06/16/14 - Week 70 {Week 5 of Transfer 12} "Mountains to Climb"

Hello wonderful people :D

This week has been a hard week. We have had lots of obstacles to overcome and work through, but we made it! It reminds me of the EFY song called "mountains to climb." It talks about giving you mountains to climb in your life because they just make you stronger. They are hard, but they make you better. We had lots of challenges. Obviously Satan didn't want us to do much this week, but we just tried to keep our hopes high and push through. And we almost reached every goal! We worked as hard as we could and put our trust in God. Just remember that even when there are mountains to climb in your life, you can move them with your faith. Just like it says in Jacob 4:6, as we search the words of Christ, our faith becomes unshaken and we can command in the name of Jesus and the elements of the earth obey us. We can move the mountains in our life and make it through!

Our miracle this week was with investigator Barbara! She has been learning about the church for about 4 months now, and she knows it is true. She has just been waiting and holding herself back because of her family. Her family is Quaker and her in-laws are very strong Catholic. She was really scared of what they would do when they found out she wanted to be a Mormon. They are very closed minded with things like that I guess. She has been able to overcome that though. We had her last lesson at a members home with someone she is pretty close with. That member was a convert from the Catholic church and so she is able to relate to her with family issues. She testified that God would provide. As we talked she just expressed that she knew the church was true and even if her family rejected it, she would still know it was true. Everything just made sense to her and she could understand why other people didn't see that too. {{{That is what I think all of the time!}}} So, we committed her to be baptized again, and she said..... YES!!  Not just a sure, or maybe later, or I will see, but Yes! :D We are so excited. She is an amazing lady and has done so much research! She would come to our lessons with questions that definitely tested your knowledge of the gospel..but with the Spirits help, we were able to explain them and confirm her testimony {{and our own}} of the truth. :) God is amazing. But we found out she lives right outside of our ward boundaries so we will have to pass her off to other sisters this week, but that doesn't matter. As long as she gets baptized, that is all I care about. We should be able to go to her baptism though. She is just wonderful :)

We also had Stake Conference this weekend and it was amazing! We had Elder Dunnigan come from the 70's and he talked so much about families. I just loved it. Since I have was about 8 years old {{when Dawn got married}} I have been so excited for when I could get married and have a family. And I have learned sooo much about being a good mother on my mission. He talked about how we need to focus on when we are home, be home . Leave your work at work. He also said something that I loved about doing the little things as a family. He said that reading the Book of Mormon and saying prayers with your family each day, protects families. Isn't that all we want? For our families to be protected from the world? Well, it is in doing the little things. He said, "If something is priority, we just make it happen." Whether that is reading the Book of Mormon, then you do it. No matter how late it is, how tired you are, what day it is, you do it. You make it happen. We all could make excuses, but we have to make it happen. I have learned a lot about "Making it happen" on the mission. It is called --The Accountability Ladder-- I will have to show it to all of you when I get home. Families are just so important. We need to put our BEST effort in to our family. Not the effort that is left over. I think about it even in my companionship. We need to put them first and put their happiness above our own in all things. I could go on and on about families and how to help them....so I won't bore you. But I just love families! And marriage! And together..ness...... .. ... ......anyways.

One thing that he quoted was from Elder Holland, and I love Elder Holland. He said:

"This is the Church of the happy endings"

And he also quoted another person....but I can't remember who. But they said:

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it is not okay, it is not the end."

It is so true. Not saying that the end of THIS life will be okay, but it testifies that there must be another life. We will all have the best blessings that we can have. The Lord will give them to us. I am so grateful for that knowledge. We have potential in us that is beyond what we can even imagine.

This week was just great. We are going to have a great week this week too! It is the last week of the transfer, and we are going to do amazing things through the Lord. I will most likely be staying here, but I don't know. So if you need to send anything, do it this week! Because next Monday I could be in a different place. I sure hope I stay here with Sister Bowers for my last transfer. I love her to pieces. We have lots of fun together! :)

Thank you all for what you do for me. I LOVE YOU!!!

Love,

Sister Emilee Farr