Hermana Amy Geis: Week 68: Come, Come Ye Saints

Hello everyone!

This week was so crazy! But really good :)

So one cool experience: There's a less active member named Angela. She talked to another member and said that she wants to come back to church, but her husband and her kids aren't members of the church and have never gone. So she wanted us to go visit them. So we went, and we were extremely happy and surprised to find them as a complete, unified family. So we sang a hymn, and Angela said the first prayer. She could barely get through the prayer, because she started crying. We asked her why she was crying, and she said it was because she felt the Holy Spirit, and because she wanted her family to accept the gospel. So it was extremely spiritual. Her family accepted the challenge to be baptized, but her husband has a lot of doubts and doesn't want to rush things. So we`re gonna have to work with them step by step to help them progress and accept the gospel, so that they can be an eternal family.

We`ve been working a lot with Luisa and Abigail, I wrote about them a couple weeks ago. Luisa has been praying a lot to know if these things are true, but she said that she hasn't gotten the answer yet, and she has felt that her other church is keeping her from having an open heart and receiving the answer. But this week she asked us to tell her how she could pray more correctly to get the answer. So we told her that all she needed to do was direct the prayer directly to God, as the specific question, and end in the name of Jesus Christ. So she said, ¨Wow...I haven't been praying that way. So I'm going to do that and get the answer.¨ I don't think I've ever seen someone who wants to know so badly whether or not these things are true. One time praying with us, she said, ¨Heavenly Father, I NEED to know if these things are true. Please help me know.¨

So we were really praying that she would come to General Conference, so that she could feel the spirit as the prophet and apostles were speaking. And she did go! She went to the Saturday morning session and she said that she felt really good. After the Conference we asked her how she has felt as she has prayed about everything, and she said, ¨Well I felt enough that I wanted to come today!¨ We were like, hallelujah! So we are super excited for her progression.

On Friday we had the Leadership meeting. It went really well! It was the last time Hermana Chatwin and I were gonna see each other :( It was so sad! And other missionaries are leaving too. It's always hard to say goodbye to other missionaries because you don't know if you'll see them again. But you really meet the coolest people on the mission.

Then of course we watched General Conference! And of course it was great. I really loved the talk about asking the spirit to tell you what you need to change to progress. It is not easy to be so open to the spirit and so humble to accept what it's going to tell you, but I love the promise that the spirit will tell us specifically what we need to change. I know that there's a ton of little things like that that I need to change to progress.

I'm so excited about the 3 new apostles! They seem so awesome, and so humble. I know that we will all learn so much from them.

Another really cool experience we had last night: It was pretty late and we were far away from our house, and as we were walking out to the main street we missed the bus....and then another one came behind it but we missed that one too!! So we were like, why did we just miss two buses in a row!! Haha so we started walking down the road thinking of who we could visit and we passed by a really big and pretty house. I thought, ¨that'd be cool to teach the people in this house! But how scary it would be to knock this door!¨ But I recently put a goal to be more brave! and so I stopped and said, ¨Hey let's contact this house!¨ And a lady like in her 50's came out. Usually we ask them a random question to start the conversation, but we just said, "Well we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we have a message for the families about Jesus Christ. Can we share it with you? and she said, "Yeah come on in!" Haha I was soo happy and surprised!

So we taught her and her 23 year old son. And they LOVED it. We read from Alma 7:10-14, and she was all ready with her Bible so we told her it was in the Book of Mormon. After reading the scriptures we asked if she had any questions, and she said, ¨No, but I'm still in awe about this book! I really like it!¨ So anyway, the lesson went great and we invited them to be baptized. as we asked them if they would prepare for a specific date, she said ¨Honestly, no. because I am used to my religion.¨ So then we let her talk for like 5 minutes about how she wasn't interested in changing, and as she was talking, she led herself into accepting the challenge haha. So then we asked, "Hermana, if GOD tells you that you should do it, will you do it?" And she said, ¨Yes absolutely.¨ Haha so we didn't do a lot- we just let her talk and let herself realized that she really would do it. It was great!

This week as a Ward activity we watched the movie "17 miracles", about the pioneers who crossed the US after joining the church. It was AMAZING to watch that. It was mostly amazing because my great great great grandma was in that exact company. And she lived through it all. And I realized - if it weren't for everything that happened in that movie, i would not be here on a mission in Costa Rica. I would not even be alive. Thanks to Julia Hill, THOUSANDS of lives have been blessed. My mom went on a mission, my brother did, and so many cousins who are all descendants of Julia. If she didn't give up everything to follow Christ, none of us would be here.

So just think about the Legacy we need to carry on, and everything we owe to the early Saints who gave everything to follow God. We owe to them to do the same.

Anyways I love you all!! Please go listen to Conference again, I'm going to do the same. And we can really try to apply what they taught and change.

Thanks for everything!

hermana geis