week 16

fist of all... shout out to my mom who i love SO MUCH.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! i have the best mom in the whole wide world. how lucky am i :)

we had the most amazing week :) Simon got BAPTIZED! as did Betty! we had 2 baptisms yesterday which was so wonderful. we have been working with Simon for 2 months and he has come SO far! he has changed so much and seeing him in white just about killed me. "i feel so great! im new!" he even shaved off his beard for the service. im so proud of him :) Betty's was so tender as well, a 17 year old in our ward baptized her and it was so touching to see. their hug after she came up from the water was the cutest thing i have ever seen. tears filled my eyes.... how amazing it is to see God's children making that decision :) and THAT.... is why i love being a missionary.

we have also been working hard with the family i talked about in last weeks email, the man that ran up to me on the bus. we have met with him, his wife Marta, and his (depressed) son Steven almost everyday this week... the parents are preparing to be baptized on October 19! its a little harder to work with Steven but we have AWESOME members in the ward and he is really opening up to them and us. what a blessing that is. in one of the lessons this week, we had something totally different planned, but the spirit spoke to me 3 different times super strongly to hand Steven a picture of the Savior. the room went silent and after a few minutes with tears in his eyes... he said "He does know how i feel." Fernando (his dad) looked at us and started bawling. HE DOES know how we feel. at every moment. the following lesson as we were talking about the Restoration, Steven ran out of the room (he does that a lot.....) but he ran into the Primary room and up to the picture of the Savior and just started bawling. the Savior loves him so much and the Gospel is going to change his life. i love this family so much! haha Fernando is so cute... yesterday was their first day at church and him and his wife just ran up to the front row. he's pretty much already a member since him and Marta were fellowshipping up our other investigators after the baptismal service. MIRACLE.

we had the opportunity on Saturday to go to the TEMPLE! finally! we get to go 2x a year here, and it was so amazing! i can't even tell you how much i love the temple. how lucky are we? we had to get up at 3:30am to travel there (haha mom.. you would have died seeing me walk the streets here that early. picture NYC! yikes. good thing im a servant for the Lord:) but it was the greatest day ever. followed up with the General Womens meeting that night where all they talked about was TEMPLES. so amazing!

i love my mission. i love the Gospel. and this weekend is General Conference... basically Christmas!!!! i can't even wait :)

xoxo, HERMANA HORTON