letter dated November 5, 2012

hey mom!

haha man you describing our fall weather is exactly what the summers are like here! its weird i'm sure my blood has thickened cause i can go outside and have it be between 50 and 60 and i dont really need a coat on just a cardigan, if that. but this week was awesome!!!

first let me tell you about transfers. so i'm getting transfered to tacoma! its a newer sisters area called soundview it is right next to skyline where i was serving last christmas. sisters got put in there 3 months ago and have just been kicking butt so now i get to go and try to keep the momentum going, so i am way pumped! this will probably be my last area that i serve in so i'm really stoked that it gets to be tacoma. it is right across the pudget sound from where i'm serving in gig harbor so i've spent a lot of my mission surrounding the narrows bridge (just look it up on google) but i am way sad to be leaving gig harbor.. i put a lot of work into building relationships with the members and i'm going to miss them a lot..

okay so we had the most incredible miracle this week! but i'm going to talk about hayleys baptism first. so hayley was baptized on friday and she was just so happy and her mom came and the singles ward was really supportive and stuff. she just said she felt soooo clean and happy which made me happy! and then after she got confirmed on sunday she came up to us after sacrament meeting and was like guys i need to tell you something
so we step outside and she says "i just wanted to thank you guys for teaching me and showing me this. and guiding me to the light." it was awesome. she said more then that but basically she just kept saying thank you!

okay so my great miracle for the week was this: so we were knocking doors on tuesday and as we were knocking i was extremely thirsty, and so was sister douros. and we just kept telling each other how thirsty we were. so i prayed in my head that someone would offer us a drink of water and sister douros did the same thing but we both had no idea that we each had prayed for that. so we come up to this door and a lady answer and (its pouring rain. shocker i know...) and she is a little bit stand off-ish but we tell her who we are and she just looks at us and says do you need an umbrella and we are like no thank you, its really kinda pointless cause it rains and mists so you really need a bubble not an umbrella, anyways so i think that she is just going to say no thank you about our message but instead she is like are you sure you dont want one? how about a drink of water? so me and douros both say YES! to the drink of water. so she invites us inside and has us sit at her kitchen table, and then she turns and asks us if she can visit with us and so of course we say yes and she says "okay hold on i gotta get something" so she runs to the backroom and brings out a copy of the book of mormon and i'm like "where did you get that from?!" and she says " a client of mine gave it to me last christmas, i have a question for you guys.." so we say "okay what is it?" and she says "well i want you to talk first.." so sister douros looks at me like come on say something haha so i just tell her that the message we share with people is about Jesus Christ and his Atonement and how we can be healed through him. and i said some other stuff but i dont remember exactly what it was. so then the lady starts talking and she say "okay my name is tina" and she proceeds to tell us this story about how her exhusband was extremely abusive to her and her kids their entire marriage and she stayed with him all the way until her kids were grown and moved out. and then one day she couldn't take it anymore so she fled from him and to her marriage is supposed to last forever and if you break your vows you make when you are married you are going to hell. so in her eyes she was going to hell because she left her husband and that was keeping her end of the marriage promise, so we reassured her that that wasnt true and then we taught her the plan of salvation, and the entire time she was just soaking it all and saying ok teach me more, teach me more. so in the middle of the lesson we talked about baptism and she says okay how do i get baptized so we told her what she needs to do and we set a baptismal date for the 17th of this month. and then at the end of the lesson we read the intro of the book of mormon with her and we asked if she would pray right then and there with us if it was true. and she says sure. so we all kneel down and she looks at me and says ok you pray and i say okay how about i pray and then you, and she agrees. so i pray and then tina prays and in her prayer she forgot to ask if the book of mormon was true and so when she got done i asked her if she would pray one more time but this time ask about the book of mormon and this is what our conversation went like:

"okay will you pray this time and ask if the book of mormon is true?"

"no."

"what?? why not?"

"because i dont need to.."

"why dont you need to?"

"because i know its true"

"how do you know?"
"i can feel it"

"where?"

"my heart."

it was sooooo coool!!! and the spirit was SO strong and we set up a time to come teach her again and she just hugged and kissed us on the cheek our entire way out her door and as i walked out of her house i just felt like falling to the floor and crying cause i was so happy. it was nuts..

so that was my week haha i love you and miss you!!

love tay