July 8th, 2013

Woohoo!!

Oh my goodness I am so grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ! The first thing I really wanted to tell you, is how awesome the spirit is. Sister Thompson and I had been frustrated because we only had one investigator and all of our finding efforts were proving ineffective. So like I told you a little bit about last week, we went into Bainbridge and contacted all of the "former investigators" in that area and came in contact with 3 people who wanted to learn more about the gospel! Two of them we still haven't been able to contact, but the third was a very sweet lady named Deb. We taught her the lesson of the restoration this week and it was AMAZING! She has a good friend who lives in Ohio who is a member of the church and has been talking to her about the church. Months ago, Deb had been having serious neck pain so Vicky asked if it would be okay for her to call a priesthood holder in the area to come and give her a blessing. Vicky accepted and in no time, a man (my current ward mission leader) came to her home and gave her a blessing of healing. Deb told us that she felt a tingling sensation in her neck and felt it the following days after the blessing. She told us that after a few days, she was healed! This provided us the perfect opportunity to explain how she was able to be healed because that power and authority from God was restored to the earth through the prophet Joseph Smith, and that she was literally being blessed by the power of God. She felt so special, and thought that was the coolest thing. The spirit really touched her heart and witnessed to her that what we had told her was true. We have another lesson with her tomorrow :)

So aside from that unbelievably wonderful experience, our whole week was great! On the fourth of July, we had the opportunity to eat at the home of one of the families in the ward. They are so sweet and fed us so much food! They love the missionaries and probably told us 20 or so times how much they love having the missionaries in their house. The craziest part is that they sent us home with enough food to feed us for a few weeks! Haha Sister Thompson carried a big box and I carried a big bag out of their home that the Mom had packed up for us. We felt SO loved and taken care of! 

The fourth of July night we had to be in our apartment at 7pm because President Topham didn't want us out and about. So we had an extra 2 hours to clean our apartment, do some area book work, and have some fun! Sister Thompson LOVES glow sticks, so since we were not allowed to use fireworks, that was our substitute! We used the slow shutter setting on her camera and took some really cool looking pictures. There was also some fireworks happening across the street from our apartment, so we got a little bit of a fireworks show :)

Anyway, I gotta go but I love you all so much! When we rely upon the Lord and turn to him in faith, He is always willing to help us and bless us! Take advantage of the blessings the Lord is already willing to grant you, simply by asking Him in prayer and being obedient to His commandments! Thank you for your prayers and love, I draw upon their strength all the time :)

Love, 

Sister Walborn

p.s. The pictures are of the crazy amount of food we received from that awesome family in our ward, Sister Thompson with her glow sticks, and a beautiful sunset that we witnessed last night. Love you!