I BRING TO YOU GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY!!!

I BRING TO YOU GOOD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY!!!

OSVALDO WAS BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!

And what a story I have to share with you all about this week- one of the most meaningful and memorable and miraculous weeks of my whole mission (and I'm not even exaggerating today).

Well the week didn't start out particularly well. In fact, it was one of the worst beginnings to a week I've had in quite some time. There was lots of rain and no one wanted to talk to us and the only people that did talk to us cursed us off their porches (that one was actually pretty funny, I thought Sister Rasera was gonna jump the fence and go after the lady for a minute hahaha).

So it had been a rough several days until Friday morning I studied Helaman Chapter 5 about Lehi and Nephi. They had gone to try and teach the people and got thrown into jail where they suffered "for many days in the prison". It was only moments before they were to be killed, literally at their lowest point, when they received divine intervention sufficient enough to convert an entire nation. The secret? "You must repent, and cry unto the voice, even until ye shall have faith in Christ, who was taught unto you by Alma, and Amulek, and Zeezrom; and when ye shall do this, the cloud of darkness shall be removed from overshadowing you."

So I decided to do just that and I kneeled down and offered a fervent prayer telling the Lord of the sincere desires of my heart and asking that as I do my part, that He would do His so that we could reach our goals and His goals for us as well. When I opened my eyes I looked at Sister Rasera and said "we're gonna find 6 new people today." But turns out we didn't find 6... we found 8!!! And everything went better than perfect for the following two days. We also decided to fast on Saturday so that we could meet our goal of having at least 5 investigators go to church on Sunday, one of our biggest struggles here.

Sunday morning arrived and as we were getting ready to leave for Church, I offered the prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for the many miracles that we had received and asked in faith, knowing that we had done everything within our power, for one more miracle: that we could have at least 5 people at church. As we said Amen, I felt the spirit so strongly in my heart testifying that the Lord had accepted the labor we had offered him and would fulfill His part as well.

Well we went to pick up one lady to go to church and ended up getting there late, and we sat down in a rush and started to subtly look around to see who all had come. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9...people. I looked at Sister Rasera with wide eyes and she looked at me just as shocked. My heart swelled within me and I couldn't stop the tears of gratitude from rolling down my cheeks as I prayed thanking the Lord for his goodness and mercy.

And just when you think the day couldn't have gotten any better, we had Osvaldo's baptism!!! We had to use the biggest jumpsuit in the whole stake and it ended up being a little snug for him hahaha. But it was a marvelous experience and just as he was about to enter the font, his 2 children arrived to watch him be baptized and he got so happy that they came that he started crying and I don't think he stopped until he left to go home (like I said, gentle giant).

Im so incredibly grateful for the reality of the power of faith and prayer and fasting. When we are doing our best to do the will of the Lord He will always help us along. I know that when we ask, we shall be given and when we knock, it shall be opened unto us, even if we have to wait a little while for the response.
I love you all so much and hope you have a week even half as marvelous as mine was!!

LoOOOovvVVveeeeE,

Sister Curtis