Welcome to the family baby Hudson! :)‏

It was a SUPER hot day and we thought we deserved some ice cream...SALTED CARAMEL, that is. Best thing of my life.

......another hot day? hehe ;)

A member made me put these on because I told her I was terrible at them......hahaha. It was a great time.

We had an awesome lunch with a bunch of cool members this week. It was such a blast.

BOWLING!! Thiese are two of the kids from the family I was talking about :)

I told you....missionary work is hard. Hahaha.

Hi everyone!! Wow, well this is by far the most exciting week of emails I have had. I can't believe I am an aunt!!! :) I really...I am so excited to meet the little guy. He is way too adorable for me to handle. Thank you for all for taking the time to send me all the pictures and update me on everything!

I feel like my little mission life is so insignificant compared to what is going on with all of you...buuut I guess I will just talk about it and bore you anyway ;) I have actually had a super wonderful week this week!

I woke up Tuesday morning and decided I wanted to have one of those weeks where I was just absolutely exhausted at the end. I wanted to go home at night everyday just in pain and exhuasted because I had worked so hard. Honestly, I wish I would work like that everyday. And I should. But I really just had this like super extra motivation to really absolutely do everything that I could to work hard this week. And ironically...this week ended up being a blast. We ended up just having SO much fun! My comp even told me that I seemed like EXTRA happy this week. And I really felt it! Funny how the harder I worked and the more I tried to completely devote myself to the work...the happier I was. Heavenly Father truly blesses us when we consacrate ourselves and just do everything in our power to build His kingdom.

And you are probably expecting that I am going to tell you that after working SO hard that I saw tons and tons of miracles. But to be frank...it was a hard week. In the work aspect, that is. I already told you how super happy I was all week. But, I feel my faith being suuuper tested right now. But I truly have been able to learn SO much this week. I couldn't even begin to put it all into words. But I feel Heavenly Father just building my faith so much right now. I have been praying more faith, and I really feel like this is the way that He is giving it to me. He is testing me. He is building me up. He is seeing if I can keep my faith solid despite the fact that we aren't seeing much success...we honestly have no amis right now. This is the first time this has happened on my mission, where we literally have no one to teach. We have lots of potentials...but they are using their free agency and choosing not to keep to church. It is super frustrating. But yeah, we kind of lost Lina this week. Long story short...opposition. I think she let it get the better of her. She just really kind of went off the deep end, and I think she just isn't quite ready yet.  Soooo we are starting with a clean slate!: Definitely devoting this week to finding new amis.

BUT there is a certain family I would like to tell you about this week. I actually don't really know why I haven't talked about them yet, because they have been a HUGE part of my work here in Chambéry. They have just been a huge focus for me. We have this absolutely wonderful beyond words family we are working with. A family of 5. Over the past couple transfers here, they have been a huge focus of mine because sadly, we have not started to teach them yet. We have an AMAZING relationship with them. We have been over to their house so many times, playing games, eating dinner and ice cream, doing nails, haha. They are so incredible and I love them more than I could really explain. But they are just those people that have really good realtionships with the missionaries, and come to our activites, but were never super interested in being taught. So that has just been my huge focus these past few weeks. Is figuring out how in the world we can start to teach them. And we saw the biggest miracle this week with them!!

We went over just to pass them by and invite them to our branch activity in a couple weeks, and we ended up staying over there for a couple hours and eating dinner with them. It was so perfect. And then at the end...I had to use all my courage AGAIN (like last week) and ask them if next time we come over we can share our message with them.

AND THEY SAID YES!!

Now, I don't want to get ahead of myself. It will still be a long journey for them to get there. but I know they can! We are going to try to start teaching them this week :) And another huge miracle is they ended up coming to our movie night and we watched The Testements...and there is no way they didn't feel the spirit testify to them that night. We are finally getting somewhere. Such a cool miracle of the week!

I feel like Heavenly Father is just teaching me so much right now in my life. I had a night this week that honestly..I felt really down. Haha I know I just told you I was super happy all week. But it was only one night! After our lesson with Lina. I felt really sad. I just felt my heart aching for these people. And I was really upset with myself at just how plain SAD I felt. Because I have no reason NOT to be happy! But then I realized that honestly..I wasn't thinking about myself. By heart was literally aching for these people who aren't accepting the Gospel.

I can't even really describe to you what it feels like. But I feel like Heavenly Father is really blessing me recently with a pure LOVE for these people. To the point where it sends me on my knees in tears just asking Heavenly Father to help them understand. There are just so many people who don't understand. And it breaks my heart.

But even though it is hard..I am so grateful I have been able to be blessed with this amazing love for these people. I can't even begin to fathom what our Father in Heaven feels for each one of us. I can tell you that I know with all my heart that this Gospel is true. I am so grateful for these moments that I have almost everyday where someone tries to get me to doubt my testimony.But I get to look them in the eyes and tell them I know with all my heart that God exists, and that He loves us and cares more for us than we can ever even imagine.

I love you all. I am so happy. God is so wonderful. He is blessing us more than I feel like I even deserve.
I will see you all soon.
Love,
Soeur Magleby