Sorella Ashlyn Henderson: I'm halfway there...

Ciao tutti! Well, as you can see by the subject line of my email, today is my 9 month mission mark!!!! I'm officially half way done, which is kind of scary and doesn't seem at all real. This week has been really busy again, and therefore really great. Maria's baptismal date has been pushed to the 28th so that she can be better prepared for her interview. Also because June 28th is the Independence Day of Peru and she wants to be able to remember the day forever. So we are glad because this way she will be a lot more prepared!

We did a practice baptismal interview this week with Maria, and it went well except for a few questions. But besides that, Maria brought her 23 year old daughter with her 2 year old daugther to our lesson this week! Her name is Caty, and she just got to Italy. And then all 3 came to church this last Sunday. Caty has been asking us some questions, and we are really hopeful that we will get to work with her too!

So we have this investigator named Karem, and she has never really seen us that often or wanted to do much in the sense of read the scriptures and come to church. But this week we had a scambio with the Sorelle of Busto Arsizio, and Sorella Reeder from my MTC group and I taught Karem a POWERFUL Restoration. When Sorella Reeder was reciting the First Vision, the Spirit was one of the strongest I have ever felt it in my life! Karem told us this time that she knows that she hasn't been commited and that she is going to commit this time to everything that we have asked her to do. She also basically said that she believes that the Church is true, so now the next steps are just preparing her for baptism.

This week, Sorella Tafur and I have been studying and talking a lot about prayer and how it works basically. I studied this a lot at the beginning of my mission, but now I have learned that God is not going to do anything for you that you can do for yourself. He will support you and help you in all your righteous tasks, but He will leave the majority of it up to you. He does this out of love for us because He wants us to grow. Just like how good parents don't spoil their children and they let them make their own decisions, God leaves us to make personal decisions and work things out on our own. And then He will support our righteous choices. I know that prayer works and that God hears every single one of them and answers those that are asked in faith and according to His will.

Vi voglio bene! Until next week!

Sorella Henderson