Sister in Spokane: Andy's Baptism and Merry Christmas!

Hi family and friends!

This week has been a great one, our Investigator Andy got baptized this week! Woo!! It was such a great experience and he was so excited and happy. It's amazing to see how the Lord moves his work forward in areas of the world where the missionaries aren't able to teach. Andy is from a part of Asia where missionaries aren't allowed in right now. He came to America for a year as an exchange student and is staying with a family in our area! He is YSA age and Chinese so we were able to teach him. When he goes home he will be able to share the gospel with his friends and family there! I officially am getting my Chinese name tag this week and I can bear my testimony in Mandarin and say simple sentences. It's coming slowly, haha.

We also go to go with James (our recent convert who was baptized two weeks ago) to the temple to do baptisms for the dead with him! It was super cool and he loved every part of the temple. This coming week we get to go with Maddie (a recent convert of almost a year) to get her endowment with her! We have been teaching her temple prep in broken English and Chinese. We went to Spokane Valley to help translate Maddie’s temple recommend into Chinese. The Spokane temple is really tiny, but it’s so peaceful.

A hard part from this week was our investigator who was supposed to get baptized this weekend just found out that she has liver failure and has to move to Seattle for treatment so her baptism is being pushed back awhile. I hope she is ok and it's really disheartening but it just goes to show how much the adversary really doesn't want people to get baptized. :( She did call our ward mission leader and wanted to meet with us and Bishop Neilson, and that she wanted a blessing. I was happy that she turned to the church and Heavenly Father to help her. J We’ve definitely seen her faith grow. Any extra prayers for her would be appreciated!

We also had another disappointment the other day. Sister Huang and I went on a split with members so she could teach a lesson in Chinese, and I could give a church tour to a potential investigator. I called him and he said that he was on his way, and he would call when he got to Cheney. I was so excited and a little nervous for my first church tour by myself. J I ran around turning all the lights on in the building, setting up two sacrament trays, opening the baptism font. As I waited for him I rehearsed the commitments and the testimony I wanted to share, I was so excited! I thought for sure Heavenly Father was blessing us with a new investigator because we have been working hard and have been obedient. J I waited, and waited….and waited. After a long time, the member I was with softly told me that she didn’t think he was coming. My heart broke, I was so disappointed. L

One highlight from this week was teaching John. He is a referral from a member, but he works crazy long hours as the manager of a trucking company. So a lot of times he doesn’t even get off work until after our missionary curfew. Anyway, we finally set an appointment with him! We taught him about the Book of Mormon and he talked about how he needs to read it every night. And we put him on date for baptism right there for January 16^th. Somehow Heavenly Father keeps blessing us with people to teach and baptize, even with the students being gone over the break! J

I FINALLY got a letter from Brittin this week too!!!! So that was a highlight! :)

Oh, and one other thing…. the roof blew off of the post office here, so the mail is backed up by 5 days or more. We had winds again about 75 miles an hour. Hopefully you’ll get my written letters soon, but they may be delayed!

Well I love you all! Thank you for all of your love and support during Christmas time!

Love,

Sister Worthen :)