Baptisms & X-Rays

 Hellooo friends & fam! Miss you all! Life's been pretty good lately!

This week was hectic but so good. I think the adrenaline added up from a bunch of situations took a few years off my life, but I'm still here haha. This email's long, so prepare yourselves.

On Wednesday, one of the Hermanas that lives near us fractured her wrist in a bike crash, and we got the text asking if we could take her to urgent care right as we walked into a lesson with our friend Henry, who was about to have his baptismal interview. One of the people in his household was trying to convince us to move his baptismal date by a month and a half because she was going out of town to Mexico and wanted to be there to see it. So we had to talk through all that while the poor Hermanas were waiting for us to text them back about urgent care. We love the chaos.

On Thursday, we had Zone Conference!! It was sooo good! We were fashionably late because we took the other Hermanas to get an x-ray done after the bike crash. Zone Conference was sooo good and just what I needed. We talked a lot about the role of the Holy Ghost as missionaries. We can say a million things, but the power in our words really comes through the Spirit. People won't act on our invitations if they don't feel something.

Right after Zone Conference, we had an amazing lesson with a friend named Kenny. He speaks English, so the English Elders came and we introduced him to them. We gave him a church tour and he was sooo excited. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon and asked if he'd ever heard of it, and he said he had just heard about it for the first time a few days ago. It felt like Heavenly Father lined up this lesson so perfectly. God's timing is amazing.

Our friend Henry was baptized on Friday!!! It was such a special experience but honestly the most stressful baptism of my life too haha. Story for another day. I'm just so grateful that it all worked out and that he was able to make such an important covenant with God! He is a sweet, quiet older man and even though I've only been in Simi for a little bit, I've loved the lessons we've had with him and the faith he has. I definitely lucked out getting to be here to see his baptism day!

I had exchanges on Saturday with Sister Gray!! She's in the Newbury Park Zone, but she's over the YSA ward, which means she covers a huge area. So we were actually in Thousand Oaks for most of the day. (That meant we got to go to the ONLY Cafe Rio in the entire mission woohoo!! I haven't eaten there in so long.) We didn't have any lessons go through that day, which meant we went finding for a really really long time. Since we were looking for the young adult age-range, we spent most our time at the mall in Thousand Oaks and at some cafe areas. Finding in English in public places like that can be pretty brutal. I was definitely nervous to find that day. But we said lots of prayers and saw lots of miracles! There was one woman we walked past as we were headed back to the car who called us over and said that she was a member of our church and hadn't been in a while. She said that she wanted to read from the Book of Mormon with her husband (who wasn't a member), and had realized just a few days before that they didn't own a Book of Mormon. She asked if we had one she could have and we did! It was really cool the way that God lined up the timing so well! Even though we faced a lot of rejection that day, I knew that we were exactly where God needed us to be.

One huge miracle from this week is that Eduardo, a friend who Hermana Crawford had been teaching before I got here, reached out to us all of a sudden and wanted to have a lesson. He had been really interested in the church and even had accepted a baptismal invitation, but all of a sudden the Hermanas lost contact with him. He messaged us and told us that his phone hadn't been working, but he wanted to have a lesson! We had a lesson with him yesterday and the Spirit was SO strong!!!

I got a little sick near the end of the week, so that wasn't super fun. Buuut on the bright side, I've been a chef lately and actually cooked some pretty good food. I'm not usually the biggest fan of cooking, so I was very proud of myself for following some basic recipes. Don't worry, I promise not to forget about you when I'm on Chopped one day

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

♡ forgiveness ♡

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the Sacrament and how blessed we are to take it each week and remember our Savior, Jesus Christ. I especially loved the talk in General Conference, "Welcome to the Church of Joy," by Elder Kearon, and highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't heard it!

Last transfer, I remember one Sunday specifically where I was sitting in the chapel during the Sacrament. I was playing the piano for the ward that day, so I sat up front and had a view of everyone sitting at church that day. As we each took the bread and water, I thought about how we were each being purified by Jesus Christ in that same moment, TOGETHER! I thought about how unifying the Sacrament really is.

The Sacrament gives us all an opportunity to level with each other. It is a chance to forgive. All of our mistakes and shortcomings have been forgotten by our loving Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ's sacrifice, and we get to do the same -- to forget our mistakes (while making sure we learn from them), AND forget the mistakes of others.

There is no comparison. We are all loved, we are all forgiven. We are showing faith in Christ's Atonement when we believe He can forgive us. We are showing that SAME faith in His Atonement when we believe He can forgive OTHERS. And we can forgive them too!

My invitation for you all is to find someone in your life to forgive. Whether it's over something big or small, I know it will help us each better understand Jesus Christ's grace.

I love all of you!

-Hermana DeMordaunt