Dearest Family and Friends!
Holy moly! Conference was so good! I still can't believe that it's been six months since they announced that missionaries could go out at a younger age! Now conference is over again and we have to wait another 6 months until it is here. I'm going to order myself a Conference Ensign so I can study the talks until conference happens again. That's what I've done the for the past two conferences. On Saturday morning, I finished reading the last talk from October so I was pretty excited that I had read them all before conference happened again! I love learning from our leaders. There's so many things that I need to work on and it stresses me out sometimes but there was something said this conference that I loved! I believe it was Elder Scott who said it. He said that although there may be many things to work on, we can become like our Heavenly Father one consistent step at a time. That's not exactly what he said, but that's what I got! I can't worry about doing everything all at once, but I can work on becoming like my Savior one step at a time. Elder Cardon's talk was probably one of my favorites! It was all about forgivness and how our Heavenly Father is so willing to forgive us no matter what we have done. None of us are perfect and so it's nice to know we have a loving Father in Heaven that is willing to extend His mercy towards us and that our Savior, Jesus Christ, allows that to happen because he suffered through the Atonement for us. President Uchtdorf was also one of my favorites and of course President Monson was as well. I pretty much just liked the whole thing! :) We watched all of the sessions at the Parkes' home except for Sunday morning. We had an investigator come! Christina...the one with heart problems. Sister Parkes and us went and picked her up and then went and watched it at the church. Christina loved it! She thought Pres. Monson was hilarious! Naturally, he was....with his funny facial expressions and entertaining stories! Who would have guessed that the Prophet would have lit a field on fire when he was 8?!! :) I guess we all have to learn someway. :) Christina said that if all goes well, she'll be back next Sunday! We're pretty excited!
Transfer calls were this last Saturday so we had quite the eventful weekend! The expected happened....Sister Hatch and I are staying together in Muskogee! :) This will make my third transfer here and so I'm excited to say that I'll be here as long as I was in Bella Vista!
Unfortunately, I think I'll be transferred at the end of this six weeks but you never know! We'll see what happens. I'm just happy to get to stay in Muskogee for another transfer! Although, I feel like I keep gaining weight here! But Sister Parkes says it's because I'm happy. I say it's because she makes delicious cakes.....I think I've told you before but she makes cakes for a living. When she makes a cake, she has to cut off the top of it to make it even and so we get to eat the cake that she cuts off of the top! I believe she has two wedding cakes this month so we'll be eating more cake pretty soon! Her cakes are so good! I want to fly her out to Utah to do my wedding cake! hahah they really are AMAZING!!! I've never had a cake that was better.
We got some exciting news this week! So Bishop Grooms has been working on getting permission to rebaptize Bro. Russell. We texted him earlier this week asking him how that was going. He texted back and said.....we got the paper work so now the bishopbric just needs to meet with him and we can proceed with setting up his baptism!!!!! We are so excited! So that will probably happen this month!
Some other great news....Saturday night, we went to go see Christina and we told her that we were getting transfer calls. She was super sad and didn't want either of us to leave. So we told her that she had better say a prayer that we both stay. She proceeded to give a beautiful prayer, very heartfelt. I even started tearing up a little bit. She is so amazing. She told us to text her right when we found out what was going on so when we got news that we both were staying, we texted her and said, "We are staying! :) Now you have to get baptized! :)" She texted back and said, "Yea WhooooooooooooooooooooooYahooooooooooooooooooo! :) and us 3 will work on me getting baptized! :)" SO, we're hoping that she'll be able to get baptized this transfer as well! It's probably going to be the best transfer yet! :)
We were able to pick up a new investigator this week! Her name is Marsha. She lives up in Wagoner so it's super far away and they live in a REALLY run down house. It was kind of sad to see. She even said herself that it's not pretty, but it's home. She and her husband live there. Their son passed away in October from colon cancer. It was really unexpected and so they've been having a hard time with that. Especially because he was so young. We were able to teach her about the Plan of Salvation and she believed every word! It will be hard to get her to come to church because she says she doesn't leave her house very often but we gave her a Book of Mormon and she said she would read it. At the end of the lesson, she gave a beautiful prayer and thanked God for sending us into her life.
On Monday, we were trying to locate a less active member so we went to the address that is on the ward list. We came to find out that she had moved to Tennessee a few months ago. BUT the lady that was living in her house is a member! She's not on the ward list so it was a miracle that we found her! She was in the Navy for 4 years and so now she's wanting to get back into church. She is a very talkative person, we think that it might be because she's a little lonely but we don't know. She was going to come to conference on Sunday morning but she wasn't feeling good. We'll go back and see her again this week.
We've also been going through our "Potential Investigators" list and trying to find people to teach from that. We texted this number for one of the people on there and it was actually a number for the lady that referred him to us. She said that she'd referred him a while ago but she didn't know if the missionaries had gone and seen him. So we went and saw him! :) Turns out, the sisters had gone and seen him but then hadn't gone back. He is very knowledgable in the Bible and is very logical. The sisters gave him a Book of Mormon but he said he hadn't finished it yet. So we gave him a "marked" copy (I think I told you about the district meeting we had on that....I sent one to Nani for her birthday...) and challenged him to read it. He said to call him on May 5th and he will have it read. So I'm excited for May 5th to come and to see what happens! I hope and pray that he feels the Spirit as he reads and that he'll know that it's true!
We also had an amazing lesson with CJ. He's less active. We decided to watch 17 Miracles with him. When we first decided this, I thought, "Do we really need to watch this with him or are we just being lazy?" Because we watched a movie with him last time. BUT, we were definitely supposed to watch that with him. After the movie, he testified that he knew Heavenly Father was watching out for him because he'd seen miracles in his life. He told us a story about how he was working a job as a trucker and fell asleep at the wheel. He swerved to the left and hit the median thing three times before he was able to recover. Then as he was driving back past where the incident happened, he noticed that there wasn't near enough median for him to hit three times. Also that there was dirt that he should have hit and then he would have gotten in a really bad accident. I didn't explain it very well, but he said that he knew Heavenly Father was watching out for him that day and made it so he didn't crash. It was awesome. We also gave him a marked Book of Mormon a few weeks ago and he said he was super grateful for that because it really helped him. He was going through a really hard time and he was able to read the markings and get through his trials and strenghten his testimony.
I love this work and I love being a missionary! There is nothing better I could be doing right now! I'm glad to be here and to be serving my Father in Heaven and Savior, Jesus Christ. I owe them everything.
I love you all! Know that my prayers are with you!
See you soon, then!
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