Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Letter 71 -- Temple, Instruction and Priesthood Blessing!



Hello Wonderful Family!

Happy Birthday to all my wonderful family members that were born in March! I am happy you are born and are a part of my life!!! 

Marvelous things happened this week. One of my favorite things about the mission is the small and simple little promptings of the spirit and the feelings and experiences that come as we follow it. I love receiving a prompting to say something in a lesson, and having it be exactly what that person needed to hear. God knows His children and what we all need :)

Our choir is sounding marvelous! We started to pull all our songs together last night and it is sounding like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.... almost :) Brother N... stayed after Marcella's baptism to listen to the choir and get a ride home with some members and he was getting a kick out of me controlling the choir. Haha when Sister Bodine is in charge of a choir there are a lot of arms flailing all over the place, random noises coming out of my mouth to grab people's attention.. it's hilarious. I am loving this.

MLC was this week, and it was powerful as always. Sister Howle and I were asked to instruct about having Friend-Present lessons, and not just Member-Present lessons - the importance of inviting members to come teaching with you with the intention that they will be a support and friend for that investigator. We felt good about it! We were also asked to instruct a couple days later at Zone Council about Fostering Unity within a Companionship. SO MUCH FUN. Family, I can't express how much I love to teach. I love instructing, speaking, teaching, everything. I can't get enough of it haha. Sister Howle and I were just on cloud nine preparing for these instructions.

We were blessed to go to the temple with Abigail Lunario! Oh it was such a wonderful experience. Our mission is doing this event now where the first Saturday of every month, new and returning members can come and do baptisms for their first time, and the missionaries teaching them get to come as well. So missionaries from around the mission were there with these brand new members, walking into the temple for the first time, eyes wide with excitement. I felt so honored to be there with Abigail. I bawled as she was being baptized. It is a missionary's dream to be able to see the people they love go to the temple and feel the spirit there. Not to mention she just got called this week to be a Gospel Principles teacher! She is so great :)

I received a Priesthood blessing from President Clayton for my back. I KNOW that Priesthood blessings are REAL. They WORK. According to our faith :) I am so grateful for the experience that I had. President Clayton promised me that I would be feeling significantly better and that is exactly how I feel. It's not perfect, I can still feel pain, but it has improved so much. All the way up until yesterday. Sister Bodine never slips, until yesterday when we were walking to our house. The whole walkway tends to turn to ice and I was a little too excited to eat lunch and slipped on my way. I tweaked my back a little bit more but it wasn't anything a little laugh couldn't cure :)

I was blessed to go on exchanges with Hermana Sandorf for the third time! We have been following each other around the mission :) She is one of my heroes as a missionary. That sister is amazing. As always we had a marvelous exchange. We have a challenge going on in the zone where we have to talk to a certain amount of people (at least) each day independent of tracting, working with members, and teaching lessons. It came to be the end of the night, and we were driving home, but we needed to talk to five more people. So we prayed and decided that as we were driving home, if we saw someone walking on the side of the road then we would stop a little ahead of them, act like we were getting something out of the back of the car and then start talking to them. Clever eh? ;) haha well no one was outside. We got really close to our house and really close to time being up and we were REALLY wanting to find these people and then we saw them!!! A group of five people walking to a bus stop. We found them as we were on a busy street so we pulled off to the nearest side road, bolted out of the car, sprinted around the corner and down the sidewalk (literally), we slowed down as we got to the bus stop and started an AWESOME conversation with a group of teenage boys. It was a great way to end a wonderful night :) 

At MLC, we always end with testimonies given by the new Sister Training Leaders and Zone Leaders as well as those who are leaving their missions this transfer. Afterwards, as everyone was leaving, Sister Mandla and I were talking, and then she turned to President Clayton and asked him if the people who are going to train at the end of their missions were going to be able to bear their testimonies at MLC as well. His eyes got wide and he said he never thought about that before. And then he looks at me and says, "You're going to be training your last transfer." And I immediately start bawling haha. He went out into the hallway and called all the missionaries back in. He started to cry and told them that this was going to be my last MLC because I was going to train the last transfer of my mission. And He gave me the chance to bear my testimony. That was a huge wish that I had was to bear my testimony at MLC and I was blessed with the opportunity. Haha I looked hideous because I was bawling my eyes out and everyone was gathering around me which made my face go really red, but I WAS JUST SO HAPPY. I am so grateful for this opportunity I had to be a Sister Training Leader. It was such a humbling experience. I just love all these sisters so much. And I am just stoked beyond all reason to be able to train my last transfer. What a great way to end the most amazing experience for my life. This will be a great rest of the transfer.

Brother N.... is getting baptized this week. Please pray for him throughout this week! I love you all! Have a wonderful week! Keep your standards!!

Sister Bodine


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