April 24, 2017

Hi all!!

This week was super good! We had interviews with President and Sister Johnson on Tuesday and they went awesome. It was so weird to realize it's just one more and then a departing interview left with President. But I had really good talks with both of them. And then President basically said I'll either end here in MoVille or go back to DC3rd. But we all know how transfers go so basically anything could happen. 

We also had Zone Conference this week which was pretty good. It was great to see a lot of the friends because we do multi Zone combined since we do Zone Conference every transfer now. It was another weird realization when Elder Florence leaned over and pointed out we only have one more now..

On Friday we got to go to the temple and once again was a kinda last, I only have my departing temple trip left. It was super nice to be in the temple again and feel the spirit there. I'll miss the DC temple a lot, I've had a lot of amazing experiences there through my mission. I'm so grateful to have served in a mission that had a temple that I could attend regularly. I've gained such a testimony of the temple and the blessings we can have in our life from it. It will be hard for this area to have it closed when it's renovations start in March but I can't wait for it to be rededicated in 2 years and have the open houses. It will be a huge missionary boom in this area from that. 

Lastly and defiantly not least we had Latifs baptism! It was such an amazing service. Elder Strubell got to come back and see the baptism which was nice to have him there and get to see him! Latif was crying as soon as the kids gave the talks on baptism and the Holy Ghost. Bishop baptized him and then we came back and they had asked the missionaries to sing Called to Serve...and it was absolutely awful haha. We told them we can't sing and they said they didn't care. Some ward members I guess had some mixed reviews to bishop about our singing but hey we all said in the first place we didn't want to sing and couldn't so we aren't mad hah. Then both Bishop Ure and President Arnold bore testimonies about how amazing it was to see this all happen. They have knows Latif for nearly 10 years and they said they would have never guessed he would have been baptized even 2 months ago. They said it truly is a miracle. We are so excited for Latif and the family, they are amazing. 

Then to top the week off last night was Why I Believe and the speaker was one of the missionaries who was in the Brussels Airport bombing. Super amazing kid and testimony. 

Well it was very busy and full week, I'm glad I was able to be a part of all this that has happened. This truly is Gods work and because of that we can expect miracles to happen. I'm so glad I got to play a small part in this miracle that's going to allow a family to be sealed in the temple. I can't think of a better cap stone to my mission. There's still time to go though so it will be fun to see what else happens. Love and miss you guys!!

Love,

Austin