It feels like months ago, but last Tuesday Elder Kopischke from the Seventy came. It was definitely the highlight of the week. 6 hours of spiritual uplifting. So much fun! I loved every minute of it and was so excited to have that opportunity.
A few of the highlights:
-Come to church with a question in mind. It should be one of your most spiritual experiences each week. And it will allow you to get more out of the meeting!
-live your dream We all have dreams and we should have a vision of how we can accomplish them.When you wake up in the morning, just lay there for a few minutes and picture your vision God's big dream Moses 1:39 -Our goal should be to find our replacement teach and baptize someone who will someday serve a mission too :)
-M&M- the most wanted candy in the mission, missionaries and miracles, missionaries and members, mary and mckenzie, might and mind. what other m&ms can you think of? It seems to be a theme in my life (maybe just because of my name) but I've decided to adopt this motto and always have some m&ms on hand! It should serve as a great reminder of my purpose and also, I definitely need chocolate :)
At this meeting I also saw some of my district family from the MTC!!! It seriously felt like being at home. It was something familiar and I missed them so much and it was so good to see them and to catch up on mission life! I probably talk about my MTC days too much, but it changed my life and I'm so grateful for the people I met there! it.was.a.blast. This week Alejandro had his baptismal interview and he is so excited!!! As are we :) We got to practice some good spanish. Afterwards, we went to dinner with a couple in our ward to the place where Alejandro works. New China Buffet. Someone please explain to me how it makes any sense that a hispanic is working with the chinese. I'm still not sure how they communicate haha! But it was SO good! And Hermana Wong and I ate way too much and I regretted it a little bit later. It was fun while it lasted! One of the things I love about the South is that since everyone loves Jesus, it becomes "normal" to just have gospel discussions with people. We went down to the leasing office one day to say hi to Sister Malon and ended up having a gospel discussion about faith and service and tithing and all sorts of other good stuff with about 5 people, all of different denominations. It was awesome! And we started and ended with a prayer and shared some scriptures and had a great little discussion. We all kind of marveled at how cool it was that a group of so very different people could get together and do that. It was added to my list entitled only in alabama.
We've been teaching this 13 year old boy named Lawrence who is so solid. And so we stopped by his house one afternoon and asked if we could follow up with his mom about him going to church. Well, she came out and said that she had been talking with some people and how he would be staying at his own church because we limit people and have all these boundaries and how he would not be doing that "missionary thing". Well that opened up an opportunity to testify to her about how keeping the commandments blesses our lives and doesn't hinder us in any way but keeps us safe. And how ultimately the way we find truth is by asking Heavenly Father. So we invited her to pray about the things that we've been teaching and talking to her about and she said it all made sense and that he would be allowed to come to church and decide for himself. So that was good, but it was a little terrifying at first. We didn't want to lose him but we didn't want to disrespect his mother either. So she went back inside and we got to talk to Lawrence and he says he still feels really good about getting baptized and that he knows it's true. I just told him to always remember that he is a son of His Heavenly Father and to always remember how much He loves him and that He is so proud of the choices he is making and his desire to learn more. You could tell that he was kind of down and that he didn't really know what to do because he was in a tough spot, but I promised him that as he continues to come closer to Christ and learn more of Him that he would be a great example to his family. We wanted to read some scriptures with him and he picked Mosiah so we got to talk about King Benjamin and about following the prophet and serving others. It turned out to be an awesome night!
Lastly, the Mulligans got baptized!!!! I called it the baptism of the year because we've all been waiting for this moment and it's taken a lot to get them to this point. But the spirit was so strong the whole time and it was wonderful! The girls looked adorable in their baptism dresses and they had a lot of family come which was great! The gospel really has blessed the family and hopefully Nicholas will be soon to follow :) We're giving him till October 15th because then they can be sealed on their anniversary next year! Yay!
I can't think of much else. We're staying busy as always and of course having a lot of fun :) We have an awesome ward, an awesome area, an awesome distrcict, and all is good in the hood... (literally) I can't even begin to describe some of the areas we drove through yesterday! Crazy stuff! until next week :)
♥ con amor, Hermana Blackner
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