Week 66 - Family History Is the Best!

 Well hello there!

Here is an actual weekly email for you for a change, and what a week it was! For starters, we had visited a woman in our ward who has two teenage girls named Tiffany and Tara who haven't been baptized yet. She came out and talked with us for a second, and even said hi to us at church the next day (last Sunday) and introduced us to Tiffany and Tara! That was already really sweet, but then it got even better! Later in the week, she sent us a text saying Tiffany and Tara hadn't been baptized, and asked if we would be willing to start teaching them the lessons every week after church and help them get baptized!!!!!! We were so excited and still are. It's great. It's not often that people walk up to you and ask to be baptized!

The next huge miracle happened in McClusky, the cutest darn town of 409 people you'll ever see. It's about an hour north of Bismarck. The one and only active member up there, Sister Bowers, set up a time for us to come up and do a family history event for anyone in the town who wanted to come! It was a small turnout, but we still got to help 4 people set up FamilySearch.org accounts! They all loved it and now want us to come up and do family history workshops every month, so hopefully they'll slowly but surely get more popular! The super cool thing is I got to help Sheila get started, and Sheila is somebody I'd met and talked with quite a bit the first time I was in McClusky. We ended up talking about a TON of the Church's teachings, and I asked her if she'd like to learn more, and she just looked me straight in the eyes and said, "Yes, I really would." I mean, I know to expect miracles and that God is always preparing people to receive His word, but my jaw almost dropped. It was the best thing ever! Man, I love McClusky. 

President Howell gave us a ridiculously unrealistic deadline for a ginormous project, so that was stressful. Thankfully we got that all sorted out and now we have a team of people helping us instead of just Sister Murri and I! We got to eat dinner with two member families who were both absolutely fantastic, and we got to go and do service at the soup kitchen! It was honestly just such an amazing week. Every day felt like a 5K and by the end of the week it felt like we'd ran a triathlon. Nothing makes you feel quite as accomplished as knowing you did everything you could in your power!

The other really cool thing that happened this week was President Howell asked us all to make it a week of "mighty prayer" where he asked us to pray 50x's a day or more; just little one sentence prayers in our hearts, praying before we left the apartment, before we started to drive, before we got out of the car, before a lesson, after a lesson, whenever we started a new task, asking for help whenever we had something difficult ahead of us, giving thanks whenever we noticed His hand in our lives. It was absolutely incredible, and it's something I plan to keep up for the rest of my mission for sure and try to do the same to the best of my ability when I get home. I've never felt so completely at peace in the midst of chaos, because I knew that I'd "counsel[ed] with the Lord in all [my] doings," so therefore "He [would] direct [me] for good." It was a life changing week. I would 100% like to invite you all to increase your praying starting today; then, keep it up for a few more days. Do this, and I promise your life will never be the same, and you will feel closer to your Heavenly Father than you ever have before. 

I love you all SO much! Have wonderful weeks, and enjoy some pictures below!

Sister Balls