FORGET YOURSELF AND GO TO WORK!

Hey hey hey!

Wow. What a great/stressful/spiritual/inspirational/crazy/wonderful week!!

Monday we ate at Slug and Lettuce (a well known pup around here) with some other missionaries and that was great! It's half price on Mondays, so the staff there know the missionaries haha. Never thought I would be recognised at a pub! But it was a lot of fun. :)

Tuesday we had district meeting and Sister Wai gave an AMAZING training on accountability. Then we had to travel forever away to meet Chioma, to teach her the last bit of things before her baptism on Saturday! (So, she technically lives outside of our ward boundaries, but because she is engaged to a member in Whitechapel, this is her ward. :)) So we had a wonderful lesson with her, and talked about how she was feeling, and she was so ready and excited! :)

Wednesday we were able to see Sandra again. We brought her cookies and had a great lesson where we read from Ether 12 and discussed it. She is SO sweet. She has such strong faith, we are just helping her put that faith into action to get her to church. :)

Thursday we had an appointment with Serena (Michael’s friend) but she had a family emergency come up, so we have to reschedule. But we left cookies on her doorstep. :) Then we went to contact some church head quarter referrals. So here's something you need to know about the Whitechapel proselyting area. It's massive, and part of it is all the tourist places (Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus, St. Paul's Cathedral, etc...), another part is all the super posh areas, and another part is proper east London (ghetto and super dodgy). So we were going to contact the referrals and the address we had was the St. Pauls area, which is an EXTREMELY posh area, (and where St. Pauls Cathedral is!) So we walked into this huge building, which a spiral staircase, chandeliers, security, etc... to contact her. The address was bad, but MAN was it an experience! Haha so then we had lunch in a cute little park next to St. Pauls. One of the many blessings of serving in Whitechapel, you see all the sights, while you proselyte! :)

Friday we almost died. Probably theeeee most stressful day, EVER. So everything was good to do for the baptism the next day, we had called those we needed to, assigned refreshments, the interview had been conducted and she passed, program was set, etc...We were feeling good. But it was strange. It was as if it had all been TOO easy, like Satan wasn't actually trying to mess with us. And then at around 9:00 we encountered some major hiccups. We had about 30 minutes of suspense, just waiting for a phone call to let us know that the baptism was happening. Well...we got the call and it was all good. :) Whew! Haha but in those 30 minutes, I learned SO much about having faith that it was in the Lord's hands. We had done everything that we could, and it was literally all up to the Lord. If she was supposed to be baptised on Saturday, He would make it happen. We had to completely submit our will before we could feel any peace. And then we left it all up to Him. That is KEY to missionary work. We need to have faith the God will make things happen, but we need to do ALL that we can to make it happen.

Saturday started out great with a beautiful VC training meeting. We listened to a talk by President Hinckley called "The Church in the British Isles". He talked about the history of missionary work here in England, and his experience with his father’s advice of "forget yourself and go to work" and then Sister Lung and I gave a training on not giving up, how we forget ourself and go to work, and how we can become to person God can see us being. We talked about Peter’s journey from Simon to Peter. Preparing for this training, and then discussing it, was like a spiritual overload for me (in the best way possible). I am just SO grateful to be a British missionary! The legacy that missionaries have left, and the spirit I feel here are incredible. I KNOW that this is where I need to be. :)

Then that night, we had Chioma's baptism!! It was BEAUTIFUL. Ah, Incredible. She was just beaming and the ward is incredible and I just feel so blessed to have been able to witness this. The Gospel is TRUE and I have no doubt about it in my mind. Chioma is amazing and I feel so blessed to know her.

Sunday was great as well! It was her confirmation, and it was equally as wonderful. :) Then it was fast and testimony meeting and it was a powerful meeting. After we were talking to Chioma and she expressed to us how great she was feeling, and told us how her Dad had called from Nigeria to see how everything went, and after talking to him more, her and Charles were able to send him a Book of Mormon and he will begin to read. :)

Then we watched to women's conference and IT WAS INCREDIBLE. I loved every single minute of it.

Sunday night we contacted a bunch of referrals and potentials with one of the BYU study abroad students, Missy. She is great! It was so much fun and we met some great people that we will hopefully be seeing within the upcoming week. :)

Well! It was a crazy week, but I learned and grew so much. I'm just so grateful to be a missionary.

Love you all! Thanks for everything.

Xx-Sister Moody