Beyond all logic

Me celebrating with a pastry on my year mark

A beautiful place we stopped and had a picnic

At the baptism

My hilarious sister missionary tan lines I thought you would enjoy

Salut ma chère famille!

First thing before I forget to tell you, transfer calls are this week. In fact, President is calling us tomorrow which is super freaking me out...anyway, we all know that anything can happen! Obviously since I have only been here one transfer I intend to stay here another one, but that is what I thought in Tarbes...honestly now that I say it I can't believe it has already been 6 weeks since I have been here. I have to admit, it definitely has not been the easiest transfer for me. Honestly a lot of my other transfers feel like a walk in the park compared to this one. I can't even pinpoint exactly what it is that made this transfer a bit more difficult than the rest, but even though there were some days and nights that were super hard to get through..I am grateful for it. I have really learned so much this transfer. I guess overall I just have felt a lot of opposition, inside my head and just all around me. Everything from the work here, to some of the people, have just made me even work HARDER on my patience. But something my amazing Sister Training Leader said to me when I was telling her about how it was frustrating that I finally felt like I had done a pretty okay job at obtaining patience, and then this transfer I just feel like it has gone down hill. And she talked to me about how that is exactly what Heavenly Father does with us, to help us to progress. He isn't going to help us develop a Christ-like attribute and then just have everything be all fine and dandy. He is going to test us to see if we REALLY have developed this attribute, and give us trials in our lives. Like He gave me this transfer. I have been forced to aquire a lot more patience than I even had before this transfer, and He has helped me progress a lot. It is sometimes so hard to see in the middle of it all, but I am just working on gaining more trust in Him than I have in myself, because I know He knows a lot more than I do!

But not to say this transfer has not been absolutely wonderful!! Obviously I have been writing you about all the amazing things I have learned and all the amazing miracles I even seen. So even though yes it has been harder than the rest, it has been full with SO many miracles. And I really do love it here in this ville. We have seen so many miracles happen in this branch that are beyond words. I love so dearly all the members here, and they have been so SO amazing with us in doing missionary work!! It has been such an amazing thing to see.

The coolest experience I had this week was actually when we got to go to a baptism for one of the members who just turned 8. They are such an adorable family that I love so much and she is so sweet. We don't have a baptismal font here, so they had the baptism in one of the member's pools. But it was so perfect because it is in this city where actually most of our members live called Aix-Les-Bains and it is SO beautiful there. Seriously, to die for, just beautiful. And so the baptism was so perfect! The best part of it was there were 9 non members there. And they were ALL friends of our DMB. He is so incredible. It was such a miracle. And one of the families that came is one of the families that he brought us to visit once before, and so we got to talk to them again and we finally got their number so we are going to go visit them this week!! Haha it sounds like such a small thing but that was seriously our biggest miracle from this week. I mean....it is a family. They have like 5 kids. And the mom is SO sweet. And they are friends with members. I mean I am probably getting ahead of myself...but it is a perfect equation to me :) Haha. But the baptism was so absolutly wonderful, it made me cry! The spirit there was just SO strong. And I feel like that Spirit carried over into church yesterday. I have never had such a powerful experience at church. Our Stake Presidency was there for her confirmation and so it was just such a wonderful spiritually-packed meeting.

Also, it was an awesome meeting because we, us four sisters, did something absolutely CRAZY. Beyond all logic.  We told our Branch President to announce that there will be two baptisms this Saturday, July 5th. Literally impossible. And crazy. But hey, guess what? The other sister equipe here is having a baptism this Saturday. WHAT. Crazy miracle that happened yesterday, haha. And this may sound crazy, but I am literally not giving up the faith until Saturday is over. We actually just got gone done fasting to have a baptism this Saturday. It literally defies all logic. But you know what? I have come to learn that is exactly what faith is. Defying all logic. Faith is taking a step into the darkness. It is doing the unheard of! To just take a leap forward and do the things that are not logical. And overall, it is having more trust in Him than we have in ourselves. Like I said earlier, that is probably the biggest thing I have learned this transfer. I have faith in His promises. If only we endure it well, we will be blessed beyond anything we can imagine.

If I have faith in anything...I have faith in that promise. I know with every ounce of my being that if we just turn to Him instead of turning away...that everything will be alright in the end.  In fact, it will be better than alright.

It will be blissful. And more joy than we can comprehend.

Our mission is seeing absolute MIRACLES. This Saturday is going to be incredible! I can't wait. I couldn't be more blessed than to be exactly where I am.
I love you all so much.
Have a wonderful week :)
Bisous!
Love,
Soeur Magleby