You Gotta Have Both

Nicole's Letter:

"You gotta have both"

Lili got baptized!!! It was such a good day! We started teaching her in September and it has been a long road for the family. Lots of tears and prayers to get to this day.  And Lili was so excited! The ward was amazing and the Young Women support was strong. It seriously is the best thing to see someone take that first step toward our Heavenly Father and making that covenant. Lili also got confirmed yesterday and she was petrified to go up. I thought she wasn't going to go but her mom walked her up. And then after she was happy and confident. She said that she felt so good and couldn't even describe the feeling of how she felt. The spirit is real. 

A thought that came to me after we learned that Frankie can't meet with us anymore was that -We are doing the work of eternity on an earthly timetable. 

Miracles do happen. In the Bible dictionary it says that Christianity is founded on the greatest miracle of all. The resurrection of our Lord and Savior. Why don't people believe miracles could continue. I know that saying that Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ is a bold claim but in reality it is a miracle that the fullness of the Gospel was restored to the earth once again. I mean why couldn't it happen, Christianity started with a miracle. 

 

There are miracles all around us. Do we chose to see them? This week Frankie saw a miracle even though his parents aren't allowing him to be baptized at this point in time. He got up to bear his testimony yesterday and he bore a sweet and powerful testimony that God is aware of us. He told the events that have occurred with meeting with us. He related how we asked him to be baptized and then the next week to pray about a date, following week we followed up and he told how a date came to his mind which was February 24th. He didn't know what day that was until the next week when we brought a calendar to map it all out and he discovered that the 24th was a Saturday. And it was a small thing but powerful to him that God impressed his mind with that date. I hope that we can all see those small miracles or tender mercies or blessings or whatever you want to call them because God is real and God is good.

 

Had a lesson with Tarah and her family. Tarah had read 10 chapters of the Book of Mormon! She had lots of questions for us. By the end we asked if she had prayed about the Book of Mormon and knew if it was true? She told us that before we came over she didn't think so but God used us as mouthpieces to answer her questions and she knows that the Book of Mormon is true. Now they just have to come to church. They are awesome! I love their family! 

We had lots of fun times walking and riding the bus this week. On Friday night we had to get the car from the elders (We now share the car with them) and so what would be a 10 minute drive to their place took a hour of travel time. The joys of public transportation :) but we walked super fast trying to get to this one bus stop but then we knew that we were too far so then we waited for another one but that would take us to the plaza (which is a sight to see, just where all the buses connect downtown) and then we had to wait for the transfer and then that bus took us about a 20 minute walk from the elders. While we were walking in the dark on a Friday night, Sister John was like Never would I imagine this being a mission. And I just thought "if we did, we probably wouldn't be here". There are lots of those moments but I love them! I love my mission life and I hate that I am to the point where people are now saying that I have no time left! 12 weeks, crazy! Enjoying my time while I have it! I think that I have been on a mission a while though since yesterday at dinner they asked how much school I did and I was like "3 transfers". Apparently everything is in transfers in my mind now.

Pictures:

Lili's baptism

We went to Manito park and they have a ton of daffodils, it is so pretty!  

went to lunch for birthdays​​

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