Hi everyone!
I hope y'all had a good Easter!! Thank you so much for you emails and prayers! I LOVED every one of your emails so so much. I love them every week but today they were extra special to me :) I'm glad everyone had fun at the fair and sounds like everyone had a great Easter.
This passed week I feel like was a pivotal point thus far in my mission. Saturday was my official 1 month mark since I entered the MTC. It's crazy because it seems like I have been away for so much longer than that and that I have known some of the people here all my life. Every day brings something new and I learn and understand things greater. My testimony is growing and evolving all the time and I am so grateful for Heavenly Father who truly has shown me my weaknesses and is helping me to turn them into strengths.
So many things have happened in the passed week but I mostly just want to tell you about the last couple days!
Thursday we had what's called a Zone Specialized Training and the whole zone meets together and we have a meeting pretty much all day with the President and do different trainings and lessons. I love the tranings so much but they can sort of overwhelm you too! Ha but I learned a lot of good lessons. The most important being that I have to give my best every single day and it's often more than I think I have in myself. But if we are always striving to do just a little more then our best will always be enough.
That night after we left the training Sister Smith and I had a miracle! We decided to go check on a guy who we had spoken with once but didn't end up coming to church like he had promised the week before. He's a young guy in his 20s and just really quiet but listens and I can tell does have a sincere desire to learn more. Since he lives with his 5 other brothers and his mom isn't ever home we can't go inside his house to teach him. We wanted to try and apply all the different things we had learned at the meeting so instead of just coming back when his mom was home we acted on faith and called the ward mission leader to see if he would come and pick Mike up and take him to the church with us for a lesson. And he did! So the ward mission leader came and picked him up, then we went to the church (this was my first time taking an investigator to the church). We gave him a tour of the chapel and building and then had an awesome lesson! We really tried to focus on teaching with the spirit and just trying to teach in simple terms. And as the lesson was starting to come to a close I took a big leap and just tried to be bold and act on the spirit like I'm supposed to (sometimes easier said than done!) and I invited him to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the proper authority of God! and he said yes!! You can imagine the big that I had and almost started to sort of laugh because I was so excited haha but it was so awesome! And then when people agree to be baptized we are supposed to schedule with them to be baptized 3 weeks from that date and before we even asked him about the date he said, "well my birthday is on May 11th" and that was exactly 3 weeks away! So he is now on date to be baptized on May 10th and confirmed a member of the church and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost on his birthday May 11th! I probably don't even do the experience justice trying to type it but it was so awesome and then he came to church on Sunday and even stayed with us for all 3 hours and said he really enjoyed it!
I know that Heavenly Father is preparing the hearts of those who are ready and that He is guiding us to find them. Another really awesome thing that happened that I will never forget was yesterday. Easter was so amazing! I feel as if I have never appreciated it enough and now it's like my favorite holiday. Well besides Christmas, but they're both celebrated Jesus Christ so it's fine. hahah but really it was a beautiful day. It was raining and stormy all day Friday and Saturday and then yesterday was absolutely beautiful and sunny! After church we may been oblivious and pulled into a gas station that was just robbed and there were cops surrounding the place and some how we seriously didn't even notice.. haha and we got out of our car and started walking and luckily one of the cops was a member and informed us... (thank goodness for the protection the Lords gives his missionaries!) After that little experience we went to dinner at a family's home and they were so sweet! They recently moved here from Springville and were so nice. It sort of felt like having a piece of home ha because the people here are really amazing but they just aren't the same as people from the West so it was nice to spend time with people who know where we come from haha.
Okay but the best part of the day was after dinner. We had an address of someone in the book that we were looking for so in attempt to try to save some miles on the car we parked at the beginning of the street and just started walking A little ways down the street we realized that the street was actually just a giant circle and the address we were looking for was really back closer to the car. I sort of jokingly said to Sister Smith though, "well who know's we were probably supposed to walk this way so we would end up some where at the right time as someone else". So we keep walking and get just about passed the half way point of the circle and see someone out in their yard for the first time. There was a middle aged man loading up his car and so we start to head up his drive way to speak with him and he pleasantly came up and introduced himself. After talking with him for just a moment I felt such a strong impression that we weren't meant to run into him at this time. His name was Chad and we came to find out this was his parents home that he was born and raised in and his dad had just recently passed away. He was in town just for the weekend with his only brother to visit his mother. He said that before we came walking up the street he had been packing up his car to leave and head back to Georgia and was tearing up because he was worried about leaving his mom. He said since his dad died he has been praying a lot but he doesn't feel like he's gotten any answers or peace about it anything. Sister Smith and I were able to teach him briefly about the Plan of Salvation and I promised him that his father was in Heaven right now learning the exact same things he is as we teach him and that he will see his dad again one day. I bore my testimony to him of the power or prayer and that is does work. It was the neatest experience. His eyes teared up and he said that he knew we were angels sent to him from God to bring him those answers and peace he is looking for.
I know that there are no coincidences. Heavenly Father does hear and answer each and everyone of our prayers. Sometimes they take time and sometimes we don't get the answers when or how we want to, but they do come! As long as we live by faith and have intentions to act on what he tells us he will answer us :)
I am SO grateful for that experience and so excited for him to meet with the missionaries in Georgia when he gets back home. We are going over to visit with his mom later this week too.
Sorry this is so long and I hope it all makes sense! Since I typed so long on this one I wont have time to reply individually to everyone this week but I have been printing out everyone's emails every week and I made a cute binder to keep them in :) I will write back this afternoon!
Thank you so much for all of your love and support. Hearing from you and your testimonies and whats going on at home means more than you know and helps me so much! I think about each of you every day and am so thankful for such amazing family and friends. I hope y'all have a good week!!
Love,
Sister Hendrix
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