Alternate titles for this week were:
"I thought the baptism of fire was supposed to come after"
Apparently my name is Sister Gate
Stefania got baptized!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited for her. The baptism was good, though a little eventful. You may have guessed, but we accidentally made the water too hot. Normally you have the opposite problem. Anyways, everything went smoothly until we went to do the actual baptism, and the bishop stepped in and said, "That's hot!" So she came back out, we had the talk on the Holy Ghost and the welcome to the Young Women's, and Bishop added cold water to the font. After that, it was fine, and we had the baptism.
The confirmation was amazing. She was given some awesome promises, and I really felt the Spirit. We get to go to the temple on May 17th, since we get to go every other transfer, and then we have a ward temple trip that Stefania is going to go to on May 19th. So we'll get to go to the temple twice in three days!!
We had exchanges this Wednesday, so I went with Sister Decker to Porterville, and we had some pretty amazing experiences. We taught 9 lessons. At least, I think it was 9. It may have been 7. In any case, it was a ridiculous amount. We did family history work with a recent convert couple, taught a bunch of lessons about the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation, and contacted a couple of potentials. After dinner was when we really had some miracles, as if we hadn't already had tons. We stopped by a less active member's house and ended up talking to his daughter, who isn't a member. We taught her the Restoration and she was fascinated by it. For her, it was mind-blowing to think that there is a living prophet and that God has given more scripture. I seriously hope she continues being interested in the church. Then we went to a less active couple's house, fully expecting not to be able to talk to them, since they always cancel on the missionaries, or aren't there. But when we drove up, we saw the dad and his two sons playing basketball. So we started talking to us, they invited us onto the porch, and we just got to know them for a while. The dad is a convert, and while he hasn't been coming to church, he and his wife, who is also a convert, still have the goal to be sealed in the temple. Then he asked us if we had a lesson we wanted to share with them. We hadn't expected to get that far, but we shared the Restoration, and the boys absolutely loved it! Oh, the boys haven't been baptized. So hopefully they'll come back to church and the two boys will be baptized and they'll go to the temple and be sealed! The Spirit was so strong!!
And then John Paul is just amazing. I got to teach him with Sister Ferrell a couple times, and he has the most amazing story. It's definitely been rocky for him, but he wants to go to the temple. He has such a strong testimony and has seen God's hand in his life so much.
Oh, apparently lots of people read my nametag as Sister Gate. I've stopped correcting people. It happened in the MTC too, so I'm fairly used to it by now.
On Thursday we got smartphones, and it's the best thing ever. We have Gospel Library and LDS tools, and the LDS Media Library. That one may be my favorite, since it makes it possible for us to show videos during lessons. That will help us so much, since it can reach people more than we can sometimes. And we have a couple people who talk so much that we can't really get a lesson in, and interrupting them with a video might get the lesson on track. And we can send people videos and websites in texts! Because there are many people who we can't reliably see in person, this gives us a way to still help them progress.
So I am on Facebook, and you can send me a friend request, but I may ignore it. But then you can follow me and see my posts. And if you like or share them, that's an awesome missionary opportunity!
Love you tons!
Sister Cate
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| Stefania's baptism |
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