Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places: Week 44 - West Columbia, SC

My dear family and friends!

What a wonderful week it has been! It started off with exchanges with Sister Creager! I've been living with her for the past 4 1/2 months, which is longer than I've lived with my own companions! Needless to say, I just love her to death! She is a wonderful missionary and she has inspired me to become better! We had a lot of fun working in the Young Single Adults ward! I even got to bust out my middle school slash college Spanish just like Cody did this last week! We saw a Hispanic man and his kids carrying stuff in so we helped him out. I introduced us as missionaries from the church... but that was about all I could do. My Spanish is really rusty. Hahah.

So after exchanges, I made a goal to talk to everyone. That's something that Sister Creager's really good at! We were in the library the other day and I approached this man and asked him to watch the video on mormon.org/motherhood. We got talking a little bit and he gave us his information but he's in the other ward's boundaries. Well we got a call from the elders serving in our ward yesterday and they said that this man that we contacted came to church! Whoa. Miracle moment! I was speechless. Needless to say, I'll be talking to everyone from now on!

S got baptized this last Saturday! It was such a cool experience for me because I saw him come full circle. He had overcome a lot of trials and then he got to enter into the waters of baptism. There was nothing more humbling than when Bishop Del Priore got up to welcome S to the ward and he told S's (8 year old) son, N to come up there. He said "This all happened because N wanted to be baptized... because of that one righteous decision." That was really neat for me because it helped me realize that it wasn't because of me. It was simply because I was in the right place at the right time. It also was a testimony builder about how the Lord uses the small acts to bring great things to pass. It was a really neat day!

And then of course there was Mother's Day! It was so neat to speak with my family. I want to brag a minute here though. I asked my family to help the missionaries out with referrals and with teaching appointments because I know how important it is as a missionary. Well I got an email from my dad this morning saying he did just that! I know that this work is bigger than just the missionaries. We are all on the Lord's team and we need to be working together! I would like to invite y'all to do the same! Find someone who needs the gospel and share it with them! It helps us as missionaries so much!

Anyway, I'll get off my soap box now! I love y'all! Have a blessed week!

- Sister Amy Christensen