! So even though he gets headaches a lot now because his body wants the caffeine, he still doesn't drink coffee!! How great is that? That is something Sister Knutson and I were hoping for. On our way to their lesson, we were like, "How great would it be if Bro. S had stopped drinking coffee without us begging and testifying of the blessings it would bring?" Well, that's what happened! It's amazing what Heavenly Father can do for people! He touched Bro. S so much that he stopped drinking coffee without a second thought! It's so great!

Another amazing thing happened on Saturday! We came out of our dinner appointment and we had a voicemail from a Young Single Adult. In her message she said that she had a friend that she talked to the night before until 5 am. They were having a gospel discussion and she said she basically taught him the first lesson (she's a returned missionary) and he said that he wants to get baptized!!! We were more than excited to get this news! So we are hoping to get in contact with him super soon!!

As I am out here on my mission I am coming to more of a realization that I have nothing to do with any baptism I will be a part of; I didn't cause any of it. I'm just "the finger of the Lord." In our instruction today, President Stout, the Rogers Stake President, talked to us and he related the story of the Brother of Jared and how he saw the finger of the Lord. He said that us as missionaries are the finger of the Lord and that we need to live accordingly. I've been pondering that and how it really is true! I'm just here to guide people and get them through "the gate" on their journey back to their Father in Heaven. The Spirit is what testifies, convinces, and changes people and makes them want to become better. I'm just here because I have to be here in order for them to know what they need to do once they want to change and become better. I'm not making anybody change. I can pray as hard as I want and share my testimony as much as possible but that doesn't make people change. I'm only inviting the Spirit into the situation and that is what causes the people to change. I'm so grateful that my Father in Heaven saw me fit and worthy and called me to be out here helping him save souls. That's truly what missionary work is: saving souls. I'm humbled and grateful to be apart of His great and marvelous latter-day work! 

I love you all!!

See you soon then!

Love, Sister Pahl