Donna had to move her baptism to THIS weekend because she couldn't get work off. She was sad because she is SO excited to get baptized and receive the Holy Ghost. So it is definitely happening this weekend and we are all excited. We are inviting a lot of our investigato.. wait. Donna doesn't like being called an "investigator" she wants us to call them "seekers". Haha! Love her.

We have been teaching a part member family for a while now. The mom, Brindi, was less-active and married a non-member. They have four adorable little kids and she wants the gospel in her life and in her families lives. She invited us to teach her daughter because she is seven and is preparing to get baptized but now we are teaching her father Jez. We have taught them a lot and we committed Jez to be baptized on the 15th of this month!! Then after he is confirmed on Sunday and when he gets the priesthood he is going to baptize his daughter! When he said he would get baptized his wife was crying and the spirit was so strong that he started to cry. Then the whole little family was just hugging and smiling together because we told them that they could be an eternal family! They are striving to do all they can to get to the temple to be sealed as a family for time and all eternity. 

That is what the Church is all about! Bringing families and individuals back into the presence of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. It's about true and everlasting happiness. I am so grateful for my parents and that they taught me the gospel in our home. I love this Church and I'm so grateful for our Savior who made it this all possible. 

Guess who finally came to church this week!!! John! Oh my gosh, that was a wonderful day. We had a lot of "seekers" there and it was really exciting. He's finally moving forward and tonight we are going to meet with him and set a baptismal date for the 15th as well. We have taught him everything and met with him a lot. Now he needs to act and ask God if this is right. He's had a hard time praying and we hope that Sunday made some things change for him. We will see though! I really hope he says yes!

We taught Brian yesterday and he is really making progress. He reads and studies a lot and always has questions for us. I love how much effort he is putting in to find the truth for himself. We found out that he smokes... funny we never realized that. I have no idea how they hid that from us. But he wants to quit and I know that with the Lord's help he can do anything! We tried to set a date for the 22nd and he wasn't comfortable with it and wanted to talk to his wife first. But he wants this. I know he wants to be a member and he wants to have a testimony of his own. We taught him about fasting and he said that he is going to fast and come to church on Sunday in hopes that he will receive his answer that this church is true. I am so excited for him to receive revelation for himself. Today he called me and said, "I made my first highlight in the Book of Mormon today!" It was so fun to hear him excited about Alma 32:21, which talks about faith. He is an incredible seeker and will definitely "find".

Jennifer is another person we are teaching. She has had all the lessons and has read the Gospel Principles book. She is a good family friend to a young family in the ward and she loves the spirit that she feels in their home. She wants the blessings of the gospel and keeps all of her commitments! She prays and reads and comes to church and I am so excited for her to have a date set for her to be cleansed from all her sins and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Lord loves his children so much. I am so excited when we can all live together again "in a state of never-ending happiness."

Now to tell you about my new little Dane :) Our new missionary waiting for her visa for Denmark is awesome. Such a blessing to have in this companionship and I love having more help with all these people we are teaching. 

We keep finding more to teach and I didn't even tell you about the Houston family! Gah! We are busy! But that's how it should be. ;) 

Thanks for all the prayers! As you can tell from what I just wrote- they are definitely working! 

"Let go and let God"

St. Louis Missouri Temple 

So remember how we all thought it was crazy that after being a missionary for six weeks I was made a trainer? Well here comes baby number two! Wednesday is Transfers and Sister Adamson is going to have a little sister! Oh and Sister Adamson wants to say something to everyone "Your daughter or sister or friend is an amazing missionary and I am so grateful for her. I know the lord is giving her another baby missionary :D because she is such a wonderful trainer and i love her... well thats about it..." 

Awe what a sweetheart! :') She's growing up so fast! I love her!!!! But our new missionary is going to be a visa-waiter... she's really going to Denmark on her mission so we have no idea how long we will have her for. It could be months and it could be days. Only the Lord knows!

Here's an update on our crazy missionary adventure! Our teaching pool fluctuates all the time and now is bigger than ever! (Definition of teaching pool- all of the people that are current investigators that we are teaching.. not including potential investigators) I am actually really excited to get another missionary because then we can go on splits and teach more people! We will divide and conquer! I am determined to baptize the Hell out of this town! Literally!

(Credit for that hilarious joke goes to Alicia Sturges)

Speaking of which, we are having a baptism for Donna Beavers this weekend on Saturday! My first baptism from tracting! Donna is such a strong investigator. She always comes to church and is just so eager to serve God. She builds our testimonies whenever we get to teach her. The ward LOVES her. 

We teach and we find and we teach and we find and when we find we teach and when we teach we find! (man, I love P-days!) We are so blessed and are just trying to get people to keep their commitments. 

One of my favorite people that is having a hard time keeping commitments is John. Oh how I love this guy. We have taught him all the lessons and this week we had him sit in on a lesson with Donna. She just told him straight up that he has to try to come to church haha she's awesome. Later that day Sister Adamson and I were sitting in the car planning while waiting for an appointment and all of the sudden I had this weird feeling. I told Sister Adamson I felt weird and she was like, "Yeah, I feel super weird." Both of us felt strange but we could not figure out why! We knew it was the spirit but we couldn't figure out what it wanted us to do. We called John to see if he was okay and he said he was and that he appreciated us asking. 

The feeling didn't go away and we knew we needed to do something we just didn't know what. So I started to drive home. At this point we were freaking out because the spirit was telling us we needed to be somewhere but we didn't know where. We called John again and asked him where he was and told him we wanted to talk to him. He said he was at the library and that he would be back soon. We hung up the phone but the feeling was getting so strong we couldn't sit still. So we parked the car and started to walk to the library really fast... This was so weird because we had no idea why we felt this way or what was going on but we felt like the Lord was guiding us. 

We couldn't find John at the library and we started to wonder why we walked all the way up there. Then when we turned the corner we saw John walking down the street and was very surprised to see us. We told him we felt like we needed to talk to him and he let us sit down with him at a picnic table to talk. He finally opened up to us and told us about some hard stuff he's been going through and that he didn't know if he could spiritually keep going. He was lacking faith and told us that he had said a little prayer saying "it would be nice to have someone to talk to" and then we showed up. 

His prayers were answered and we talked and learned and prayed. John said the most beautiful and sincere prayer I have ever heard and asked God if he was his son. The spirit was so strong and I told John that we knew each other before we came here and that I promised him I would find him. Sister Adamson and I both bore testimony to him and we all felt the spirit. John is making progress and I have full faith he will rebuild his relationship with his Heavenly Father and he will receive true peace and happiness in this life and eternal life as he strives to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

God cares SO much about all of His children individually and listens to EVERY cry, every plead and every mutter of "please help." He loves us and always wants to help us. He is there and wants us to let Him bless us! All we have to do is obey.

Love,

Sister Collett

Well Monday was Zone P-day so everyone in our zone got to go on a tour of Busch Stadium! It was a pretty cool experience and I liked learning about the history.

Tuesday started eeeearly with Interviews with President Clark. Which went wonderful. He was very impressed with our numbers and that got Sister Adamson and I pretty excited. Then we went to lots of appointments the rest of the day and even found some new investigators. We are continuing to teach John who is still struggling to come to church. He's really nervous about fitting in. So I had the idea (or the spirit gave me the idea) to invite him to have a tour of the church and a lesson in there. The lesson was wonderful and the spirit was so strong as we sat in the chapel. He didn't come to church because he had to go see his mother for Mother's Day but we had a lesson with him after church and it was the last lesson. I told him that we have taught him all the lessons and now the ball is in his court and he needs to pray and decide if he wants this or not. He knows it's true. But he has his agency! So we won't be teaching him anymore... but we want him to meet Donna because her testimony is already so awesome! So we are going to set up a time for them to meet.

Lori has been reading but I don't know if she is willing to actually get on her knees and ask God if this is His church. So we also told her that she needs to read and pray and let us know when she recieves that answer. Because she needs to ask and she hasn't.

The C. family (name removed per request) is progressing. Brian (the guy who didn't believe in God) was invited to pray on his own and ask God if he was real. We stopped by the next day and he told us that he actually prayed. We are excited for this family. I really feel like they are going to get baptized.

Through some tracting we found more investigators and have been teaching a LOT! We just need to keep going and trying to find those that have been prepared by God. Like Donna! She was the only investigator that came to church yesterday even though many others said they would be there. But we can't give up hope! People can change!

Oh and Doris and Larry (old couple we've taught twice) have been reading the Book of Mormon together and are progressing! We get to teach them tomorrow.
:) Life is great! I LOVED getting to skype my family yesterday and seeing everyone was so fun! I am SO grateful for my amazing mother and the wonderful example she is to me! I would not be the person I am today if it weren't for her incredible love. Thank you mom!!!!

Love,

Sister Collett

We are progressing in all our numbers! We hit or exceeded all of our goals last week and are really doing well. The week started with a lovely visit from our Sister Training Leader (the new equivalent of a zone leader for sisters) and her companion she's training. It's always nice to do exchanges and to get to know other sisters. They helped us out for a day and we got a lot of work done. The best part of it all was when we switched comps, Sister Adamson was forced to open up because the other sister she was put with for half the day was even more shy than her! She had to become a leader and for a little while, got a glimpse of what I do as a trainer and senior companion. It seriously changed her perspective and made her into a better missionary. I love how the Lord always knows exactly what we need.

 

I can't remember if I talked about Lori last week but she is a lady we are teaching who's daughter recently converted (and is waiting for a missionary) and she wants to know why she can't go to the temple wedding. We had a wonderful lesson with her on Wednesday and a member came. What's cool is that Sister Hutchison (the member that came) had been praying for an opportunity to do missionary work right before we called and asked her to come. The spirit was so strong as we taught about the temple. We taught Lori the restoration in the previous lesson and hope she reads and prays so that she can be baptized and have the opportunity to be at her daughters wedding.

 

Sister Adamson and I had the opportunity to attend the temple on Thursday- which was so nice! And it was wonderful to think of the blessings of the temple and how much I desire for my investigators to be able to have those blessings. It was a beautiful day at the (DANG IT I forgot my camera :( ... sorry) but I did take pictures and we even saw other sisters there!

 

John (the guy who didn't have quarters) is progressing. We wanted to get him to come to church and set a date but he is having a hard time committing because he doesn't feel like he has had his prayers answered yet. But members have been at every single one of his lessons and I feel like he will set a date to get baptized as soon as he figures out that the "stirring" he feels is the spirit telling him these things are true. We pray hard for him.

 

We're teaching an older couple, Larry and Doris, who really liked our first lesson. Sister Adamson and I are getting good at teaching with unity and she is getting more and more comfortable with talking. In fact last night when we taught a lesson she talked just as much, if not more, than me! It was awesome. It is so fun to see her grow in the work!

 

Now to the good stuff...

Donna :) I don't know if I talked much about her in precious emails but she is the lady that we tracted into who loves fellowship and told us that her salvation is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to her!!! She tells us all the time. When we last taught her we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we had a convert member come and contribute. Members are the key! They add so much to the lesson! After explaining the priesthood and how she needs to be baptized through the proper authority I asked her if she believes the Book of Mormon is true. "I know it is!" She exclaimed. "And I know that Joseph Smith was a Prophet! The Lord has made it manifest to me, I know it is!" With so much joy in my heart I quoted the end of the introduction of the Book of Mormon where it states that after receiving a witness of the Book of Mormon- that means that 1. Jesus is the Christ, the Savior of the world. 2. Joseph Smith is his revelator 3. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord's kingdom on the earth, preparatory for the second coming of the Messiah.

I then invited her to be BAPTIZED on May 25th and asked if she would prepare for that day. She said yes and asked if she could come to church... HA! Of course you can come to church! We then invited her to kneel down with us and ask God if this Church is true and if this is what He would have her do. She gave the most sincere and wonderful prayer and when my eyes opened everyone was in tears.

The next day she came to church and before the meeting started asked about women not being able to hold the priesthood. We answered as best we could and then Testimony Meeting started. Those testimonies were for her! I have never felt the spirit so strong when listening to testimonies and I know Donna felt it! At the end of the meeting she said that she knew this was right and she was definitely going to get baptized! .... so hard not to scream in the chapel.

In Relief Society they taught about the Family Proclimation and Sisters started to talk about the roles of men and women and why men hold the priesthood and women don't. Donna had her questions answered. I KNOW Heavenly Father loves Donna! I KNOW it! He cares about every single soul so much!!! He is guiding her and helping her to come back to Him!

I love this gospel and I LOVE seeing it touch people and change their lives. "After all has been said, the single most important work is missionary work." -Joseph Smith

 

Sista out! <3