Well it sounds like you all have had a lovely time at the beach! What a neat story and experience that you had to help to invite and befriend that man who had fallen away from the church. Look at you all being little missionaries at home :) And what a fun surprise to have Zack come and visit!!
Well I have got 20 mintues to write so we'll see how much I get done. Guess what? yesterday I hit my 2 month mark! I have been in New York now for a full 2 months! So this week we had the chance to have interview with President Morgan. He tries to have interviews on a fairly regular basis if he can. Transfers are coming up soon on July 10th. President has a hard time keeping secrets sometimes. He told me in the interview that Sister Awerkamp is going to be transferred to a new area and that I would be receiving a brand new missionary fresh from the MTC to train!! I was speechless! I didn't know what to say! It felt like I was just at the MTC myself!! But President told me that he had received revelation and that he was confident that this is what the Lord wanted me to do. He read to me D&C 123:17 which reads "Therefore, dearly beloved [Emma], let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God and for His arm to be revealed" So although I feel inadequate and have all sorts of worries, this scripture makes is all melt away. As a trainer if I do all that is in my power, if I try my hardest, if I do everything that I know, then I can be still and be at peace. I can know with the utmost assurance that God will take it away from there and I will see His arm revealed in the work we do. So, on July 10th I will receive a new missionary from the MTC!! Today, this Wednesday, she is actually entering that MTC! She is starting on her journey as a new missionary and I am so excited for her and to meet her. I pray for her and pray that I may be strengthened and that I may continue to prepare for when she arrives. I know that this is really going to push me. But I know that it will also cause me to really turn to the Lord for help daily, and hourly.
Vasu is getting baptized on Saturday!! We are so excited for him! He has met with missionaries for years and I feel so privileged to be the one who gets to see him be baptized!!
At APF this week (when the whole Zone goes tracting in one area) we had two really cool experiences! We knocked on one door and a hispanic lady opened up. We talked with her about her belief in God and how she has seen God in her life. After talking for a while she asked us which church we went to and that she would like to go! We shared with her the Book of Mormon and gave her our number. She is not in our area, so we won't be working with her but I will be checking up with the Elders who will be teaching her to see how it is going. Then we also knocked at a door and the lady was so nice to us and invited us in to have water (which was so lovely since we were both dying of thirst). It turns out that she has a neighbor who is Mormon and she is close friends with another Mormon family. So she was very receptive to our message and accepted our invitation to read the Book of Mormon and to pray to know if it truly is the word of God. We won't be able to teach her either but it was really cool because we normally don't have such great success tracting door to door. But the Lord is preparing people daily to receive the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives. We just have to go and find them!
We met with Diane again. She is the one who has a hard time remembering things. That continues to be the case as we meet with her. She forgets things that we have shared with her and she is progressing, but very slowly. She has been relgious and reading from the Bible for 14 years and it is hard for her to understand the concept of the Book of Mormon. She struggles to understand how God speaks to his children no matter where they are and that prophets have written down and recorded God's words in Ancient America as well as Jerusalem. Last time she was telling us her concerns about it and how she doesn't want to do anything that is wrong in the sight of God. She feared that God would be angry with her if she read the Book of Mormon. I felt the spirit very strongly that I needed to tell her that I loved her. I thought that was a strange thing to say but the spirit kept pressing me. So finally said "Diane, can I just tell you that I love you? Do you want to know why? Because I can see how honestly and sincerely you are trying to live according to God's will in your life. Diane I know that God has been a part of your life thus far. He has kept you safe, He has changed your life, He has answered your prayers and I know that he will continue to be a part of your life. If you read from the Book of Mormon and pray I can promise you that he will answer your prayers just as he always has. He will not let you go too far astray before he will step in and get you back on the right path. So Diane, will you commit to reading the Book of Mormon and pray to God to know if it is true?" I just felt the spirit so strong and it was a really cool experience. She has told us that she knows the Book of Mormon is the word of God because we have read with her a few times and she knows that the doctrine is true. But she still has some barriers she need to overcome. The concept is all very new to her. I think next time we will try to answer more of her questions and teach her how the Bible and the Book of Mormon go hand in hand and that they both testify of the divinity of Christ and help men to draw nearing to God.
Here are some other random thigns that happened that week
1. We were planning out our day in our apartment and we heard the loudest thunder we have ever heard! We both screamed and jumped! It sounded like an explosion like bombs were going off!! It was crazy!!
2. We were stopped at a stop sign yesterday and someone threw a pear from the building above and it exploded on our car window! It scared us so bad! We had no idea who threw it but now we have dried pear all over our car :/
3. Jalissa moved to New Jersey rather abruptly. We are so sad because we were making really great progress with her. We will send a referral to the missionaries over there so they can try to reactivate her and help her work towards her goal of entering the temple.
4. Kodi, a girl in our branch, came out with us all of saturday! It was really cool and she had a great experience helping us teach Diane.
Well that is all for now! I am about to go to a BBQ at the mission home with our zone. It should be fun :)
I love you all so much!
Love, Sister Lounsbury
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