1 Year

In honor of my one year mark...here is a picture of my first day in the MTC :) haha. Oh how much I have changed...

I just took a few photos walking to the cyber cafe today so that you can at least get a taste of where I am at!! I am SO happy to finally have a camera back. More pictures will be coming soon :)

Hey, you know something funny?

FAITH BRINGS MIRACLES.

I mean...who would have thought! ;) Haha. I have definitely had a week FULL of miracles! I really just tried my very best to expect miracles every day this week. And oh my goodness did they come! I taught more lessons in the presence with members this week than I have on my entire mission! And it was just miracle after miracle. We have really wonderful members here, but they all just live at least a train ride away so it gets really hard for us to have member-presence lessons. But we had SO many this week and because of the sacrifices of our members, our amis actually started progressing! It was such a wonderful thing to see. And then our DMB had all the members who taught with us get up in Sacrament Meeting and talk about how edified they were after they taught with us. ....it was pretty awesome.

We have SUCH an incredible DMB (Ward mission leader, well, branch) and we are just working as hard as we can to get this branch involved in missionary work! And it is working! We are literally having members come up to us talking about their friends they have invited to church. And the past couple weeks we have had multiple rdv's where we go with members to meet their friends. MIRACLES. This is the kind of thing I have been waiting for my entire mission, and I am starting to see members start to really work with us and it is bringing incredible blessings! Alright so, some of the miracles that have happened this week:

Found a new ami named G--. He is just one of those people who has SO many questions and he read 13 chapters of the Book of Mormon in one day. It has been so fun to start teaching him, he is one of those people that really just needs somewhere to go in his life..and he found it.

Another ancient ami we found this week that we started reteaching. His name is Fred. He has recieved ALL of the lessons but then got upset over something and hasn't talked to missionaries in 9 months. but we just called him and started teaching him this week...and he is super, super incredible. It might take him a little bit really build his testimony of the church but honestly, he has such a light.

Another ami we have named N--. She actually has quite a lot of problems and we are just trying to get her to turn her life around. But we showed up for her rdv and her sister was there! At first she was super skeptical and started asking us all these questions but then we asked if we could teach her and she stayed and listend to the Retab and asked SO many wonderful questions. I am just praying we get to see her again. She was a HUGE miracle from this week. She was one of the nicest people I had met and by the time we left she just absolutely was so interested in our mission and wanted to learn so much more.

These are just a few simple examples of amazing things I have seen this week. One of the biggest miracles I have experienced this week..was just how simply HAPPY I feel right now. Yes, I have been pretty much been happy my entire mission. You all know that. But never in my entire mission have I felt so honestly and sincerely 100 happy to be a missionary and to be doing exactly what I am doing. I feel like I have probably said that before...but this week I just felt so many prayers, I felt so much life in my life, and I felt so guided by the Spirit.

That is definitely the biggest thing that I learned this week. What a difference the Holy Ghost makes in my life. Having the Spirit with me is something that I have really strived for as a missionary, and honestly, it is one of the hardest things to achieve. To really figure out how to be in tune with the Spirit and to be guided by the Spirit. But Heavenly Father has really blessed me...and this week, I felt closer to the Spirit than ever before. I felt like I was actually able to really teach by the Spirit, and touch peoples hearts. And the way I testified on the street to people was different.

The Spirit is everything. Without it, these people can't know full the truthfulness of our message.
How grateful I am for the gift of the Holy Ghost!! I have had this gift since I was 8..but I don't think I have always fully used it and been aware of what a blessing the Holy Ghost is in our lives.  I am so grateful that as a missionary I am really learning to work with and to feel the Spirit..and so that I can know that my Savior is always with me. That He is standing beside me, and I feel more strongly of His love.

This seems like a very generic just missionary email this week....sorry. Haha.

Hey soo.....remember when it was a YEAR ago that I went into the MTC?! How crazy is that??
I can't really wrap my mind around it...
I can't wait to use the next 6 months to serve my Savior the best that I can.
I love you all. Have an amazing week. I will see you soon!!
Love,
Soeur Magleby