Good News and Bad News

Dear family and friends,

So a little bit of bad news and lots of good news this week!! I will save the best news for last :)

The water returned!! Monday night it started coming back and Tuesday morning it was back completely. When I turned the faucet on and water came out I literally fell to my knees haha! I never realized how much of a blessing it is to have water.

I guess I'll give the bad news now. Monday night we visited Jaime and he had suddenly lost all interest in being baptized. He won't be direct with us, but someone probably talked bad about the church to him. It's so sad because he received an answer and we taught him everything. We brought members that we taught him with and tried to explain the importance of this decision, but he won't budge. Hopefully with time he will realize what he's missing! Truly this gospel would bless his life so much.

General Conference was the bomb! Unfortunately our chapel doesn't have the capabilities of showing it so we had to travel to center city and I only got to watch about half of it. But I loved everything I could watch!! I know that the new Apostles truly were called by God. I remember Elder Rasband giving a talk in a Priesthood Session once that I absolutely loved! I was able to sit next to Helberth when President Monson was talking! I told him that was our Prophet and he leaned over and said that it's the voice of the Lord whenever he speaks! How cool that he recognizes and remembers that from the lessons.

One of the many things I loved from conference was something Sister Stephens said. It was something like this "Commandments are an expression of God's love for us, and our obedience to them is an expression of our love for Him." How true! I keep learning out here that obedience truly is the first law of heaven, upon which all things are predicated. And it makes so much sense to think about obedience as an act of love rather than an obligation!

We are in the middle of moving to our new house!! It has been a crazy crazy weekend because of that so sorry if my words don't make very much sense- I wasn't able to think about what I would email beforehand. But our new house is sooo great! I'm thankful to be moving.

Teaching Karen this week was amazing! Every day we taught her with youth from the church and she continued to love every bit of the gospel. The Plan of Salvation rings so true to her and she has a huge testimony of prayer. This week I gained a larger testimony of prayer too. Elder Vieira and I prayed for Karen a lot this week. Her family is not supportive of her and her boyfriend threatened to leave her if she got baptized. It was a tough situation. The Lord surly did answer our prayers though! Karen made it to General Conference and was baptized in between sessions on Sunday!! Her boyfriend has had at least a minor change of heart, and said he will go to her confirmation this Sunday! And her family is nicer to us now. Truly this baptism was a miracle though. At times we would be going all over to find her because she doesn't have a phone and it was really stressful leading up to this weekend. But it all worked out! And she has two really great friends in the church now (other than us). I'm excited to be able to confirm her on Sunday! Karen is inspiring. She was willing to leave her relationship and go against her family to embrace this gospel and live with her Father again after this life.

Karen's baptism!! Such a spiritual experience. Our Branch President, who is the father of one of Karen's friends, performed the baptism. Even though Karen technically was found by our own efforts, we couldn't have done this without the help of members.

I love you guys! Thank you for the continued support and prayers.

Elder Searle

Weekly steps: 120964