Knee deep water: a mission theme ?

Dear family and friends,

Each week I just fall deeper and deeper in love with what I get to do.  My mission here is to help others, yes, but looking back, my mission has been changing me the most.  Taking stock of where I am now and where I was pre-mish, I've seen a completely different level of conversion to the Gospel in my life.  Would I have made it to where I am eventually?  Sure.  Eventually.  Reeeeally eventually.  Did I have a testimony before my mission?  Absolutely!  Was the Gospel the most important aspect of my life, infused into every molecule and gene that makes me who I am, what drives me to follow Christ's example as closely as possible and set all else aside?  No.  And I will never return to that.  The Gospel is my LIFE now, and always will be.

Anyway!  Awesome week!  Sister McKnight and I decided to set a goal for 20 lessons taught to investigators with a member present this week, which is a BIG number, and we got 21.  And more and more, we've been talking about how we really do nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  None of our success comes back to us.  We just work as hard as we can and remain obedient to the mission rules, and Heavenly Father blesses us with oppotunities and aid that we could never come by on our own.  He's so good to us!  It's like He loves us, or something!

Theresa's baptism was beautiful!!  The water was knee-deep (hmmm... mission theme?), and it took three tries to get her completely immersed (and the first time he dropped her on the way up.... oops), but it was absolutely beautiful.  And funny enough, because Kamryn had gone through the same thing, I was able to let them know a way they could make it work--lay her on the ground.  What's that?  Everything happens for a reason?  Oh, ok!  But yes, she's wonderful and so excited to be a part of this Church, but more importantly, to follow in Christ's example by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God.

Ok, so this week, we were knocking on one of our investigator's doors, but he wasn't there. So we started hiding against the walls next to their apartments so they couldn't see our tags and not answer. The second time we did, I kind of just threw myself into the wall. A few seconds later, the door next to us opened up and a girl straight out of India appears, wondering who knocked on her door. So then we proceed to get to know her and invite her to church as well as we could with the Hindi-English language barrier standing stalwartly between us. When Sister McKnight finally pulled out a pamphlet with a picture of a church service at the end of our discussion, she said she wouldn't come to church. But she was super nice!

Chriss is just awesome.  It's been amazing to see the Spirit working on so obviously!  When we first met her, she told us she was born a Catholic, she'll die a Catholic, and she had taken lessons from missionaries years ago and it didn't do anything.  We asked her and her daughter if they would try again, and when her daughter said no, we expected the same from Chriss.  "...Well, I guess we could try again."  We left her with a Book of Mormon that she said she probably wouldn't read.  When we went over the next time, she had read the first few pages.  We talked about the Restoration, and when Sister McKnight related the account of the First Vision, we paused for a while.  "...Pretty powerful."  Whoa!  And THEN we invited her to be baptized on a specific day, which at first she outright declined, but then after another pause, she said she would work on it.  Daaang!  We've been going over every few days to read the Book of Mormon with her due to her eyesight, and the workings of the Holy Ghost are deliciously apparent.

Read Alma 26 this week.  It's pretty much how I feel every day: indescribable.

I love you all.  I love the Lord.  I love His Gospel.  It means everything to me.

Love,

Sister Jacobson

Pics:

1. Theresa!

2. Awesome group of people.  We later did our best Adele impressions and ate brownies.