Hurray for Members!

I have to say, the members are often the highlight of my week. On Saturday we called one woman to ask for a joint teach for that evening, even though she lives about half an hour away, and she came. And when she found out that we would be somewhat in her area to contact a referral, she fed us dinner beforehand too. And she was a perfect joint teach for the woman we were teaching. The woman still dropped us, but it was so great to have that member there. Lots of the members are helping us out, and that makes things a lot better.

This week I learned a lot about the Atonement. This one woman we're teaching is really struggling right now with a lot of things in her life and we were trying to teach her about Jesus Christ and the Atonement and she just didn't seem to get it. And that hurt so much because I know how much the Atonement could help her. And I know that because I know how much it's helped me. Not just in repentance, but in getting through hard things. We saw some hard things this week with investigators. But the Lord is making me into something better and the Atonement is carrying me. I know that Heavenly Father has things under control and that is enough.

We had two pretty fantastic miracles this week with investigators. One of them is a self-referral from mormon.org. We went to her house right after we received the referral, but she wasn't there so we left a note. We tried to go back a few other times but it never quite seemed to work out. But last Monday evening we finally made it over and she was home and let us in. We had a first lesson with her and extended a baptismal invitation and she accepted! She is super prepared already--she'd been reading the Book of Mormon online but wanted her own copy. She has lots of her own ideas, but is very open to the Spirit telling her what is right--even if it means that her own ideas are wrong. Sister Hoff and Sister Larson went back on exchange and gave her much of the second lesson and asked her to think about being baptized on a specific date. She couldn't go to church for some reason, but she said that after she does go to church she will pick a date. She is amazing. Another big miracle of this week is a JoVo (young adult--jong volwassen) from Africa (Angola) who had had lessons from the Elders for awhile, but always with a group of people, so he missed some things. But he had been going to church just on his own and has a strong desire to do what is right. We'd been trying to work with him, but wasn't progressing a ton. Also he said that he had already been baptized and thought that was enough. But we'd managed to teach him some things, and he finally set up a real appointment with us and we went through the first lesson again and asked him what it would mean to him to know that it was true and he said that if it was true he'd be baptized again! That was super exciting.

Missionary work is the best and the church is true! I love you all and I hope you are as fantastically happy as I am right now!