The Future is Bright!

I'll start with the baptism first :) :) Linda made it! It has been a year of missionaries, and she is grateful for every one of them. I feel so blessed and privileged to have been with her in her final weeks before baptism and then for the actual ordinance. She said she was nervous, but very excited! It will be so good for her grandkids to have the gospel in their home now.

At one point, Hermana Fowers mentioned that it was the best day on her mission thus far!

 

Later that day, we found a Spanish investigator! Our first one for this area. We were at a YSA activity at the park, and stopped to talk to him. One of the YSA members served his mission Spanish-speaking, so he jumped right in and they are around the same age. Immediate fellowshipper! :)

At that same activity, we found a group of girls from Saudi Arabia who are at ETSU to learn English! I think they just wanted to practice their English with us, but we were happy to talk to them! They even fed us lunch! But we asked them all about their religion (Islam) and were able to connect on a couple different points.

We have had quite the variety of cultures and languages this week! There is a less-active family in the ward that has recently started coming back to church. They have a 9 yr. old son named Jordan who is deaf, but his parents want him to be baptized, and know why he is getting baptized. There is a sister in the neighboring ward who knows ASL and came with us for our first lesson with him. He was sooooo excited to talk to someone that could understand him! His parents are trying to learn, but since he learns mostly in school, it is hard for them to keep up. So this will make a huge difference for their family, and for him. We are going to try to learn a little bit so that we can talk to him, but we mostly will just teach and be translated.

I love you all and wish that I knew a better way to express that to you, but those words will have to suffice :) We feel the work hastening. It's exciting! Catch the wave! :)