Work! Work! Work!

Hello!

This week has been busy and awesome and I love it all :)

We got to visit with a lot of the usual people we meet with; less-active members that are working on growing their faith and testimony. We also got to meet with Jeffrey and his girlfriend Alina to talk about his baptism! We did some service at a museum and sorted some records, which was fun because I like organizing.

Saturday was absolutely CRAZY. We worked so hard we were EXHAUSTED by the end of the day. I have never been that tired on my mission. We started off street contacting and then we met a less active woman in the ward who has health issues. She's really sweet and we're going to meet with her again next week and she's bringing her friend who wants to learn more about the gospel!! Then we got to meet with Mirian, a youth who was baptized right before I got here. She invited two of her friends to learn more about the gospel so we got to teach them about the Restoration and they are interested in continuing the discussions!! Their names are Jenny and Isabela and they are very sweet. Next we taught Karie. She has decided to turn her life around this year, she wants to make a change. We read a chapter in The Book of Mormon about the gospel of Jesus Christ and asked her to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized and she said yes! We are so excited for her! After dinner we saw an investigator named William, he's like 13 and is interested in learning more about Christianity. We took Mirian with us (she's such a little missionary) so we had to walk because we couldn't take her in our car because she isn't 16... so that was fun! We taught him about the importance of The Book of Mormon and he said he would read and pray about it, to ask Heavenly Father if it is His word. I love how in this gospel we believe in finding out for ourselves. We don't expect anyone to just take our word for it, to just trust us. We ask you to trust in God! Ask him if these things are true and he will tell you! I can testify that this is true and that God answers us! Not always exactly when or how we think we should be answered, but He does answer.

After William's lesson we had to quickly walk Mirian home and then go to Jeff's baptism!! It was such a wonderful experience. I love Jeff so much and I'm sad he's moving to Colorado (yep, we lost another one) I got to give a talk about baptism and I think it went okay! I felt prompted to speak about how baptism is not the finish line, you're not done! It's the first step! Now, we endure. We continually find faith in Christ, repent, partake of the sacrament and nourish our testimonies! I always tell people that there has never been a person who fell away from the Church that was; reading their scriptures, praying, and attending Church. It just doesn’t happen. We need to do these things to keep us spiritually alive! CPR: church, pray, read.

By the end of the day, we realized we were super close to meeting the standard of excellence, so we panned the heck out of Sunday, giving up our lunch so that we could try and do that... we almost made it! Sacrament meeting was really awesome, Jeff was confirmed a member and he received the Holy Ghost, AND he got the priesthood! It was a good time.

Later on Sunday, we had a lesson with William again, so we walked over with Mirian so she could be there (did I mention it was a mile long walk so it took like half an hour?) We get there and William said that he couldn’t do the lesson right then... so we walked all the way back. While we were fasting. Man, did we get blisters.

Anyways, the Church is true! I love you muchly!

Love, Sister Holt