Sister Young : The One Where God Is In The Details

This week was one of the highlights of my mission thus far. There have been lots of tender mercies and lots of times where the Lord has helped me to recognize His hand in all things. I wish I could write them all down and tell you all about all of them, but some things are best kept to ourselves and some things can't be shared. BUT! I want you all to know that no matter what you're going through, no matter what you're dealing with, no matter if your situation is happy, sad, lonely, fully active, lazy, dark, light, complicated, scarily simple; whatever your circumstances are, I promise that Heavenly Father is mindful of you. Not only are you being watched over, but He is blessing you with things you may stand in need of, need that sometimes you don't know is there. He is all knowing and is fully aware of the times in our lives and has placed stepping stones to make things work up to that point and He is in the works for the stepping stones to get to the next area of life. He is incredible. I am SO grateful for Him and His plan and His love.

Last Monday, we spent a good majority of our day with the mission office staff because our car was giving us troubles again. RIP. So, we called the wonderful Sister Braaghton and she walked us through what to do. We ended up driving to the mission office and they asked us if we would help them drive the new vehicles they got for the mission and we said "TOTES!" which means totally, for those who don't know. So we were on our way with the finance coordinator, Elder Johnson, the housing coordinator, Sister Johnson, and sister Braaghton. As we were driving to the dealership, Elder Johnson pulled into Buffalo Wild Wings and took us all to lunch! So nice! And then we got to drive the 2019 Chevy Equinox's, they got 4 of them. When we got back to the mission home, Sister B said: "Alright, take your pick." And we got a new car! Stinking lucky is what we are! It's been so nice to not have so many problems with our car!

An then they put the Tiwi in. It's this little box in the car that tells us when we're speeding and when we're not wearing our seatbelt and when we're being an aggressive driver. I actually quite like it. It's a nice reminder! But they put it in our car on Wednesday and it's been messing with the system. 🙄 It's been pretty frustrating! But I'm studying patience in my studies so God has blessed me with opportunities to be patient. :)

Some pretty cool things that happened this week is there is this wonderful family whose father works a lot and he's gone quite often. One of the boys has turned 8 but is not baptized yet because he wants his dad there, so we are going to be teaching him the lessons! We could make our last appointment because the schedule ended up not working. So this last Saturday, we texted the mom and asked if there was a time that would work for us to come over and she said that in about an hour and a half worked! It was awesome! So we just discussed a little bit of what we wanted to touch upon and then headed over and taught him the first lesson. He is SO excited to get baptized and LOVES the gospel! It's infectious! At the end of our lesson, Sister Kepler asked him if he would pray to know if what we talked about that night was true and he said, "Umm, I already know it's true!" My heart exploded. He is so wonderful. I wish I had his faith. It's so strong and he just knows that it's true because he feels it in his heart! Also, the mom has like 7 tarantulas and 14 snakes and she's gonna help me on my phobia of snakes! That's an added plus, too. 😊🐍

Another really wonderful experience! we were at the library to get things switched over from sister Kep's phone to her SD card and it was taking a long time. We were kind of getting grumps and antsy to leave and she had me check over a Facebook post (Add her as a friend! Alyssa Kepler. She's awesome!) and I said it was good, and a lady sitting at the desk by hers perked up and asked if we said her name. We said no and then struck up a conversation about religion and different things and she had a pretty interesting opinion about the "Mormon church" and then asked us what church we're from and we told her that we're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints... or previously known as, the Mormon church. :) She was surprised and we chuckled and asked if there was a time we could come share what we believe with her and she said yes! She gave us her number and told us to call her the next day.

We called her and she invited us over to her home and we went and she had a pretty interesting belief about religion and talked and talked and talked to us for about 50 minutes about.... honestly, there was so much. I can't even begin to put something down. haha. But at the end, she said: "Well, is there something you want to ask me or talk about or tell me about?" So we got the opportunity to share with her the restoration and bare our testimonies about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. She was pretty quiet the whole time and then said that it all made sense and she believes that he was a prophet already. SCORE! and then we extended the invitation to read the Book of Mormon and she said yes with no hesitation! It was so wonderful. Before we left, she told us that she was going to tell us that today wasn't a good day and tell us to reach her in a couple weeks, but God told her that we needed to come to her home that day and she knew that meeting with us was very important. HOW COOL IS THAT?!?!

I LOVE THE GOSPEL!

I LOVE THE BOOK OF MORMON!

I LOVE THE POWER OF MISSIONARY WORK!

So beyond grateful for the opportunities I've been able to have on my mission to strengthen my testimony and to help others. I'm grateful for the power of the spirit and how it can help us to know who to talk to and how to share the gospel with them! I'm very very grateful for all of you and your love and kindness and prayers.

Work hard this week, pray to know who you can serve, be mindful of opportunities to testify and share the gospel, and be kind to one another!

- Sister Young