15 February 2010

HELLO HELLO hello hello I welcome you today. HELLO HELLO hello hello

This week was AMAZING!! Ok so remember last week in my email how I left of on monday??? Well let me tell you about Monday...

MONDAY we went to teach Ellen, we were teaching a great lesson and then she asked a great question? Why do you care so much about me? We told her that we were the tools that Jesus Christ worked through to show her His love. So we feel just a little bit of the love that He feels for her. She said I accept. I was taken back I said you accept? She said yes. I asked her if she believes everything we have been teaching her and she said... YES! Then I told her that we wanted to do a prayer circle with her. We all kneeled Sister Hansen said the first prayer, I said the second, and Ellen said the last. Then we all closed our eyes for 5 mins and pondered... in my head I was praying like crazy that she would have comfort and peace and that she would have the answer that she needed. I opened my eyes to see her, I asked her how she felt and she said Peace.... then we asked what she was thinking and she said, "I know the power of prayer." We asked when did she learn this? "Just now the energy in this room." I said "The Spirit?" She said "Yeah that" Sister Hansen then shared a fire burning testimony about the power of prayer. The whole time I had an overwhelming feeling to invite her to be baptized. So I did and she said YES! We have invited her so many times to be baptized and she never said yes but then she started asking all these questions. Who would be there, who would baptize her, and tons of other questions, when she gets her lessons of don'ts? ELLEN IS GETTING BAPTIZED PEOPLE!! I have been waiting for this moment to so long. I love this women with all my heart and I just want her to have that peace that she needs so she can be happy and now she is going to have that. It is going to be a rough road with lots of bumps getting her to that baptism but we will get her there. So that was Monday.

Saturday I got to go do baptisms for the dead with the branch. Oh my, the Temple is so great. I was there to see the first deaf confirmation in sign language (for the dead in the Sac Temple). When I saw Ed signing I had so much Joy in my heart. I was so proud of him and he did great. The spirit was so strong. And Dolores one of our members she is 80 went and did baptisms. Her little deaf voice saying amen was the cutest thing I ever heard. She is about 5'2" cute cute. Then after baptisms we had to opportunity to Interpret for the initiatory for Sister Taylor and Cheeseman. I love sign language that's all I have to say. I am the happiest person alive and the Temple is the House of God. I can't say it enough, Oh how I love to be a Missionary.

The rest of the week was pretty so so. We went and saw a lot of potential people and set up some good appts. with them some we have this week and some for the next week, pray that those will be successful. I have had a lot of good learning experiences this past week and realized how much responsibility I hold right now. The Lord will be right beside me the whole way. It's a little scary to think of but I know I can do it.

Sister Brennan my momma has been informed she is being transferred to Anaheim, a completely different mission, and that makes me the Senior missionary for the ASL sisters. I will be leading the program and training the new sister coming out. I am slightly nervous about the responsibility I will have but I'm excited for the learning experience I am going to have. There are some great ASL sisters here and they are gonna rock it big time. Who knows what is going to happen in 3 weeks? I know I don't.

The last bit of fun information for this email was I had the best door slam of my mission yesterday. She opened the door, this little old lady with a silver beehive hair and her little pearl earings. We said how are you, "fine" well we are missionari..." SLAM... It made our hair woosh back and the glass shake. It was amazing. We were just standing there looking at the women and so she smacked the window and walked off. I love being a missionary. This was on a blitz so I was with Sister Pack for all of these fun events. She has been out 13 months and she is so much fun we die of laughter all the time. So then we went to another house and it was a Jehovah's Witness. He answered and said he was eating so we asked if we could come back at a better time? He said no but he is happy for what we are doing because he used to go door to door. but now he has the chance to be on the other side and say no. I immediately replied with, well since you have experienced this wouldn't you want to say yes because you know how it feels? He said come back in 30 mins. uh oh what did I do? So we continued tracting and ran into this old women who was a born again Christian. She was crazy and told us that we were the wrong church and we were just gonna try to convince her to join our church we said no. Then she told us we were wrong and got all mad and there was much more to the story but that was the jist. It was great sweet old lady huh. Then we went to some more houses and then it was time to go back to the JW... Oh man if we only knew what was going to happen. He tried to bash us the whole time. About everything it was amazing the things he would come up with. Anyway it got to the point that I just said we are not here to convince you that you should not drink wine we got to go. The conversation continued for another 20 mins. then we got up to walk out and he held the door to give us just one more piece of advice, that we were idiots and we should be careful. Oh man it was quite the event. Good thing I know a few stories from the Bible otherwise I would have been in trouble. But from that experience my testimony has grown so much because he was not able to say anyhting to make me question my own beliefs. The Gospel is true and it is so simple and it makes sense. Hold on to it.

Life is good and next week is going to be great full of fun and exciting things. Hopefully there will be some more miracles and spirit to share. I love you all and thanks for writing me, those of you that do. Hope to hear back from you ALL soon.

Love sister HOlt
Be happy and keep smiling.