Week #85 - Blessings of Baptism

Hey Fam!

Lilie's Baptism

 Alright Lilie's baptism was on Saturday - literally the highlight of the transfer. It was so awesome. We did it in Treasure Beach at a place called Old Wharf. It was SUPER pretty. The sun was shining, the water was sooooooo nice. I felt the spirit super strong throughout the entire thing. Lilie is amazing. She is going to be a great addition to the branch. 

After the baptism, everyone there was going around sharing their testimonies. When Sister Gayle spoke up, she revealed to us that she had been silently praying that her family would join the church for the past ten years, and that prayer is beginning to be answered. She broke down crying because she was so overcome with a whole mixture of feelings. She thanked us for helping her own mother to be baptized and prayed that this would be the spark necessary for her children to soften their hearts. Ah man, it was such a great day.

I have seen a ton of growth in the Junction branch in the last 6 months. This has probably been one the most family-centered, humble, loving group of people I have seen on my mission and I feel privileged every day to have the opportunity to serve them in such a capacity. I will ever be thankful for the things that I have learned and experienced in Junction.

I'll let that be it for this week.

Love you guys!

Elder Graham

She stopped me before we started walking back and said a quick prayer,
thanking Heavenly Father for preparing the way for her to finally be baptized.

Week #84 - Shut Up

Hey Family!

I'll keep this short and sweet, wedding plans are getting crazy I hear.  Fact.  Cody’s sister, Chelsea gets married on September 30 – crazy is in abundance.

We have been teaching this sweet old lady named Lilie. She is Sister Gayle's mother and she is awesome. Long story short she is getting baptized this weekend! When I asked her who she wanted to baptize her, she asked me to list some options, so I started listing people in the branch, then the missionaries, when I said I could do it if she wanted, she completely cut me off and said "Shut up...shut right up, right there. Stop talking. YOU will do it." Haha it was the funniest thing. She is great. 

Pictures are interesting right now, my SD card adapter rusted out so I am going to hunt for a new one this week. Wish me luck! Lucky for us, I got friends in low facebook places so photo creds to Sister Baker this week!

More news to come later on!

Love,

Elder Graham

Reunited with his good bud, Elder Palmer
Planning to room together this spring... Heaven help Rexburg.

Zone Activity in May Pen

Week #83 - Challenge Accepted

Hey Family!

This week was cool. We have been challenged to invite pretty much everyone we meet to be baptized if God tells them the Book of Mormon is true and it has been a way cool experience!

Tuesday morning we chopped some grass for the Hudsons in the hot sun and they fed us chicken liver and fried dumpling and it was fantastic. And if you're wondering if we used machetes to chop? Yes we did.

Thursday we had a couple cool experiences with this BoM challenge:

First, we did a little finding trip up this big hill to a place called Tod Town and as we walked past this bar, a girl was asking for a bible verse and we kinda just brushed it off (usually it is the sole intent of those girls to just flirt with missionaries so we usually avoid those situations) but on our way back past the bar, she was still sitting there and she called out to us again and asked us what we believe about God. Her exact words (English translation of course) were: "Hey I have heard some people say that Mormons don't believe in God and I thought that was crazy so I thought I might go straight to the source. So what do you believe about God?" We gave her a Book of Mormon and gave her a challenge and she said that of course if God told her this was true she would have to do what He says. So that was awesome

Later in the day, we met this other lady who just seemed way cool. We challenged her and the same thing happened! Elder Trinnaman took Omar to go see her on Saturday and had a great lesson with her. She even fed them!! Good things are happening in Junction!

I went with the Chandlers on Saturday to go visit some of the seminary/institute aged people in the Junction area (they are S&I (seminary & institute, I presume?) missionaries) and had some really good talks with people who have not been to church in a while. I hope we can increase the amount of people going to Seminary and Institute this year. That would be amazing!

That's all I got for ya this week. Talk to ya soon!

Love,

Elder Graham

More Lovers Leap

Hola from the office where we email

Week #82 - Don't Leap, Elder!

Hey Family!

This week was great. We are teaching a couple new people who have some great potential.

Lover's Leap was awesome. It was SUPER rainy when we first got there, but it cleared up after about 10 minutes and was beautiful!

I got to see Elder Christensen for the first time in forever this week.

Not too much to report, but I guess I will share one quick story:

So Sister Hudson has been recovering from her surgery where they cut a burst cyst out of her head (so naturally she couldn't really make it to church the last couple weeks). Church ended and we did tithing and were about ready to head out, but as we called people, the whole evening pretty much fell through. So we prayed to know what to do because obviously the plans we made were not the right ones haha. During the prayer I felt like we should go take the Sacrament to Sister Hudson. So we called her and offered, and she said that she would really appreciate that and that she had been pretty upset that she had to miss it two weeks in a row. So that was super cool. More tender mercies. I have been noticing a lot more tender mercies lately. It's so cool to see the will of God play out through you. I think it is one of the most rewarding experiences.

Anyway that's all for this week. Let me get these pictures up, there are a lot this week.

Love,

Elder Graham

Great reunion with Elder Christensen

The rainy part of Lovers Leap with Elder Stevens and myself
Elder Graham's selfie skills not so on-point...

More Leaping