First of all, Kaden was baptized!!! 🎉🎉🎉 we had the opportunity to
teach him for a few months or so until he decided he wanted to go to the
YSA Ward, so we transitioned him to the YSA sisters! The transition
lesson was so powerful, everyone felt the spirit so strongly, and he
has continued to grow and progress! It was so exciting seeing his whole
family there, everyone was so touched by the baptism! 😊
President and Sister Lansing came to visit our stake yesterday
morning! They came to the Samoan Ward with us, then had lessons with
us, the stake president, and the 4 people being baptized on Christmas
Eve! It was so good! Sister Lansing really connected with the Gill
girls and they all shared why they want to be baptized, it was so
sweet, the youngest, Maddie, said "well I'm just kind of rowdy and I
need the Holy Ghost!" Haha it was the best, because she is so sweet! I
love their family more than they will ever know!
And With Dakota we talked about his conversion, and they asked what
his biggest fear was, and he said "well I don't really have any, but
if I had to pick one, I guess it would be learning enough to be able
to serve a mission in a year." HE IS SO AMAZING!!!! 😱🎉
Then last night, Elder Rasband, one of the twelve apostles, came to speak
to our entire mission! It was such an amazing experience! When he got
there he wanted to shake every hand, and when I looked into his eyes
he seemed so familiar!! It was really special. Later on as he was
speaking he told president Lansing he was impressed he knew all of our
names, then he said "I purposely did not look at your name tags,
because I was looking into your eyes. I've learned to look into the
eyes of a missionary and feel their handshakes, I can see the sparkle
that is in the eyes of a disciple of Jesus Christ." It really
resonated with me, because I could definitely see the same in his
eyes.
This week I learned a lot from a mistake. It was a really hard night,
but all is well and looking back I can see ways in which the Holy
Ghost was trying to communicate things to me, and I missed them.
Dakota, who's getting baptized this weekend, had his baptismal
interview scheduled for Tuesday night, we wrote it on a calendar for
him, and scheduled it with our district leader and knew it was
happening, but somehow it didn't get put into our planner. So Monday
night as I was planning, nothing was coming to me, I was having such a
hard time, I had no clue where we needed to go and I couldn't figure
out why... and I never did, until it was too late.On Tuesday night we
didn't have anything scheduled that was set in stone, and we both had
the prompting that we needed to go visit a Samoan family in West
Jordan, about 20 min from our stake. We felt good about it so we went,
and then as we were about to leave, at 6:45, we got a text from Dakota
asking what happened? He'd been waiting on us 45 min! We felt lower
that the scum of the earth!!! We rushed back and frantically called
our district leader. The district leader who was supposed to do the
interview, and knew about it, was transferred that morning. He
wouldn't pick up so we called the zone leaders and neither would they.
They finally got back to us and our new district leader, Elder Choi,
came right over, for his first interview ever, that he didn't even
know about....... AND HE HAD FOOD POISONING!!! So we were an hour
late, but Dakota is the best, he had his interview and forgave us, and
Elder Choi was happy he didn't have time to be nervous.
I am so thankful for forgiveness, and being surrounded by such
wonderful people. I don't know why that had to unfold the way it did,
but I learned a lot, and I am working every day to pay closer
attention to the things the Spirit is trying to communicate to me!
I love you all and hope you have a very merry Christmas!!!
Sister Kirkpatrick
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