God WILL Answer Your Prayers

Hey how are you all?? This week was absolutely LEGIT. We ended up baptizing 2 this week due to a miracle that occurred last Monday night.  Seriously one of the coolest experiences of my life! We have been teaching another dad and son that accepted dates in two weeks as well. The Lord has seriously opened the windows of heaven on top of us. We are finding new people to teach just about everyday and a lot of older investigators are beginning to progress towards a baptism. I feel like all the work that I have put in as a missionary in a year so far -I am finally beginning to see the results . . . BAPTISMS :) 

Alright so you are all going to be blown away by this story. Cynthia is the young woman in the pictures. We met her my first day here in this area. She was a referral from the Stake President. They work together and there are various members that work with Cynthia. So the first day we taught her we made it very clear that she needed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it so she could know that our message was true. She accepted and said the prayer after the first appointment. In that prayer she asked the Lord to open her heart to this message and the Spirit was seriously so strong. We left that appointment very excited and we thought that for sure she was going to get baptized.  Later that week we went to her house where we found out Cynthia's mom and grandma are members. Super less active and the last time they went to church was like 40 years ago. But needless to say the seed was there planted. 

So the teaching continued on as usual. We checked up on her often to see how her prayers were coming and if she had received an answer. She always told us that she hadn’t received anything and couldn’t seem to recognize the Spirit no matter how hard we tried to explain it to her. The lessons turned into more or less a big Q and A. So I had to set things straight and tell her that if she wasn’t going to read the BoM sincerely we couldn’t do anything for her. That’s why I went off on a BoM shpeeeel 2 or 3 weeks ago in my email. There wasn’t much progress and last week we were considering about dropping her for some time. So last Monday we went with our ward mission leader to finish the teaching and tell her that we couldn’t help her anymore. So we finish teaching the law of chastity and we begin to ask her questions about her prayers. All the sudden Cynthia tells us she had a dream. And in that dream she says she was about to do something real bad.  She never clarified what she was about to do but the point is that she was about to do something bad ha. So she is telling us all this and she starts laughing. She said she wasn’t going to tell us the rest of the dream because it embarrassed her. At this point we knew we had to hear the rest of this dream so we could know what had happened. After 30 seconds or so she finally tells us what happened. She told us that right as she was about to do whatever she was going to do that 2 angels came down from to heaven to stop her . . . but the angels were Elder Estrada and I :) Ha my jaw just about dropped . . . I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She got her answer :) And in a very clear way too. The Spirit was seriously so strong as if Christ were sitting with us in that very room.  To make a long story short, she told us she was ready to be baptized and wanted to be baptized yesterday so her family could attend.  I don’t remember feeling the Spirit stronger in my whole mission. I am not even going to mention the baptismal service - man it was powerful! The best one I have been to in my life!! This experience has been so rewarding and my faith has been strengthened SOOOOOOOO much. My testimony of the BofM and prayer has never been stronger that it is today. It felt so good the rest of the week when we taught about the BofM and how we can know if it’s true or not and have the assurance that God WILL answer our prayers. I feel powerful!

So that’s the story of my week. The other girl that got baptized is named Britzeda. She was baptized on Saturday afternoon and Cynthia on Sunday afternoon. Britzeda's family was inactive when she was 8 and her family is getting active again. Britzeda is 9 now so her baptism counts as a convert baptism for us :) Gotta love free baptisms!

What else has happened?? We spoke in Sacrament yesterday. I gave my talk from my farewell and it was a hit ;) The weather here has gotten hot. It’s been like 80 degrees for the past week. But they say in February it gets cold again so who knows?? The weather here is crazy just like it is back home. I’m looking forward to your package! Thanks for sending it...ha I got a bunch of Christmas cards this past week that were sent a month ago. The mail is super slow here! 

Well that’s about it for this week :) I have a grown a bunch.  I was reading in my journal - my entries from when I very first got here to TJ . . . man I was a different person ha! TIME IS FLYING BY!!

I love and miss you all! Go Utes and Go Broncos!!

Elder Roper :)