Sister Fisher on Temple Square!

From: Jessica Fisher [mailto:jessica.fisher@myldsmail.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2013
Subject: Transfer 12, Week 4: 17 (miracles)/missionaries later, and a baptism!
 

HE GOT BAPTIZED!

S was baptized this past Saturday, November 2. Wow it was neat. I got to do a violin duet with the piano playing elder who was teaching him at the University, we played: I am a Child of God. It was another dream come true! Wow.

 

Then we received permission to attend his student ward and see him receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and what do you know? It was Fast and Testimony Meeting and he asked me if he was allowed to get up. Of course I said that he was, and he got up there and bore his testimony. My face hurt from smiling through that entire meeting. 

He later told us that he counted all of the missionaries that he had spoken with, that hand knocked on his door in the past or that had taught him: 17 missionaries. 

The neatest thing was that his ward was having a Temple Day in the Salt Lake Temple and he got to go and do baptisms just 3 days after his own baptism! Pretty neat. He said it was really special, "tons of spirit", and that "his heart was pounding" the entire time. There's few things better than to be able to hear someone you've helped through all their concerns say that finally! Aww just so neat! I'll be using him soon to be a member present on a phone call where we will teach a man who just called in yesterday who used to be a Southern Baptist Minister from Mississippi who is just tired of hypocrisy in his congregations/other faiths and wanted to learn more about why all the Mormon kids in his classroom are so much better behaved than the other students.

I'm just grateful to the Lord for putting those people in my life. I really truly genuinely love the people I teach with all of my companions. That's the hardest thing on your mission is letting them go, and letting them make choices for themselves when you know it contrary to their happiness.

 That brings me to my thoughts recently this week in what I have studied in Helaman. I've been pretty startled this time around of reading the Book of Mormon at what events are described, what trials and what condition the people are in up until Christ's Coming, and I really have felt, just as all the Prophets have said, that those same challenges will be among us, now in the last few years before Christ's Second Coming as well. 

 Here's some shocking things that mirror our own day:

 
Helaman 13:38

"ye have sought for ^chappiness in doing iniquity, which thing is ^dcontrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head."

Helaman 13:27
"Walk after the pride of your own hearts; yea, walk after the pride of your eyes, and do whatsoever your heart desireth—and if a man shall come among you and say this, ye will receive him, and say that he is a ^bprophet."

 Helaman 11:22

"And also they had peace in the seventy and eighth year, save it were a few contentions concerning the points of doctrine which had been laid down by the prophets."
 
Helaman 11:32-34 
"And the robbers did still increase and wax strong... and did do great destruction unto them; yea, did kill many, and did carry away others captive into the wilderness, yea, and more especially their women and their children. Now this great evil, which came unto the people because of their iniquity, did stir them up again in ^aremembrance of the Lord their God."

 Helaman 5:2

"For as their laws and their governments were established by the ^avoice of the people, and they who ^bchose evil were ^cmore numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were^dripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted."

Helaman 12:6 

"Behold, they do not desire that the Lord their God, who hath^a created them, should ^brule and reign over them; notwithstanding his great goodness and his mercy towards them, they do set at^cnaught his counsels, and they will not that he should be their guide."
 

I think I shared what the Spirit taught me in my study, so now onto a more optimistic point. So we can see that time is coming. That it is happening! What an exciting thing? We know that the end is nigh! What a wonderful thing to know if we are prepared! We shall not fear if we have prepared. I am so excited to see our Savior again. I am so excited to have Him reign and rule over all the nations and bring peace and rule in absolute righteousness. I am so excited for Satan to be bound and for thousands of Temples to dot the earth and for the wave of missionary work to blossom and bloom and cover the continents. What an excited time to live in! The opportunities we have to build the kingdom! I see it in the excitement of all the members all around of opening their mouths and in how my referrals we received at conference above and beyond that of the other two conferences I have experienced on my mission. I see it in the amount of people on chat and who call in to mormon.org with good questions and with prepared hearts and minds. I see it in all of the desire of good Christians and religious people alike to find truth and to stand up for what is true and correct morally despite a demoralizing society. 

Many of the sisters around me make comments to see if I am sad to leave my mission in a few weeks and go home. I'm not. Why? It isn't because I haven't absolutely loved every second of representing the Lord and His church and bringing the gospel to everyone I meet, but it is because of all of that. I'm not done here. I'm not through. When I am released it doesn't mean the Lord has released me as a missionary! No no no! Instead I have gone through 18 months of an extensive internship and now in just a few weeks I will be released into my real job- spreading the joy of the gospel to everyone I meet. Standing as a witness of God at all times and in all things and all places! Everyone needs what we have! They are looking for it! They just want to know how to be happy, and why they are not, and why we are! They want to know why our families and marriages are so strong. They want to know how to raise their children in a chaotic dangerous world! 

 I know that this is why we are on the earth right now. This is why I am here. 

Please send any referrals or anyone else in these last few weeks, that you'd like me to call to share the gospel with to me. I will call them. I would LOVE to. Call my mission's guest services at this phone number: 801 240 1706 and give the referral to Sister Fisher. 

I love you all and I know that there are MIRACLES with member referrals. 

It's because of a member who referred S again that he was baptized this weekend.

Sister Fisher

 Remember the promise God has given us- "Neither take ye thought beforehand ^awhat ye shall say; but ^btreasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be ^cgiven you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man." D&C 84:85

I know God has never forgotten His promises to me these last 17 months.