Hola todos! Spoiler alert; this email is going to be so long. First things first, MARIA O. WAS BAPTIZED AND CONFIRMED! It was a beautiful day and my heart was filled with so much joy. There is such a special spirit around baptisms. That being said, baptism prep is not nearly as pretty. Satan tries really hard to thwart these things. I think through the whole week my Heavenly Father was telling me, hakuna matata Sister Sellers. I have everything under control, just do your best and I will take care of the rest. So many tiny details and things made life very crazy stressful this week. However, I learned to truly let the Lord take the wheel and everything turned out just the way it was supposed to in the long run.
Monday: After Pday we had dinner with the Burt family and spent the rest of the night calling and texting the branch to confirm assignments for the baptism!
Tuesday: Tuesday's are some of my favorite days because we have the Stewart family! We went out to dinner with them and had a blast! Last week we promised them we would come with a special gift and we delivered! We gave them all their own hand painted copies of the Book Of Mormon and I wish I could have had their reactions on video. Dillion the little one was sooo excited, and you could tell Ari felt so special. Hopefully this will help them read individually and as a family. The whole day we tried to find time to plan for the baptism but it just didn't work out. We did some finding activities but, came home empty handed. The Stewart family was truly our top priority today!
Wednesday: This morning we had a lesson with Maria at 8:30am! We showed her the font and talked to her all about what would happen in her baptism interview and on the day of her baptism. After the lesson we rushed back home and had day one of three of our mission wide zone conference!! Elder Kyle S. McKay and his wife were there from the Seventy and they literally changed our mission in three days. Elder McKay is one of the bluntest and loving people I have ever met. One day I hope to be able to speak with the power, authority and love that he did. He challenged us to work hard all day and promised that if we did we would find a new person to teach. Sister McBride and I did everything in our power as we worked around a crazy baptism schedule to try to find someone to teach. We tried everything, there were three minutes left of the day and we decided to just call two more people. We each individually prayed and found one person to call. The very last person, after hours of rejection, answered the phone. She wanted to be taught and even set a return appointment on Tuesday. That was a huge miracle for us, that even in our crazy day, we worked hard and God provided a way. We also had a lesson with our friend Maria D.. We taught her the Restoration and are going to explain mode about the Priesthood next week. She has a testimony she just doesn't understand some key parts of the gospel. She has been taught by missionaries for sooooo long. Hopefully we can be the ones to finally get her to the blessings of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost.
Thursday: Not going to lie, today was a hard day. Most people never say today was a hard day in their emails. But, today was rough. All the crazy from planning and feeling inadequate to plan this baptism and the stress of not knowing if it was even going to happen all crashed down on us today. That being said, Heavenly Father blessed us so much through the day. Had he not been there helping me through it all, the day would have been a whole lot harder. Today was day two of the mission conference and Elder McKay really spoke to me, I could go on for years about how cool he is and how much I felt the spirit in these meeting but I won't, because my email will be wayyyy too long. However, I started the conference with three question and my questions were all answered beautifully. He challenged us again to go out and find someone new, he told us not everyone would find someone, but if everyone acted on their spiritual promptings that was the real success. We had dinner with the Lemos family and I choked down some banana empanadas (she HATES bananas) and hoped for the best. We went to the Cisternas families house, got toasted for our Spanish and got help with our baptism program. Afterward we went to Centro Hispano and taught Marcos English! All in all a crazy long, crazy productive, crazy stressful, crazy faith filled day.
Friday: Today we decided to turn it over to the Lord. We had 15 hours worth of things to do in 12. First we had Maria's baptism interview at 8:30 in the morning! Luckily the Elder doing the interview was an answer to our prayers and filled out all of the paperwork for us. We had our companionship study with Sister McKay from 9-10 which was amazing!! She is so cool and full of the spirit. You could just tell she loved us and that was a really neat experience. After we had day three of our mission wide conference and I was so sad to see that it was the last day. I have learned so much and really regained my desire to do missionary work through these past three crazy days. Right after the meeting we rushed to a service opportunity in Rhodes Ranch and helped this very stressed single mom clean her house and rearrange/organize her toy room. She was so grateful and you could tell she really needed the help. She even got us in on the Rhodes Ranch moms facebook group sooo, I'd say mission accomplished. Right after that we rushed to a lesson with Maria G. who sadly didn't answer the door... (have you noticed this is the third Maria?). Next we rushed to dinner with Sister Sibley a single lady in our English ward. We managed keep the visit to two hours and rushed the the Whitaker's house to print off the baptismal program for tomorrow! We left our apartment at 8:00 in the morning and didn't come home until 9:00 at night! Through the whole day the Lord orchestrated every little thing to work out just the way it needed to and we were able to get our whole crazy agenda accomplished.
Saturday: The day you have all been waiting for! Maria's baptism! We left the house at 8:00 again to fill up the font! Turns out we have a master key which unlocks literally everything. Our key unlocks more things than the Zone Leaders key does.... ;) we got everything all set up with our fair share of interruptions, but everything was all up and running by 10:00. Only problem, Maria still wasn't there...! We were all so stressed! She walked in the door around 10:10! We were so glad to see her and got her all changed and ready to go. We took a quick picture of her in her jumpsuit and we were on our way. The baptism went amazing. The spirit was so strong. We loved every little second. The cute Ricarte kids surprised us with an unplanned musical number and Hermana Gonzalez, a returning member, gave a beautiful testimony of the Holy Ghost. My favorite part though, was right at the end. She was walking out the door, she turned around and in broken English said "I am so happy now" Is that not the reason why we are all here? To find joy? Seeing Maria find that joy that all of us are her to find was truly a miracle. It made every step of this crazy week so worth it as we heard her bear her testimony and saw the light of Christ enter her being. I could not wait to see her confirmed tomorrow.
Sunday: Today Maria was comfirmed!!! She was literally glowing. I have never seen anything like it. Afterward we went to our English church and it was nice to talk to everyone. We had a super fun lesson with the Vazquez family and their new puppy!!! Sister McBride was in heaven. Me, well.... dogs are kinda growing on me. We had a blast, and taught about tithing. We can really tell Maria's (yes another one) heart was softened.
Pictures include lots from the baptism, and our serious drinking problem during this stressful week. Also included is a timer selfie with the puppy! But, most important are the super cute pictures of us with Maria at the baptism. I love you guys!!! Enviados abrazos celestiales,
Hermana Sellers
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