Dear Family,
It's crazy to think that Kailei only has one more week to accept our letters! It has gone so fast and she has grown so much! For those of you that knew her before the mission will understand when I say that I didn't think it was possible for her to gain anymore of a spirit about her. Well when I got to talk to her over skype, let me tell you that she is not the same girl that left 18 months ago. She is the most Christlike person I have ever met and I can only dream of being half of the missionary that she was to those lucky people in Argentina! What a blessing it is going to be to have her back in your home. I hope that you take the opportunity to learn from her and to truly let her bless the home and the people that she comes in contact with! I know for a fact that her mission is far from over. She will bless the lives of so many more people in Mesa as she serves them and comes in contact with them! I am jealous of all of them because they get to be in her presence!
What a great end to a crazy transfer we are having! These last few months here in Brentwood seemed to fly by. We got the phone call Saturday night and we are blessed to stay together for at least one more transfer! Elder Makaya will have been here for 9 months in this area. He was very surprised to hear that he would be staying, but seems to be excited to continue to teach the people that we are teaching! It has been a blessing to learn humility from him and to continue to learn how to love those that we come in contact with each day. I tend to be a little too bold sometimes with people, so he has done a great job at teaching me how to be loving along with the boldness. I look forward to learning more and more from him as the time goes by!
New years Eve was a great time. Yes, we watched Brave and to be completely honest I forgot about the naked butt parts hahaha. The zone leaders just looked at me and said I thought you had seen this movie?! We just laughed and blew it off haha. I am curious to know if president had seen it before though. haha The members that we spent the evening with ordered a ton of pizza and we all just pigged out and had a blast together! We played football in their backyard as we all waited for the rest of the missionaries to show up and the projector was getting set up. Our zone is really fun and almost all of us are really athletic so that makes it fun on days like that and on p days!
Colby is doing soo well! She still has her date of the 19th of this month! She decided that this is what she wants to do and that she is willing to give up all the stuff that she was doing so that she can be baptized. She is still struggling a bit with her testimony. She feels like she isn't going to be ready for baptism because she doesn't know everything yet. She likes to compare herself to us as missionaries knowledge and testimony wise which is not fair to her. We are still working with her to realize that we baptize 8 year old kids who still really don't have a great knowledge of the Gospel and that need to continue to learn. We are taking her to the Visitors Center and Temple hill tomorrow so that we can help her to continue to have spiritual experiences. Please keep her in your prayers and we know that she is going to make it!
Peggy is going to be attempted to visit this week but will be dropped after that if she doesn't show any desire to change or to come back to church.. It is so hard to see people be dropped especially when they were so solid at one point! I find myself praying for her many times a day and hoping that she will feel something different when we are not in her life and that she will have a change of heart. Dang agency! hahah just kidding. She will be baptized sooner or later. The seed has been planted and she has the Book of Mormon in her house. She will come around sooner or later.
Dena and Reina are progressing very well. We are going to be teaching her the plan of salvation here this week and they are very excited to see how we believe. They both believe in reincarnation so that should be interesting to see how it all turns out. We are really going to be pushing them to come to church here this week so please pray for them for that also. We would really like to set a date with them this week but we are not sure if they will except. Good thing its not up to us right? We will extent the date and we will just leave it in the Lords hands.
I want to thank everyone for their prayers for Kailei as she has been coming to the end of her mission. I am more interested in you praying for her to make it home safe and sound then you praying for me! I have been praying so hard that she will feel good about the way that she ends her mission and that she will be ok with how it all ends up!
I have such a testimony of the power of priesthood! I have to share a quick experience with you that happened to me last night. I am not going to go into much detail just because of the sacredness it has to me, but in a sense this is what happened. We were teaching a lady who lost her husband this year. We were talking about the plan of salvation and she has been having a hard time with the thought of him maybe not excepting the gospel. At the end of the lesson I had the impression to give her a blessing. She accepted our offer and in the blessing many amazing things were said, but the one thing that I felt so prompted to tell her, was that he husband is in the process of accepting the Gospel as we speak. As the blessing ended, the spirit was like a thick fog in that room! We had brought with us a new 18 year old priest that honestly did not want to come at first. He is not really thinking about a mission but I'll tell you, after that experience that he was able to witness he came out of that house and said that he was going on a mission and that that changed his life. It changed mine too. The priesthood is an amazing thing. I have never been able to promise something like that to someone! It was a life changing experience. I love the priesthood and the power that it is to our family. I am thankful to have a father in my life that has always been worthy to use his priesthood and to have a mother that taught me to honor it and to respect it. I wish that I had understood the power of it before this, but I am sure excited to use it in the future to bless the life of my future wife and kids. I have been so blessed out here in my mission! Thank you everyone and may the Lord Bless you all this new years season!
With all my love
Elder Shelley!
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