Monday, September 29, 2014

Last Email

I am a disciple of Christ, and I love my name, Sister Watkins. I have served a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and man have I loved it!!!!! These passed 18 months have been full of sorrow, illness, awkwardness, anger, complete joy, love, and happiness. I have sat in the refinery of life and allowed my Savior to sculpt me and help me become a true daughter of God and disciple. It's been hard, but 100% worth it. I will never forget the memories I have made, the people I have met, and the feelings I have felt. I know that this is the true church and how grateful I am to have this knowledge and to share it with all mankind. I'm not sure how my feelings are about coming home... denial, but I know that my time has come and I have a new mission to embark on.

This week was a really great week!! We met a lot of new people who God has truly prepared to accept the gospel. One of the girls name is Breanna and she is just soaking up the gospel. She loves it!!! She has a date for the 26th of October. The first day we taught her I was on exchanges in my area with Sister Campbell. When we taught the restoration you could just see the joy and truth enter into this 19 year old girl. I love her already and I'm excited to hear what happens with her.

NASA was AMAZING!!! There are a lot of members that work there, and now I know why. You would have to have the truth in your life, or at least know that God lives and is the creator of all things. The work they do truly is from God. We toured through the museum and then got a tour of the actual facilities where astronauts train and we got to see the mission control room :) Right when we left the museum it started to down pour and we were completely soaked before we got to our car... haha it just happens to be that we had a lesson right afterwards at one of our members home with our investigator Larry. It was a SUPER good lesson .The spirit was definitely felt. Larry is a really strong Catholic and is having a hard time in the concept of baptizing, and why we don't baptize children. We have tried everything to try and teach this, but nothing seems to work. We were praying A TON and really feel prompted to just focus on his family history, and get him a login account for familysearch.org. We will be meeting him at the library this week to do that.

Speaking of family history, we are allowed to do 2 hours of our own family history a week. This past week Sister Elliott and I both found 5 names :) This Thursday we will be doing baptisms for the dead, confirmations, and intiatories, with one of our members. Then on Friday I have the missionary departure temple trip and I will do the endowment for the name mom found me :) I am SO EXCITED!!!

Our investigator Ernest is really changing. He wasn't very accepting of the Book of Mormon when we first started teaching him, but now he wants to come to church and live the word of wisdom :) I love seeing the changes that can be made in some ones life as they live the gospel. Sadly he wasn't able to come to church this past weekend, but hopefully for conference this week.

For all the women, wasn't women's conference AMAZING!! Wow! Our stake had over 300 women show up for the conference, and we had a big service project that we did and dinner before the conference started. I just heard that my stake was in the October New Era. It's the Friendswood Stake. It is an incredible stake. I will have to tell you all the amazing things they are doing when I get home.

Yesterday was a harder day. We were trying a lot of people, but know was home or they told us to come another day. But the very last house we tried let us come in.  His name is Lupe and his friend was there as well and her name is Denise. Guess what... their HISPANIC!! :) We had an amazing lesson on the Restoration, and guess what? They really really really want to know if it is true. Denise actually took the discussions from elders when she was little with her family, and her brother almost got baptized. They are super cool, and I'm super bummed I wont be here to keep teaching them. They are both planning on coming to conference with us this week :)

I love this work and it really has changed me. I'm not sure I am truly ready to come home, but I am excited to see y'all. I love you all with all my heart. 
Con mucho amor,

Hermana Watkins 

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