I LOVE MEETINGS! . . . 08/26/13

Melbourne Mission Moments 08/26/13‏

I love packages from home!

Ah. Where do I even start? Being a missionary is seriously the biggest blessing I could have asked for! The blessings absolutely demolish the sacrifices you make to be a missionary. Seriously, Heavenly Father is SO good to me!

First of all, It is such a blessing to be able to work with my new companion. We have so many similarities. It's crazy. I love working with her and we had such a great week this week!

It has poured rain this week! Gotta love tracting in the rain.
Thank goodness for my rain coat.

Our area is still a little bit slow so we are doing a lot of tracting/finding. That's what we did pretty much all day Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday night we had a miracle happen. It was after it was dark and we had run out of people to go visit and since we aren't supposed to tract after dark because of safety we decided to look at the ward list and see if there was someone we felt like we should visit. I saw the name of a less active single mom and her son and felt like we should go there. I have been trying to meet her for the whole 13+ weeks that I've been in this area and haven't had any luck so far but we decided we would at least try. She ended up being home and we were able to go in and talk with her for almost an hour and build a really good relationship of trust with her. She invited us to come back and start teaching her 8-year-old son so that he can get baptized soon! I'm so glad we were listening to the promptings of the spirit and felt that we should go there!

On Thursday we had the wonderful blessing of having ZONE CONFERENCE!! :) I LOVE MEETINGS. Haha but seriously, I really do. I love getting instruction from our leaders and I always leave feeling so uplifted and motivated to be better and do more. President and Sister Maxwell are such wonderful teachers and I always learn so much from them. One thing they really focused on is how to recognize the spirit. That is something that I am so grateful for as a missionary. Before the mission it was really hard for me to discern between my thoughts and the spirit but as a missionary it's getting easier and easier.

On Friday we started teaching a beautiful woman from South Africa who has just finished battling breast cancer. She has strong faith but is really open. She was really interested in the Book of Mormon and kept telling us "This just makes sense. This has got to be true." I'm excited to continue teaching her.

On Saturday we had exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders. In the morning we did a lot of tracting. Then in the afternoon we went to visit Naomi. I'm constantly amazed by her. Talking to her you would think she'd been a member of the church for 5 years, not 5 months. She is so solid. She told us, "this isn't just a fling, this is a life-long commitment." That's the best thing to hear. Her 15-year old son was home and we were talking to him. He has come to church several times with Naomi. I felt really prompted to ask him how he felt about the church. He told us that he wants to be baptized!! Another miracle! He is praying about a date for his baptism and we are going there on Wednesday to start teaching him the lessons and to set a solid date for him. :)

Yesterday we had Stake Conference and it was wonderful. Again, I love meetings :) The theme was becoming perfected in Christ. It was exactly what I needed to hear. Then last night while we were driving home we were listening to a talk in the car by John Bytheway called "Gospel Standards for Youth" from BYU Education Week, August 17, 1998. It was so good! Seriously, look it up and listen to it. It opened my eyes a lot. I realized how much I have changed as a missionary. Because we are away from the distractions of the world, I have realized how much filth there is and how hard Satan is working. I have such a desire to hold myself to a higher standard when I get home. It's not like I was doing crazy things and breaking commandments, etc., but there are definitely things that I can be even better about. Satan is working really hard and we can't allow ourselves to come down from the mountain even a little bit. I've realized that I want to stay as far from the line as possible. Ah, seriously listen to the talk for FHE this week. It is wonderful!

I love you all and I miss you! Can't believe I've been out for 5 months now. I'm gonna be back home before I turn around twice. The mission is flying by. 

LOVE YOU HEAPS!! 

Love, 

Sister Baker 

P.S. The spider I sent the picture of did pretty much send me over the edge. [Lauren said it was as big as her hand.] I was FREAKING out. So gross. It's made me more paranoid. Yuck. They said that as it starts getting warmer more spiders will come out. They said we have to watch out especially for white tails and red backs. They showed us pictures of them and Oh my NASTY! Google it. It's disgusting.