Hermana Brown -- Arizona Mesa Mission: WEEK 71: Los Dedos. 🤚

Hey y'all! It's been a good week. Kind of a harder one, but we've seen a lot of miracles! We actually had a lot of service projects with non members so that was good! I got to go on exchanges with Sister Howard this week because since my companion usually works in the Visitors center, and Sister Howard's companion does as well, we decided to do splits while they were in a special meeting for Visitors center with the guy (Chris Billings. Super classy name) from the missionary department! It was really fun! We actually went to go knock on one of their investigator's doors and a really cute dog was sitting outside the door tied up and it was so peaceful, and we wanted to pet it. Sister Howard went in first and it kind of snapped at her but didn't bite her. And I still really wanted to pet the dog, so after knocking the door a few times, the investigator wasn't home and I went in to pet the dog. I put my hand up to its nose so it could smell me and it didn't do anything, then I went in to pet its head and it totally bit my finger all the way off!!! Just kidding. It just kind of bit me and scratched a little bit and I was bleeding a little bit but it wasn't too bad.

We also went to go visit with an investigator Juana the Saturday before church. We didn't have much time and we were planning on dropping her. Juana is an investigator that has been investigating the church for a long time now, and the problem is her husband. He has familial problems with joining the church because his family is Jehovah's Witness. So he's a little scared and he does not even step close to the church now. Whenever we visit Juana he hides in his room and doesn't come out. So we've been inviting Juana to come to church the past few months but she never comes. So this lesson we taught her about coming into Christ and invited her to church. She was like, "well, maybe I'll go, if God wants." And we told her that of course God wants that! So that Sunday morning we went to go knock on Karina's door because she hadn't been answering our texts but she told us she was coming to church. We went by her trailer but it seemed like no one was home. We were a little bummed, so we called Juana and she said she was on her way to church! She beat us to the church building and participated in all the classes and really liked it! It's been really cool to see how God shows us when people are ready or not. It's cool to see that as we show our faith by dropping people he tells us and shows us who are the elect.

I think this week I learned a lot about the atonement, and its forgiveness. Nothing mind blowing. I think I just really came to be really grateful with how merciful God is with us. We are so imperfect, weak, prideful human beings. But through his atonement, we will ALWAYS receive forgiveness, as long as we repent. I read this quote from an Ensign article this week, "Jesus Christ loves us, and He forgives us as we sincerely repent and serve Him. Through His Atonement, He removes our regrets." There is no need to live with regret, because the atonement erases that. He forgives us of all our sins. We are all even going to resurrect and receive a perfect body. But we can achieve something even greater, eternal life. I just think that's really cool. Our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are sooooo loving.

So I hope you all have a great week! Time is flying here. I always come to the end of the day or the end of the week and I don't even know where the time went. So it's kind of scary but cool too. Love you all so much!

Hermana Brown