January 4, 2016

Familia,

This week has been super good! Yeah New Years was a good time, we went
to bed at 10:30 and woke up to a brand new year #obedience first.
Actually, want to hear a funny story? So I wake up in the middle of
the night because of rapid gun fire and commotion so I freak out and
wake sister farmer up to tell her that there is a shooting and I'm
looking out the window to figure out how close they are and then.... I
realize that it's 12:02. HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Hahaha good times.

Also thanks for filling me in on the reception and wedding!! It sound
like it was just the cutest thing ever! IM SO EXCITED FOR PICTURES :)

Well besides the fact that literally every member was out of town and
it was hard to get members to lessons, everything went really well!
Something I've really learned about missionary work is that if you
invite people to be baptized they say yes haha. Sister Farmer and I
have been making sure EVERY first lesson/contact that we are inviting
people to be baptized and EVERY 2nd lesson to extend a baptismal date,
and we have 8 people with baptismal dates! I know it doesn't sound
like a lot but for a mission that gets 10 baptisms total in a month
it's pretty darn good! When people realize exactly what we are here
for they work harder to obtain it. It's really awesome, FOLLOW THE
COUNCIL OF YOUR LEADERS!

I had a really cool experience on exchanges. We were in my area and we
were talking to this lady named Kim and her boyfriend/husband Kyle. We
talked about the restoration and how it can bless their family and it
was really cool, Kyle said he didn't know about his beliefs in Christ
but that it's something he would be interested in finding out. Then,
point blank he asked me if drinking was a sin (this family has a few
things to change haha) and another thing I have learned on the mission
is to be bold and that the truth never needs to be sugar coated. These
people need to know exactly what they need to change and how they can
come closer to God and partake of salvation and they can't do that
unless we are bold with them. So, I told him that it was and we talked
about why God gives us commandments. At the end we invited him to say
the prayer and he was super reluctant at first but once we taught him
how and explained it more he agreed and his prayer was amazing! The
spirit was so strong as he asked Heavenly Father to help them make
changes to bring them closer to him. We went back on Saturday and had
another lesson where they accepted baptism for February 13th and we
had Kim say the prayer at the end and they had their little kids
praying with us this time. They couldn't make it to church because Kim
and one of the kids woke up throwing up in the night (Satan is the
worst) but she was so excited as she told us that they started reading
the introduction to the Book of Mormon and prayed with their family
that night! It's amazing to see the way God changes lives in small
significant steps.

Our investigator Molly is getting more comfortable with coming to
church and reading the Book of Mormon which is awesome! She is
scheduled to be baptized on January 23rd and on her way! Daniel is
supposed to be baptized that day but he has missed church 3 weeks in a
row now and we can't get in contact with him so we are worried. He
texted us telling us how grateful he is for us to have helped him get
closer to his heavenly father but we don't know what is going on
now. Please pray for him!!

Well, THE CHURCH IS TRUE! I promise.
~Sister Hill