Sunday, July 12, 2015

The power of fasting

Dear familia!!

Oh my goodness.... just one hour ago i recieved the best news EVER. i am so happy that i was able to email after this happened. but it is all about zaza and patrick and how they MUST be really important to the plan of heavenly father because they have passed through a lot this week.

Let me begin.

So all is going super well.. we mark casamento.. they have these people coming over to prepare the plans. Like where it is going to be... who is going to give the spirtual thought. What the food is that we are going to eat.. ya know.. all those important details. So they were all preparing with so much help from friends and family and then... the disaster. I am on a division with another sister... Sister Rasmussen... (she is incredible by the way. she is a new missionary who is super amazing and obedient and has it all down. i was definitely learning from her! haha but back to the story) And we get home that night and i call my comp to get some information for the morning... And she says *just pray for zaza and patrick*... and i was like NO. So then i find out the next day they went to have a lesson with them and it was just zaza. she opened up to the sisters and said that her and patrick got in a fight and there was past wounds that got brought up between them and all sorts of things that i think patrick got super mad and ended up texting everyone saying the wedding was off... yeah. 

So that was HUGE drama. We didnt really know what to do. So we mark with them again on saturday and just pray. pray. and pray. Thank goodness this week was fast and testimony meeting because i think we needed to fast too! So we get there on saturday and they still arent talking. we expressed our love and i dont know why but we ended up talking a lot about forgiveness and repentance. we were planning somehting else but that is what came out. they committed to going to church and patrick (the menos ativo) said he would talk to bishop. So we go to church and they show up... But DONT SIT next to each other.... so we obviously saw things were still bad. We just kept expressing love. And fasting.. haha. So then after the talk with bishop that he had they committed to talk about it that night and call us that night. So we wait for the call.. nothing. So today.. being nosy and persistent missionaries... WE call. haah but it was the best call ever and i had the opportunity to do it. Zaza was like *SISTER... I AM SO HAPPY, Thank you So much for all the prayers.* YAHOO!!! After we talked a little bit but not much because we dont have minutes here in cabo verde... haha every second is like a nickle... well sort of. but anyway i was so happy and sister coelho and i did a lot of jumping up and down and hugging and then gave a prayer of thanks!

Wow! What an adventure. i know now they can get through anything and also that the power of prayer and fasting is so real! We cant go wrong with fasting! I know that on my mission i have seen a lot of these blessings. and it has tested my faith. I was happy that during all this i recognized that i felt peace.. and even though i wanted to yell at them and tell them to stop being selfish.. ha.. i felt peace and was able to recognize them as sons and daughters of god. knowing all would work out to his plan. I am just super happy the plan is that they will get married this week and zaza will get baptized on the 11!

So what else. NOt much... this was basically the greatest ever that i forgot the rest of the week. Oh wait. We had our record together of people in church! YAY. We are going up from here. We made some good plans and looked at our numbers. We had like 22 member present lessons this week and we realize that we need to have more members in our lessons as we want more people in church. The members are really what bring their friends to church. that is why you members out there... are SO vital! We need to work together in this work. My comp is genius and did all these calculations with the key indicators about how we need to strengthen this indicador to have this one increase... it was great. so we are going to present that in our leadership council tomorrow! haha it will be fun! I heard there is great food.

But also to close. i have been studying a lot about the atonement of jesus christ this week. I have been looking at scriptures from the plan of salvation lessons to study the atonement and i really have learned a lot about it. I thought about it with the plan.  I know that in the pre mortal life with our heavenly father he presented this plan to us and at that moment when christ volunteered to be our savior we had faith in him to accept. And now we need to continue to have that faith in him and know that we KNOW his atonement is enough. We already accepted it. I know that he is my savior and that i can grow and become new through his atonement. whatever weakness i have i can change because of him. And the same with all the people i meet here. The atonement is really helping them recieve more light in their life and remember the faith that they already have in him as they accepted to come down to earth and follow gods plan!

I love you all!
Sister Johnson

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