Mission Log: 25 March 2013

Sorry Guys, I have been a bad blog keeper upper. A reminder that this blog is not being kept by Jari her self while she is serving a LDS mission. -Annalee

chickens! in a living room. Jersey is crazy. 

Zelia, MY Brazilian

curled sister petersen's hair

Yesterday my sweet friend got baptized, the Brazilian woman I have been talking about the past couple weeks. I love her with my whole heart, I'm pretty sure that she and I are kindred spirits. She was so excited for her baptism. We have three different meetings at church (each one is an hour long) and after each meeting she would ask me "is it time for my baptism now?" "how about now?" "is it my turn now?" She was SO excited, and I was excited for her. After the last meeting she grabbed my hand and started singing and dancing down the hallway. She just made up her own song and sang random sentences about everything that was going on around us. "This is my girl from Alagoas." "Today I'm going to get baptized." "Elder Larson is my new godfather" (Elder Larson is one of the missionaries that taught her). "My husband, my boyfriend, the love of my life came to church today." She was EVERYTHING happy. I couldn't help but giggle the entire time. Once she was all dressed in white we went to go take more pictures and she loved that. So we took a lot of pictures. 7 different missionaries with cameras all oggling over her, it was great. 

(This is a side story just to showcase how it doesn't really matter where I am or what I'm doing and am still, always and forever, Jari. During all the picture taking I sat down on a couch...and it turns out that I sat on a spot where a little girl just had a bit of an accident. When I stood up I thought, "oh man, my bum feels really wet." Well that would be because my super absorbent skirt soaked up the whole mess, awesome.) 

I gave a short talk at the baptismal service about the gift of the Holy Ghost. A man who was baptized last week was in attendance so I had him share his testimony about the gift of the Holy Ghost, it was short and powerful. Really having the gift of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost is so special. It changes our lives to have a constant friend to help us go through life. I am so grateful. As I talked to her about it I mentioned how we can do things that help us to be worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost, and one of those things is to sing hymns (keep in mind that this woman LOVES to sing hymns). Earlier that morning I had found a hymn book in Portuguese and I gave it to her as a gift. She just hugged the book close to her and her eyes got really big as if she could hardly believe that it was actually for her. It was like Christmas. It was one of the greatest days of my life. In reality I've spent a grand total of 4 days with this woman, but I love her like family. She is so dear to me. I love how to gospel brings people together. I love learning to love the way that Christ did. 

My live a very charmed life, and I owe it completely to the influence of the gospel in my life. The gospel of Jesus Christ means everything to me and I love sharing it with everyone else. Such simple things: faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. So simple, so powerful, so life changing. I love it.