Always been a die hard

Hey everyone!!
Another week has come and gone. And also another transfer (6 weeks). Sister Gibson and I will be staying together here in Tampa 5 for another transfer, our third one. I had the sudden realization after transfer emails came in that I ONLY HAVE TWO TRANSFERS LEFT. DOS.  I'm thinking that Sister Gibson and I will stay together for my last transfer as well. If that does happen, then we will have spent 9 months as companions. Crazy! I don't think there is anything we don't know about each other! I'm excited to keep working hard here, it's a great area, we are teaching and meeting great people, and we are happy.

This week was full of great things. One day I will tell you about them, but today is not that day haha. There is never enough time. This week though, I'm not really sure what happened but we were just really determined and committed to finding people who are committed to progressing towards baptism. Like more than usual committed. And guess what happened?? 11 people we are teaching committed to working towards a specific date to be baptized!  God was touching the heart of people one after the next! Some really neat experiences and examoles of this were with our investigators Luz and Ferdinand. They are a young couple from Puerto Rico and we met Luz a few weeks ago when we prayed to find a spanish speaking family who we could teach 2 times that same week (which btw happened, luz was the answer to that prayer). She said that her husband Ferdinand wasn't interested in learning though, she had asked him. We were a little bummed but just let him be. We went by this week to teach luz, after not being able to see her for a while and her husband was there. Hermana Gibson asked him if he wanted to join the lesson and he actually said yes! We talked about baptism and why it is important. He talked about how he doesn't feel prepared and feels like he doesn't have a very strong relationship with god. We told him that that is exactly what we do as missionaries, we help people to grow their relationship with God by helping them prepare to be baptized. He was really touched by the spirit and accepted our invitation, along with luz, to preapre to be baptized in November. He said that we could come back how ever many times we wanted during the week to teach them because he really loves how he feels like we are bringing god's presence and spirit into their home.

Another was Joel- he is dinora's husband, the lady we took a picture with who made us food in the restarant she works in. they are from hondyras. Joel wasn't interested in learning with us the first time we asked him 2 weeks ago, but last week we were teaching dinora's cousin and joel walked down the stairs, said hi, then walked out the door. A few minutes later he came back in and said actually...can I sit in on the lesson? The spirit had told him to come back and he listened to it! He is now set and working towards being baptized on Nov 7, came to church by himself on Sunday, is up to 1 ne 13 in the bom and is reading 4 chapters a day and sent us a message this morning saying how happy he has been since we started teaching him this week.  so neat

-So we as missionaries and our ward council had been planning a missionary activity for a while and we were finally able to do it on saturday. It was about the plan of salvation, and we had set up all the rooms in the church as if they were the steps in the plan. Everyone boarded a "plane" when they got there, experienced a plane crash and then had to go through the steps of the plan of salvation. We were the flight attendants and guides for the groups of people! It turned out really neat. The other elders randomly had received an online referral from a member in Utah, and it was for their family members who were living here and just arrived from Venezuela. The elders were able to contact them right before the activity and those two families were able to come to the activity and learn, and also receive great fellowship from all the members. It was so great to see how fast the ward welcomed that family in and they loved it so much that they all came to church the next day. All that work we put into that activity was completely worth it to see that family receive fellowship and be able to feel the spirit.

- Well Im looking forward to the miracles this next transfer brings and am determined to work harder than I ever have before. If Im going out soon, Im going to go out with a bang. Have the best week everyone, live long and prosper.
love hermana vaugh

meditizando

Buenassss

This week was a week of meetings. Literally, every single day we had a meeting to go to and the day we didn't, we had an exchange! So it was really busy. We were still able to get a lot of work done though and meet a lot of new people. One of the meetings we had this week was MLC (mission leadership conference) and we were able to spend time learning from president and from one another. I learned a lot and left with a desire and ideas of how to improve our area and the zone. Sister Gibson and I were talking about how it's kind of weird how neither of us feel bad or discouraged or anything for not having had anyone be baptized since being here yet but it's because I feel like these past 3 months I have worked harder than I have ever before in my mission. I feel completely diligent and because of that I feel completely successful and happy. We are constantly going non stop and always finding great and new people to teach which is such a blessing.   Francheliz is continuing to progress really well, we are almost done teaching her all the lessons and she came to conference on Sunday and loved it. We are just waiting still  for her husband to agree to get married so keep praying for them! Conference weekend was so great. I started with questions and left with answers and action items from the spirit of ways to improve. I really loved President Uchtdorf's, Sister Mariott's and Elder Lawrences messages because they helped answer my questions of how I can deepen my relationship with the Savior and continue to progress. I loved Elder Durrant's idea to "ponderize" a scripture every week and really treasure up the words of Christ. I was thinking of how they would translate that word into Spanish since I was watching that session in english and I thought of Meditizar ( meditar and memorizar) so I'm going to work on meditizando. I was also able to finish the Book of Mormon in Spanish again right before the Sunday morning session. This is the fastest I've ever read it, less than 3 months. This time reading through the Book of Mormon, I did something different. I kept a running note on my ipad of all the different principles and lessons that I learned from specific scriptures and stories from people in the Book of Mormon. It is so long! By doing this, my love for the Book of Mormon and the reality of the people in it has grown so much these past three months. I am so grateful for the words of prophets, both ancient and modern, to guide us and shape us and help us to know of God's will, goodness and gospel. I was reading in my patriarchal blessing this morning and realized that it says that I will be blessed with a love for the holy scriptures and for God's prophets. I felt the spirit then and realized that I feel like I have really developed that more these past few months. Hope everyone has a great week, keep on Buenassss

This week was a week of meetings. Literally, every single day we had a meeting to go to and the day we didnt, we had an exchange! So it was really busy. We were still able to get a lot of work done though and meet a lot of new people. One of the meetings we had this week was MLC (mission leadership conference) and we were able to spend time learning from president and from one another. I learned a lot and left with a desire and ideas of how to improve our area and the zone. Sister Gibson and I were talking about how it's kind of weird how neither of us feel bad or discouraged or anything for not having had anyone be baptized since being here yet but it's because I feel like these past 3 months I have worked harder than I have ever before in my mission. I feel completely diligent and because of that I feel completely successful and happy. We are constantly going non stop and always finding great and new people to teach which is such a blessing.   Francheliz is continuing to progress really well, we are almost done teaching her all the lessons and she came to conference on Sunday and loved it. We are just waiting still  for her husband to agree to get married so keep praying for them! Conference weekend was so great. I started with questions and left with answers and action items from the spirit of ways to improve. I really loved Elder Uchtdorf's, Sister Mariott's and Elder Lawrences messages because they helped answer my questions of how I can deepen my relationship with the Savior and continue to progress. I loved Elder Durran's idea to "ponderize" a scripture every week and really treasure up the words of Christ. I was thinking of how they would translate that word into spanish since I was watching that session in english and I thought of Meditizar ( meditar and memorizar) so Im going to work on meditizando. I was also able to finish the Book of Mormon in spanish again right before the Sunday morning session. This is the fastest I've ever read it, less than 3 months. This time reading through the Book of Mormon, I did something different. I kept a running note on my ipad of all the different principles and lessons that I learned from specific scriptures and stories from people in the Book of Mormon. It is so long! By doing this, my love for the Book of Mormon and the reality of the people in it has grown so much these past three months. I am so grateful for the words of prophets, both ancient and modern, to guide us and shape us and help us to know of God's will, goodness and gospel. I was reading in my patriarchal blessing this morning and realized that it says that I will be blessed with a love for the holy scriptures and for God's prophets. I felt the spirit then and realized that I feel like I have really developed that more these past few months. Hope everyone has a great week, keep on meditizando those scriptures and words of the prophets.

love hermana va

50 First Discussions

So I wanted to give you and update on Carmen! She is the older sister of a member here that we have been teaching off and on that we set a baptismal date with a few weeks ago. She's the one who can hardly hear us when we teach haha. Well turns out that Carmen has more than just problems with hearing...we've been learning that she has problems with remembering things as well. We haven't been able to see her very much for the last few weeks because of health problems, but every time we go visit her she has forgotten everything we have taught her the lesson before. She has had some neat experiences that have testified to her that this church is true...but everytime we go to visit her she starts out the lesson by saying "I didn't read the Book of Mormon. This religion isn't true and I don't want anything to do with it. Who even is that Joseph Smith person? None of that's true." Then we have to go over with her again what the Book of Mormon is and the restoration, she feels the spirit and says "wow I have chills all over and feel so happy, this must be true!" We have to convert her and help her to have a converting experience every time we see her. But the horrible thing is that by the next time we come back, she's already forgotten it all:( So we don't really know much else we can do. But this whole experience with Carmen has reminded me of that  movie 50 First Dates. Haha kind of babylonian but it's about a lady who gets in an accident and has short term memory loss and the man she was originally in love with has to get her to fall in love with him every single day because she always wakes up the next day completely forgetting who he is. I feel like this has been our experience with Carmen, but it has been the 50 first discussions. Each lesson, we have to bring the spirit and help Carmen to recognize it so she can be converted over and over again. I was thinking about how I could try to do this more---really thing about how I can become more personally converted to the Lord every day.

- We went on another exchange this week but it was with the YSA sisters. It was so different than any other day I've had in my mission. We spent the entire day contacting and talking to people on the USF campus.  We taught so many lessons to so many different people- there were a lot that were from different countries in europe and the middle east which was neat. It was neat to see a different aspect of missionary work. But I was pretty happy to get back to my spanish investigators haha.

-Some neat miracles from the week-- We taught Francheliz the law of chastity (the 25 year old investigator from puerto rico I talked about last week) and she said that she wants to get married so that she can obey god's commandments and be able to be baptized. We were ecstatic. Something I realized during that lesson is that one of my favorite parts about being a missionary is teaching people about the commandments. Because when someone learns a new commandment that they previously were not living, they are learning about blessings that heavenly father is willing to give them that they have been living without but will now be able to have.
- Another neat thing was that we helped an Hermana set up for her baby shower this week. While we were in the church setting up, a lady named Alejandra came with her two kids Edith and Sebastion (15 and 14) and she was looking for the information for the spanish church service. They are from colombia and were baptized in 2012 in new jersey but have been inactive for the past two years while living here in Florida. She had a dream the week before though that told her she needed to come back to church and she had driven to the church building (30 minutes from her home) 3 times that week hoping someone would be there. It was a miracle we were there when she got there! They stayed and helped set up the baby shower and we got to know them better and to teach them this week as well. They are such an amazing family and their kids are awesome. They came to church on sunday too and she wants us to help her get to the temple. God doesn't give up on his children!
- Sad thing... remeber how I met my first Uruguayan here in the Tampa 5 ward? Well she was pretty old and passed away this week:( The ward hosted a funeral and it was a great service. I'm going to miss my Uruguayan.

-Last thought. I was reading Mosiah 3:19 this week which reads
     For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forevver and ever unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. 

I was thinking about the first law of motion. Or maybe thats not what it's called, I feel like I have forgotten everything related to science haha. But in my head the first law of motion is something like this : an object in motion will continue in motion unless acted upon by and eqaul(or greater than) and opposite force. I was thinking about how that law applies to this scripture. How we will continue on our course of being natural men, until we choose to act upon the  greater and opposite force (or promptings) of the Holy Ghost. It is only then that we can change our course into one of digression into one of progression of becoming a Saint. All those childlike attributes it says that we will obtain through that process are all christlike attributes. It makes sense that if we follow the holy ghost, which reveals the will of god, that we will become like Christ. Because it is because Jesus Christ had that one attribute of being able to PERFECTLY follow the will of the Father, that he was able to have all of those other attributes mentioned.

Hope you all have a great week
love hermana baugh