Good morning, lovelies.

We've got a lot going today, so I'll make today's email brief, again.

We are teaching P and L. (Mom and daughter)

L lives in a foster home and gets to move back with her mom in January, so we only see her on the weekends IF that.

We've been teaching P, and she is the one who is flying through the Book of Mormon and who's countenance is legitimately changing. Yet, she doesn't have a baptism date because she is wanting to completely lay off her addictions before she commit to baptism. She doesn't want to let God down. 

Her daughter L, wants to be baptized soooo bad. She hasn't been keeping any commitments though. But we've been working with her, and she has a date set for January 18th.

WELLLL. This week (past few days) was a GAME.CHANGER. Earlier in the week, we taught them the Plan of Salvation, and the daughter was on her phone the whole time, and mom's eyes were 'tired.' It was a wreck. We left the appointment discouraged and bummed.

We went to the Napolitano's (ward mission leader&wife) and then Sister Napolitano came up with a genius idea for our next lesson.

A couple of days later we went to our investigators. We focused the lesson around daughter rather than the mom. We really put into L's mind how important baptism is. It's not something you do, then go back to old habits again. It's life changing. It's continual progress. So, we got out a white board and wrote, "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" She'd write things down. "What changes do you need to make now to get there?" She'd write more. She was getting pumped, I could tell. Then, we realllllllly emphasized how Satan attacks righteous women by hurting their self-esteem. He'll do anything in his power to make you feel 'not good enough' 'not smart enough' 'not pretty enough'. So, we put on the board, "What if's"... "What if someone on Facebook told you you're stupid for joining the Mormon church?" "What if you have the sudden urge to smoke?" "What if your friends pressured you to do something you knew wasn't right?" Things like that. Well, that helped her A LOT. And at the end we gave her a picture of the St. Paul temple and told her that that is her goal. She was BEAMING. It was awesome.

She and her mom came to church that Sunday (yesterday)--fast and testimony meeting. Everyone was bearing their testimonies, and all of a sudden L turned to me and said, "I'm going up." She stood up, walked to the pulpit, and said something along the lines of: "Hey. I'm L. Um... I've never been up here before, but I just wanna say that I'm thankful for God.   We have been reading chapters of the Book of Mormon together, and since I've been doing that, so many people have been telling me that I'm glowing, and I think I am too. My eyes look bluer. I used to cut, but now I don't, the Book of Mormon is changing things in my life, and I feel closer to God... and...yeah. In Jesus' precious name, amen." 

It was AMAZING. Such a sincere, heartfelt testimony that touched many people in the congregation, so when those who followed L's testimony, all thanked L for her words in their testimonies. After sacrament meeting, people kept coming up to her and telling her how wonderful her testimony was and how it touched them. And, to put the cherry on top of this story, P and L have a family friend named __ who, after every lesson, would call P and tell her that everything we were teaching her was"BS'. UGH. P would believe him, and then things would cause problems, etc. But yesterday, _ gave P and L his little 'shpeel' and they responded to him in a completely different way telling him to cut it out and that they believe what they believe... (they kinda chewed him out) and guess what? He had no words. ROCK OOOOOOOONNNNNNNN. P and L are getting it!!!! I'm so happy. :D

So that's the fun news. I'm so happy to be here! I can't believe I'm home in less than a year. I have a little missionary card that says my time being a missionary expires on November 26, 2014... AH. no. :(

Well, I hope I didn't bore you outta your minds. I love you all. So much.

Talk to you in 23 days :D :D :D

xoxoxoxox

-Sister B