Sunday, August 30, 2015

Adieu.

He brought his ADORABLE daughter. She was super touched as well. It was so cool!

Gabriel!!! I guess we were laughing at something...haha. And our wonderful bishop who baptized him.

Happy Thanksgiving!! We had a great fest together as a district. It was so fun. Hope you all had a wonderful day!



Sooo we got to go on exchange in Nice this week!! And we ran by the water in the morning :) Not the best picture...But,it was a great moment. 



Hello my darling loved ones.
Well. I am not even sure what to say this week. I am feeling so many emotions I couldn't even possibly describe them all. I honestly can't get it in my head to understand that this is going to be my last letter to you. We had a really beautiful week. Gabriel's baptism was SO wonderful. He really is so great. We asked him if he could share a testimony at the end and he got up and talked for 20 minutes...which was kind of stressful because we told him just to take a couple minutes..haha. But it was so sweet. He really is just so grateful he was able to meet us and be able to finally find the truth! He has such a strong testimony. I can really just see that the Lord has so many amazing things in store for him, and I just can't wait to see where he goes from here! I just feel so extremely blessed to have been able to have been involved in such a beautiful story. We prayed and worked so hard to have a baptism and I am just amazed that we truly got to see this beautiful miracle unfold. I will send pictures :)

I decided I wanted to do something different with this letter today. It is kind of a special one...obviously. So instead of just telling you everything that happened with my week (which I will be able to tell you soon)
I wanted to tell you a story. I am hoping this won't get too dramatic...but no promises. It probably will. Haha.

A famous question on the mission is to ask "So why did you decide to serve a mission?" I have been asked this question soo many different times. And every single time, I am kind of amazed by my answer.
Because when I try to answer this question, I realize something. I realize that it wasn't ME that decided to go on a mission. But when I tell people why I am here, I realize more and more just how much Heavenly Father literally lead me to this point in my life.
I remember when I was about 16. It first happened in Sacrament Meeting. And I just weirdly started thinking about what it would be like to serve a mission.It was something I had NEVER even considered before. So I was confused why the idea even came into my head.
But then it kept happening. I just kept pondering on what it would be like if I served a mission. And then weirdly. I started to actually LIKE the idea. And I started considering on how cool and amazing of an experience that would be for me. But I knew that it might not be perfect timing when I was 21. So I told myself I would see what happens when I got to that age :)
And then came the beautiful General Conference that I will never forgot. Oh how eternally grateful I will be for this day. It really changed everything.
Here I am, only 20 years old, and I have already served a full time mission! It is truly incredible.
So I did lots of praying. And I just KNEW it was right. I knew I needed to go.
Sooo without my parents knowing I started to work on putting in my papers ;) hehe. That was the best part. And even though lots of my family couldn't even really stand the thought of my leaving for a year and a half...I told them it was what I needed to do. So I didn't slow down, and I decided I wanted to leave as soon as I could.
And then on February 27, 2013. I recieved my call. To the one place I had ALWAYS dreamed of.
WHAT. Oh wait, and also to the same place as someone very significant in my life :)
I couldn't believe it.
I love thinking of this story. Because literally...I had no idea what was in store for me.
It changed everything.
I love thinking about the beginning of my mission. And how lost I was. And how much I didn't know but THOUGHT I knew. There were many hard times. But they helped me to grow more than I ever thought I could.
I started my mission not knowing what was in store, but knowing that I would having a lot of hard, and also a lot of beautiful experiences.

But oh my goodness I had NO idea.
I had no idea how much I would fall in love with my mission.
I had no idea how much I would absolutely fall in love with the French people.
I had no idea how absolutely amazing and wonderful my mission president would be, and how much I would learn from him.
I had no idea I would have so many trials.
I had no Idea I would be this tired, worn out, sick, and exhausted.
I had no idea how many people Heavenly Father was going to let me be apart of their eternities.

But most of all...I had no idea how close I was going to grow to my Savior.
Or how much I was going to literally fall in love with the Book of Mormon.
Or how many sacred experiences I would have that have literally changed my eternity.

I had no idea.

I will never in words be able to truly thank my Heavenly Father for this amazing opportunity He has given me. I have absolutely NO idea what I did to deserve it. I feel so blessed beyond belief.
I got to wake up everyday and wear the name of my Savior. And even though sometimes that brought a lot of ridicule and persucation..I will forever be grateful.
That I got to be a representative of Jesus Christ.
And I got to come to know, that He lives.
He truly,truly lives.
I know it with everything in me.
Jesus Christ is our Savior. Our loving Heavenly Father sent Him here to die for us.
And because of Him...everything will work it.
Everything. No sadness, or pain,will ever last too long. Because He is there.

I love my Savior with everything in me. I just can't wait to spend my entire life serving Him.
And I am so, so grateful for my mission. More than I will ever be able to put into words.

I love you all. I couldn't have done it without you, truly. You mean everything to me.
I will see you all very soon.
I love you more than you know.

Love,
Soeur Magleby.

I LOVE MY LIFE

Yeah...couldn't really think of another caption for this email :) haha.
Hello my darling family. I hope you all had a wonderful week! I sure did...As always.
Literally...yesterday at church...okay let's just say that recently I seem to have lots of  tears form in my eyes and I can't even control it. It's the strangest thing. I try really hard..but no matter how I try to trick myself I think my emotions are a little overwhelmed. I have LITERALLY never felt so many emotions at once in my entire life. Anyways...my point was I feel like recently everyone is just being way to loving. Just sitting at church yesterday I was super overwhelmed by how much I really loved with all my heart people that were sitting in that room. And I felt like random people just kept coming up to me and being way to nice...seriously, it breaks my heart. Because I just love them so much. I just feel way to blessed with my life at the moment.
Coolest miracle of all this week..A wonderful man named Gabriel :) I don't think I have told you about him yet...If I have, sorry for the repeat.
But as you know, Soeur Bragg and I have been working like crazy to have a baptism this transfer. We told ourselves that there is no one we were letting ourselves leave our missions without having at least one baptism....and this week was the week where it all came together :) We have honestly been working just so hard and kind of getting frustrated..or, I guess, trying really hard not to let ourselves get frustrated, because we haven't been seeing lots of success. But just when our faith gets pushed to the limit...our loving Heavenly Father is always right there to bless us with amazing miracles that we don't even deserve.
So, Gabriel. About 4 weeks ago, on a Sunday, we were out contacting. We just had about 30 minutes and we had prayed to find another lesson with someone on the street. So we contacted a bunch of people in a row that told us rather rude no's. Haha. And then we just hear someone yell "QU-EST CE QUE VOUS PRÊCHEZ?" (What are you preaching?) And we hesitated to go talk to him because we thought he might be crazy....haha. But we went over and started talking to him. And he ended up being super sincere, and told us that he had just come from a church but that he didn't like it and was searching for a church and wondered if we could help because he saw our plaques and saw that they said Jesus. Sooo of course we taught him and prayed with him right there :) from the very first moment we just loved him, because he so cool! I will send you a picture next week...but there really is no way to describe it. But he is a super tall awesome African man who only wears designer suits and sunglasses...haha. He is so cool. So then we got a call from him a few days later. And he simply tell us "Hey I looked up the website of your church..and OF COURSE this is all true. Of course Joseph Smith had that vision and restored the church!! It's all true!!" Haha Soeur Bragg was just DYING on the phone so of course I was looking at her just dying to hear what he was saying...seriously, such a miracle. Honestly..I can't even believe it. So of course from that moment on we have been SO excited to teach him. But there was a lot of scheduling conflicts, and we weren't able to see him for a couple weeks. And he lost his phone and all this stuff...so we kind of felt like maybe things weren't going to work out even if he was such a miracle. BUT. We were still trying to keep our faith.
And then last week. He came to church. And we started to meet with him. And literally his first question was "So how is it that I become a member?" And honestly everything from that point on...has been just like that. He is going to be baptized this upcoming Sunday. We set his date for the 6th but he called us and told us he knows it is true so he wants to be baptized sooner...literally, he is incredible. I don't know if I am even explaining this well. En bref, he is going to be our miracle baptism of the transfer. He is amazing. Literally...it is impossible to teach him. We try to teach him and he just bears testimony throughout the whole lesson about the principle we are teaching. Haha. Today I said to Soeur Bragg "Getting taught by Gabriel is pretty great."
God is a God of miracles.
Also...We are having working like crazy with our zone leaders to help our zone teaching 20 lessons and to be more united. And this week we had 7 equipes teach 20 lessons...literally, more miracles than I can even comprehend. I just love my life more than words can say.
How grateful I am for my mission. I am forever changed. And I thank my Heavenly Father everyday.
I love you all. I will see you soon. Thanks for all your prayers!!
Love,
Soeur Magleby :)