I Love to See the Temple

Hey all! Another good week down here in Northern AZ! We had interviews with President Collins which is always a favorite time of mine. He is so full of inspiration and the spirit and interviews always reassure me that I can do this and I walk away with lots of goals on things I can do better on! The highlight of this week was for sure the temple trip we got to take with Haley Slade! She is 11 and the Elders before us baptized her last transfer. But the rest of her family is very against the chruch and she lives the gospel all by herself! She comes to chruch every Sunday and is such an example to me. The last Saturday of every month we have a recent convert temple trip where all the missionaries who have recent converts can bring them to the temple to do baptismal and president baptises them. It is so cool and extra fun because up North we are 2 hours from Phoenix so we got to make a road trip out of it! Haley was beaming in the temple and I got baptized with her. When I came out of the water before her she was smiling so big and clapping and I've never felt more pure joy in my life. It's about time I update you all on our people here! Quintin is SO READY for his baptism on the 10th, and we dont cease to see miracles with him. Just yesterday we taught him about temples and when he saw the font he told us that he had a vision of him in there doing baptisms for his brother who had passed away. HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT BAPTISMS FOR THE DEAD AND HE SAW HIMSELF DOING HIS BROTHERS WORK. He tells us every time we teach him that it is almost like he remembers everything we teach, none of it seems new to him, and it is because it is not. All of us here on Earth CHOSE God's plan before we came here. So nothing we teach is new information, it's just a process of letting the spirit bring remembrance to their spirit. We found a lady a few weeks ago named Julie Carol. I have never met someone so prepared to receive the gospel in my life as her. She has MS so it is hard for her to get around a lot, and she has a beautiful daughter with disabilities named Emma. Going over to her house is the happiest thing. She hadn't believed in God for 15 years until we knocked on her door. Our original intention was to offer service for her because we knew she wasn't interested, but then we ended up sitting down with her and sharing the Plan of Salvation and she bawled the whole time. She kept asking "where had this information been all my life?" And then she bore testimony to us on how she knew that God had been preparing her her whole life to recieve this information and this exact time because she was so ready to accept it. She said her first prayer in years today and it consisted of 10 minutes of silence and tears and just feeling the spirit and then her saying "thank you God, for sending me these two girls and bringing me this information that I've been waiting for my whole life." She doesn't have a baptism date yet because she wants to learn more to fully understand it first, but she knows this is what God wants for her and it has been amazing to see the change in her in only two weeks. I love her so much she is the sweetest in the world. The coolest thing though, is that both of them have been being fellowshipped for months by the Comish family! And then when we got to the area it was just perfect timing. I have a huge testimony of member missionary work. For every Elect person that God has prepared to receive the gospel, there is an Elect member that he has prepared to befriend them. YOU ARE ALL THOSE ELECT MEMBERS. Don't underestimate the power that you have. There are people who need YOU and who God needs you to help. Go find them please! We are also working with the Blie kids, Kenya, Keenan, and Kadasha, a Navajo family who wants to be baptized together on aug. 17th! The kids are so fun and they say the most tender prayers. I love teaching kids so much jt's my favorite thing. We have a lot of fun with them. In other news, I almost got attacked by a ravenous dog this week, but the Holy Ghost held it off only centimeters from tearing me apart so that was cool. Anyways that's all I got this week! I spoke yesterday in church on the Atonement and I used the parable of the broken ukelele for any of you who remember my dad speaking on that. I'm grateful for every experience and person back home who prepared me to serve this mission right here right now! Every day I find another connection and reason for every experience I had growing up. God really does prepare you for things! Alma 4:15 "And now it came to pass that Alm, having seen the afflictions of the humble followers of God, and the persecutions which were heaped upon them by the remainder of his people, and seeing all their inequality, becan to be very sorrowful; nevertheless THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD DID NOT FAIL HIM." Sometimes it's hard to see all the hard things that people have to go through, and all the terrible things of the world, but HE WILL NEVER FAIL US. And we can have his spirit with us always to make bearable happy the things that are hard and sad. I love my Savior and am so thankful for all he did and continues to do for me. Never stop praying! Also this is a picture of brother and sister Miller, my relatives! And president and sister Palmer, the Snowflake Arizona temple President and his wife. President Palmer pulled some strings so that I could meet them. I love the connections I have to this place! - Sister Hardy