Bring a raincoat!!

One thing I've learned in Florida this week. If it looks like it's
going to rain- bring a rain coat. If it doesn't look like it's going
to rain- bring a raincoat. Flash floods on bikes are pretty fun haha.
While riding along the side of the road it was fun waiting for the
wave of water to hit us as each car passed by- I felt like we were in
the splash zone at sea world world waiting for shamu as it goes around the tank splashing everyone.

Alright....drumroll please.....this week we had....TWO BAPTISMS AND CONFIRMATIONS!! Sooo pretty much this week was amazing but also super hard haha it was not easy getting these baptisms!

We felt inspired to set a goal of one baptism and confirmation and put all of our missionary superpowers into getting at least one of our investigators ready for baptism, either Alfredo or Magaly. It was weird going into the week just knowing that somehow we were going to have a baptism but not being sure who it was going to be. But it was because we had set that goal and prayed about it that we knew that we had to work as hard as we possibly could to get it. And let me tell you we did. it took a long hard week of lessons and preparing and working and praying and more praying with a little prayer in between but we did it with a ton of help from The Lord and the good old Espiritu Santo!! Magaly was baptized on Sunday and Justin (yeah Justin who kind of came up from behind and surprised us all because we didn't even have a reset date with him) was baptized on Saturday! Because getting that baptism was our entire focus of this week we were helped in so many ways to not only reach our goal but to go beyond it.

We also had intercambios or exchanges this week for a day and I was kind of looking forward to going to a different area, meeting the other sisters investigators and not really having to plan anything buuuut apparently Heavenly Father had other plans because instead of the trainee leaving their area to go do exchanges with the sister training leader In their area like they usually do they told us that I would be staying in our area amd Newbill would be leaving. Hahahaha I was like yaaaayyy I get to take care of our area all by myself for a day this should be great. I was nervous but  I'd like to let you all know that I survived, Bradenton didn't burn down, our investigators didn't dump us, I'm not being transferred, and that I haven't been fired as a missionary so i guess it was pretty successful. I have like a phobia of talking to people on the phone in Spanish though so that was probably the worst part of it all was having to be in charge of doing that all day. Usually Hna Newbill will force me to do it sometimes and I'll call them...start asking them a question then they will answer and I won't know what they're saying panic and throw the phone back at Newbill and not having her there for me to do that was hard but I learned that I can manage if I pretty much just say what I called to say then hang up haha.

One other thing that happened this week was that we had a lesson with a referral from the missionaries in another area with a lady named Marcella. So we go to her house and we taught her about the restoration and she loved it and the spirit was so strong that we even

got her to cry like 3 times during the lesson. Then we asked her if she would end the lesson with a prayer and if in it she would ask to know that Joseph smith really was a prophet for her self and she was like oh yeah of course I'll do it! Then she right away just bows her head and closed her eyes and we were like oh wow ok she's starting guess she doesn't want to be taught how to pray so we closed our eyes and waited for her to start....and then she didn't and we were sitting there like ok is she confused about how to pray? is she just feeling the spirit? did she pass out? Should we check for a pulse? So we look up and she's like whispering to herself so we're like ok ok she's alive she's just praying to herself this is cool we can go with this so we kind of just sit there to wait till she finishes. A minute goes by...then another...then five...and she's STILL PRAYING. At this point it's been like 10 minutes of us sitting in silence with me and Hna Newbill passing looks at each other like what the heck are we supposed to do how long is this gonna last while trying not to laugh in case she suddenly stopped praying and saw us. I felt like Ammon when he went to the King Lamont and it says "14 Therefore Ammon turned himself unto the king, and said unto him: What wilt thou that I should do for thee, O king? And the king answered him not for the space of AN HOUR, according to their time, for he knew not what he should say unto him." I've always wondered how that went down...Ammon and the King just sitting in silence for am hour and now more than ever I wonder how they did it because we were dying after like 10 minutes. After moving around and coughing didn't stop her, at about minute 13 I was just like ok this needs to end and was like Hermana...como se siente? And she stopped and was like I feel so peaceful  and calm right now...it's beautiful. Thank you so much for this. Then we invited her to be baptized and she didn't even hesitate before answering "Ok WHEN??" we were like woah there now that's the kind of answer we've been looking for. I was like how about October 25? She said What time?? Hahaha she's awesome! Definitely worth the 13 minutes of awkward silence!!

Well that's about all for this week and officially the end of my first transfer out in the mission field and the baptism yesterday was a great way to end it. , I'll talk about the investigators who were baptized more when I send pics of it later! Love you all amd hope youhave a great week!

Hermana Baugh

This is Magaly! She's been investigating the church for like a yr and a half and has gone through probably 20 missionaries but has come to church like every Sunday so everyone thinks that her and her kids are members so they were kind of like undercover investigators. But she had to get married before she could get baptized so that's what took her awhile but her and her husband got married a few weeks before I got here. Then she still wasn't sure if she wanted to get baptized because she was scared because she would be breaking the traditions of all her family which are super catholic. But she knows this church is true she has such a strong testimony of it. So after our discussion with her on Sunday we asked her to pray about being baptized this weekend and she said she'd tell us her decision on Tuesday. We went over to her house on tues and read 3 ne 27 together and talked about why baptism is so important and how it's the gate we need to enter through to the path that leads to eternal life and she was like Hermanas I'm ready to enter that gate and inside we were screaming and jumping and crying tears of joy and fist pumping and shouting hurrah for Israel but we kept our cool on the outside  but ah man we were just soo happy for her to finally realize that she was ready for herself. We had the baptism after church on Sunday and the branch pretty much made it like a party because they've been waiting for this day for so long. There was so much love in that room! Haha And also food so that was good too! The other picture is of her family and we are teaching her daughter who will be baptized soon. And her husband I'm sure will too all in due time haha.

So this is Justin. The missionaries found Justin like 2 weeks before I got here. They had been trying walking up to people and asking them the question "have you been baptized?" And had been getting a lot of blank stares until they met Justin who was taking out the trash and said " hey you know that's funny you ask that because I just baptized myself in my hottub last night" in all seriousness haha. So they offered to teach him how there was a proper way through proper authority that we needed to be baptized...bc I've got a feeling baptism by hottub doesn't quite cut it. But anyways Justin was supposed to get baptized 2 or 3 weeks ago but wasn't ready bc he said he didn't have a testimony about prophets or Joseph Smith yet. So we taught him more about that and gave him lots of stuff to read and watch and then this week we went by to teach him on Wednesday and he was super happy to see us and in a super good mood and he proudly showed us a stack of all the pamphlets we'd given him and the restoration movie saying he'd watched it twice and read everything and he understood and knew it was true now! He was like alright I'm ready now when can I get baptized?? 3 days lata....waabaam baptism! There was a lot of ward members there at the baptism bc there had been a wedding at the church right before for one of the English elders investigators (it was so weird it was like 10 minutes long we got to see it) so everyone just stayed for Justin's baptism after. Then one of the members took everyone out to dinner but we couldn't go because we had a teaching appt so we were like "fly little bird fly" and Justin went out with his new ward family and will hopefully live happily ever after. He's so great though and it's amazing to see how much his faith and testimony has grown these past 6 weeks. That's our district leader who baptized him.