Sister Heather Sue: May 5, 2014

Hello Family!

Wow, this week has been better than my words can explain! God has been guiding us and directing us.

Last Wednesday we were hit with a huge storm, I like to refer to it as a typhoon--and all of our appointments cancelled. We prayed and prayed for guidance to know where to go, we went to our backups and knocked for 2 hours, we prayed again asking Heavenly Father to put prepared people in our path...according to our faith, and then door after door we knocked we found prepared people, lots of potentials and 4 new investigators, Maria started crying when we shared our message, she said she had been praying for God to send her someone to show her the way back and to feel his love. Heavenly Father knows our needs, and he will answer them. That night we made a special dinner to take to Pats house to go over her baptism interview questions. We took Sister Andrus's famous Pizza pockets to her house and turned the oven on to cook them right up. After a couple minutes we started to hear a strange sizzling/bubbling noise coming from the oven....turns out the oven was turned into extra storage space, that Pat had forgotten about and we were about to cause a huge electrical fire...not safe, we ran back to our apartment cooked them and took them back to Pats. We ate dinner on Cat plates and forks with Cat hair stuck in between, we might have coughed up some hair balls later on.

We volunteered at Ellis Island this week. It recently opened up since Hurricane Sandy. The exhibits are still pretty devastated right now. Our job is to walk around the family history center and "pretend" we know what we are doing...pretend is the key word here because it was some advanced family history work. We are not allowed to proselyte but if they ask questions we can answer :) We met people from all over the world, mostly French "wee wee" lots of Irish, and of course Italians :) They all were so happy to find their ancestors names, and I can see why family history is a BIG part of missionary work. "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers" people are having greater desires to know about their families, all part of our Heavenly Fathers plan to Hasten the Work.

Eye spy....

Sunday we had Stake Conference, The stake Patriarch spoke on the three key elements of a Patriarchal blessing. 1. God KNOWS YOU, He LOVES you. 2. He wants you to RETURN to Him again 3. He wants you to experience the blessings of the Temple. It was an incredible meeting and made me want to look and focus on the specific promises in my blessing, they are given to us, from our Father in Heaven, with promises that apply to the now....and the eternities. It was an incredible meeting. Pat loved it and was excited to get baptized. We decorated her stall, (it’s a Sister thing) and after she got in whites she said "Ok....now throw me in there" It was hilarious because Pat is a soft spoken person and then every once and a while she says the funniest things. She told us she's not a lost sheep anymore and then started to Bahh like a sheep.I almost fell to the ground laughing, I love that woman.

President and Sister Jeppson came to the baptism, it went smoothly, (thanks to a lot of help from this ward) Pat picked out all the speakers and songs for the program, and asked Sister Andrus and I to sing, oh boy, I almost had a heart attack, I was so nervous, but with Sister Andrus's help (she has a heavenly voice) we sang "Teach me to Walk in the Light" we pulled through and I didn't pass out- a success. We had two priesthood holders help her into the font, and assist her going down gently into the water. She's still too weak from the cancer to climb up and down steps by herself. It was a special moment, after the baptism, when she looked up, smiled and said "I'm a new WOMAN!" She turned her jacked around to even symbolize starting new. It was a special moment. After the service she turned into a speedy demon we could barely keep up with her. We stopped by her home later and told us that this is the best decision that she has ever made. Reminded me of the promise of Joy in Doctrine and Covenants 18: How great is our joy now?

I'm so grateful for this work and the love and joy and happiness it brings. It's not easy, but it is WORTH it.