December 2, 2014

It's been a good week! I can't believe Thanksgiving is done and gone and Christmas is coming up! Logan leaves so soon. I'm excited to write letters back and forth! Hint hint Logan haha you have to write me. How does Logan feel being in the MTC during Christmas? I hear they treat the missionaries so well during the holidays :) He will have a blast, I loved the MTC. 

The Lord has been blessing me and Glenrose in so many ways. I feel like I have spent a lot of time wondering and asking what I can do to help the area grow and then I do what I can. It seems like I focus so much of my attention on certain people that I feel are going to progress and BAM! .. the Lord blesses us with someone completely different who is much more prepared! It feels as though the Lord reaps the elect while I am trying to do my best to reap elsewhere haha hopefully I am sowing along the way. I sometimes wonder if he feels bad for me that I'm not getting it right so He just makes it happen but then again I think Christ truly knows our desires and our efforts and rewards us with great things as we do our best. I think Amy Brown is one of those situations that I know without a doubt the Lord played a hand in. To finish my story from last week.. Amy lives with a less active couple in our ward. She is a family friend of theirs and is staying there to get back on her feet after a rough divorce and an illness that left her in the hospital for weeks. One of our first days in the area Sister Dunford and I decided to go visit this family and we met Amy. She was so sweet but I couldn't tell if she was very interested, however, she did end up attending the Women's broadcast with Sister Hampton and when we asked her how it was, she absolutely loved it. She felt like Uchtdorf was speaking directly to her! I think we all feel that way most of the time haha he's good. After hearing about her good experience we invited her to come to church with us. She said YES! and even offered to come pick us up :) The meetings were perfect for her, it was the primary program so you can't go wrong with that one and she was in tears during Relief Society. You could just tell she was feeling the Spirit, I was so happy! Long story short, Amy has a crazy schedule, she only has one Sunday off during the month to come to church and even though she was able to attend a couple meetings with us, it has been difficult trying to meet with her so we just kind of left it up to chance. A little over a week ago Sister Wilson and I were looking for someone to pick us up and take us home one night. We called a couple members with no luck and I remembered Amy had told us to call her if we ever needed a ride somewhere. I thought it would be a good opportunity to see her so we sent her a text and she immediately replied with a big YES! Moments later we were in her car and she was bursting with excitement!! She said, "Sisters, I have something so great to tell you!" She told us that she has been praying and praying to find a new job so she could come back to church with us. She said, "Today I got a new job and I can come to church every Sunday!" It was a miracle! She told us about how the Hamptons had bought her a quad and a Book of Mormon study manual, she told us how she has been surrounded by Mormons her whole life and she feels so good about it. She feels like this is where God wants her to be and that she feels like she has a purpose in helping the Hamptons go back to church too. Oh man it is all just one big miracle! She is coming to church with us this Sunday. Amy is definitely going to be one of the greatest converts. See what I mean?? Blessings haha big blessings from God. I feel so blessed. I walked into my house that night feeling humbled and grateful for the Lord's help. I feel like we are actually getting somewhere after a transfer and a half and I don't even feel like I'm doing that much to be worthy of a miracle like this. 

We were able to help Honeylee, one of the ward's recent converts, go to the temple to do baptisms this last week! We also helped Holly, Mario's wife, go to the temple for the first time and get baptized for her mom :) It was a close call haha we called her two hours before the temple and asked if she was able to find any names to take with her. She told us she hadn't bothered because she has no idea how to do it. Well... I unfortunately am not very skilled in the family history department either but we felt we needed to buzz over there and do our best to help her get a name. We had her pull up familysearch.org and she had no names at all on her pedigree chart. I was shocked and felt a little bit overwhelmed (we take for granted how full our pedigree charts are). Sister Wilson and I had no idea what to do but the Spirit guided us and within 20 minutes we had a few of her family members on her pedigree chart and she was able to get permission to baptize her mom. We were all so excited! I wanted to hop on mine and search for names of my own. When all was said and done we got off the computer and Holly was crying. She told us how happy she felt! I felt like Heavenly Father was so pleased with all of us and the work we had done. I felt the Spirit testifying to me that this work is so true and this is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful to be having these experiences. 

I hope you have the best week! Thank you for all of your love. Xmas is coming up! Check outchristmas.mormon.org and share it with EVERYONE. Mom and Dad you have so many non member friends that you can influence! Invite them to check out this website and to watch the Christmas video on there. 

LOVE YOU!

Love, Sister Rogers

This is Holly and her Mom.

This is our new pet Salamander.  Any ideas on what we should name him?