July 28th

THIS WEEK. Oh my goodness, where to begin! It has been the craziest, most stressful, and most completely and utterly amazing week I have experienced on my mission!

For the last few weeks, we have been teaching this girl from Shanghai named Emily. The elders who were in the area before us found her and she is one of the most prepared people I have ever met. She goes to church just about every Sunday, knows the Book of Mormon is true, and has a super strong testimony that God lives and loves her. However, she was really hesitant to get baptized. The elders had set a couple baptism dates with her, but each time the date approached, she felt unprepared or a concern came up. About a month ago, when we first got into the area, Emily let us know that she was going to move to Sydney on August 1st and told us that she had decided she wanted to be baptized there, because she felt like it would be a fresh start for her. We told her that we would respect her decision and continued to teach her the lessons over the next few weeks. However, this past week, both Sister S and I got the feeling that we should invite her to be baptized again. So, we went over tithing with her (the last thing she needed to know) and afterwards, went over the Baptismal Interview Questions (without telling her they were Baptism Interview Questions :) ) and she passed it with flying colors. We let her know that she was prepared and invited her to be baptized the coming weekend. She went home, prayed about it, and sent us a text that night saying she wanted to be baptized that Sunday! We spent the next 3 days scrambling to get everything done, but it was SO WORTH IT! It was amazing to see her dressed in white and looking so happy!! Ahhh. I love this work.

Love you all! Look for miracles, they happen!!

-Sister Sarah Bennion