"I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES...."

Mon. 3/28/11 Family, It's always great to hear from you each week, although the weeks are going by way too fast. I don't even want to think about you already having my flight plans, I just got back out here! But yeah, I can just fly again, it would be a really long drive. I'll need to have some money in my account in July to pay to ship my bike home and souvenirs I want to keep. That's great to hear that you are going back to school, Mom! (By the way, I never mentioned what I decided I'd major in: Physiology and Developmental Biology. When I read that as an option for a major, I got excited, so I'm going with it. I can go almost every direction I've considered with that degree.) And good to hear Dad has a lot of work lined up for the week! I'll be praying that Megan feels better soon and that no one else gets sick. 106 degrees is scary high.. What a great week this week! We had a specialized training for all the sister missionaries in the mission and that was a lot of fun to be a part of. We got to sing "As Sisters in Zion" - one of my favorites. We also even got a Cuddly Cousins stuffed animal from one of the sisters who did a training! All my expectations of a sisters conference were met. Haha. It was really one of the most spiritual trainings I've been apart of though, which is probably because of their greater maturity and love. Also, we had a great day on Wednesday: We taught two sisters, Tia and Takira. We had a member bring them down to the church and we had a chapel tour lesson with them. We had originally planned to teach them about the Plan of Salvation, but we couldn't seem to start into that. The Spirit was there and lead us to teach about Jesus Christ. At one point, we walked into the chapel, and talked about the Sacrament meeting being the most important meeting in the Church. Our member, Richard, started to bear his testimony of the hymns, and as he did so, I picked up one of the hymnals and flipped it open to show them. I flipped right to "I know that My Redeemer Lives". I felt impressed to ask Tia how she felt about the Savior, and she confessed she wasn't sure she believed in Him. I then read the first verse, and the feeling when I read "..My hungry soul to feed" was intense. I knew for sure at that time that she was hungry, and that she felt like something was missing in her life. And I told her of that, and each of us testified of how her void would be filled by the Gospel and through developing her relationship with Christ through prayer and repentance. When we got to the baptism font, we discussed what it means to be baptized, and we invited both of them to prepare for that day (April 16th), and they accepted that date and commitment. Both of them were at church yesterday and loved it! We also taught a young Hmong single adult girl who had been less active, and she came to church yesterday as well! Also yesterday, the two other people we are teaching who are preparing for baptism (Akilah and Colleen) both made it to church as well! Akilah had driven 18 hours straight coming home from a vacation in Florida, and she still made the decision to come to church despite how incredibly tired she was, and that she was an hour drive from church. She loved it and felt very comfortable. We have a lesson to see her today with our friend Jared from the ward. So there's some highlights from the week! I hope you all have a wonderful week! Love, Elder Vogan