July 11th-18th, 2016

Hello family. Thanks for the emails! Sounds like you're staying busy. I hope to hear that Dustin got the job with FedEx. That sucks that his car broke down!! :( I hit my year mark this week, talk about depressing. I cannot believe it's been a year, the time goes so fast. The mission is like a toilet paper roll, the closer you get to the end the faster it goes. ANYWAYS. 

KAYLA GOT BAPTIZED THIS WEEK! So happy. I love her. Parker got to baptize her and he was the one that originally shared the gospel with her so that was really cool. We asked her how she felt after she received the Holy Ghost and she said "full." I love it! She was glowing. Right after she got baptized we ran in to the bathroom/font area and she was like "I want to hug you guys, but i'm all wet. But I feel so tingly!" She just had the biggest smile on her face. President and Sister Bateman came to the baptism so that was so nice of them. Guess what, we are already teaching one of Kayla's friends that came to the baptism. #blessed. 

Shannon and Andrew and their whole family came to church! All 6 of them. I was so happy. I love them. I was sneakingly looking at Shannon during the Sacrament and she was like gazing up at the ceiling and grinning and she looked almost relieved, I just KNEW she was so glad to be back at church after like 15 years of being gone. Her cute son Cash, who's like 4 years old, looks at us during the Sacrament and said "wait, did God die?" He was so devastated haha.  

We also had our ZLT meetings and they went well. In fact, one of the elders said while he was walking out that it was the best ZLT he had ever been to! The district leaders in the zones keep telling us how the commitments we gave and principles we taught are really helping their missionaries soooo needless to say we are SO GLAD it turned out alright. It boosted our ego just a smidgen. 

It was been so hot and humid this week it's so funny haha. Then randomly one day the biggest storm of all time rolled in. Someone told us it was even a "class 1 hurricaine" whatever that means. There were a lot of broken trees and stuff that got blown around. Like even grills were blown away. So crazy. So fun. I love the midwest! 

I hope you all have a great week! I'm so grateful to be a full time missionary. I know this is Christ's church, I know the Atonement heals us, I know the gospel is for people who make mistakes. Perfect people don't need a Savior.