Mackenzie's Mission: August 15, 2016

Hello Family!!

This week has been full of some fun adventures!! It started out with a letter from my mission president asking if I thought that it was safe to have hermanas in our area because of some things that have been going on. He wanted to put elders in last week but after a few phone calls and letters we were able to make a deal! We get to stay in our area as long as we have a memeber with us every where we go and we do our studies in the night!! I was really grateful because we have sooo much progress in our area! We had a baptism this week and we fouind 4 new investigators!!

Yesterday one of our investigators dropped us and I was really feeling a little stressed because we don't have anymore investigators that are progressing. So we said a prayer right there in the middle of the street that the Lord woudl help us find at least one new investigator. Well after knocking on doors for about 45 minutes no one wanted to listen to us. But we felt impressed to talk to a couple doing laundry outside. So we went over and they invited us in to have a lesson!! They are a cute little family with two little kids! They said they want to start going to church and are so grateful that God put us in their lives!! Crazy right? It was really a testimony builder for me that this is really the Lord's work and that he really is preparing people for us!

Speaking of preparing people, Antonio got baptized this week!! It was a great baptism and in his testimony he even quoted scriptures from the Book of Mormon! A great ending to a contact no? He was literally the last contact before we went in for the night and the first thing he told us is that he would never go to a church!! I was sooo excited for him!!

So this week I have started reading the Book of Mormon only in Spanish! I tried doing it at the beginning of my mission and I really didn't feel like I was getting a whole lot out of it scripture wise because of the language barrier but now I am learning so much because I understand but have to pay attention to every single word! It made me think about how I am really studying the scriptures. I think sometimes we take for granted the tools that the Lord has given us. If we aren't really reading and meditating we aren't going to get anything out of it. Meditation really is key! Just look at Nephi when he had his own tree of life vision he was sitting and meditating what his dad had told him and that is when the spirit taught him! (1 Nephi 11:1).

So my challenge to you all is to think in what way you can better your scriptures studies. I promise as you do so you will learn so much more and feel the scriptures come to life in your life! The Book of Mormon was written for us in these times! I love you all and I hope you have a fantastic week full of miracles!!

Love,

Hermana Rich