Chapter 55: The Two Year Mark

Ashtian's baptism!

7/13/2021

Today was the first day of three for our Zone Conference week. Typically we’ve only been having one day of Zone Conference a transfer, but this one was a special one because it’s going to go all week. Today we were supposed to be combined with our members, but it didn’t go very well. Our Ward Mission Leader doesn’t have an email and that was apparently how our Mission President asked the Ward Mission Leaders for each area to get members to these conferences, which we found out when we sat down for our Zone Conference and we had no members there. Zone Conference was still an awesome opportunity to learn more about how to work with members, though, and we were able to put what we learned into practice with the lessons we learned for the rest of the day.

7/14/2021

Zone Conference day two: Today we got to learn more about using Facebook to do missionary work it was good to talk about some of the areas that are considered weaker for our mission. We got to have a lesson with Ashtian today and talk about how she was feeling in preparation for her baptism. She had finished reading through The Book of Mormon up to 2 Nephi 1, so we read through 2 Nephi 2 with her tonight and it was an awesome experience to talk about how there was happiness and a punishment affixed to each law, and our agency allows us to choose which we will receive.

7/15/2021

Today was our last day of Zone Conference and the best one for Elder Aguirre, Elder Rindlisbacher and myself because we got to go in person and the other ones were just over Zoom. We got to see a lot of people from the neighboring Zones, like Elder Gomez. It was awesome to reunite with him for a while. We got to have a meal in person which I never thought would happen in my time serving as a missionary. I also got to give my departing testimony as a missionary today. We were told that a time range of two minutes would probably be a good time to aim for and I ended up speaking for eight. It was still good though.

7/16/2021

Today was an awesome, but very tiring day. When we were talking to Ashtian about her baptism tomorrow she was pretty excited, and started counting down the hours with us until she would be baptized. We also had a few pickup lessons. We started teaching two of our neighbors, as well as someone who we met at a gas station. The woman from the gas station told us at the start of our message that she had seen a vision of an angel, and that when we spoke to her that we said word for word the same message that the angel had delivered to her. She told us that she had been humbled and wanted to make the changes that we would invite her to do, so we invited her to be baptized, and she accepted. 

7/17/2021

Today was a great day. We found a lot of new people to teach, and we got to see Ashtian be baptized. We had a lot of people attend Ashtian’s baptism, including Sister Papurt, and she seemed to enjoy the baptism as well. Ashtian was very happy afterwards, and we’re excited for her confirmation tomorrow. The baptism was a really neat experience, and we were so proud to see Ashtian’s faith displayed so proudly. She’s been doing such a great job with reading from The Book of Mormon, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen someone more prepared to be baptized.

7/18/2021

Today Ashtian was confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Ashtian received the gift of the Holy Ghost, and we got to participate in the ordinance. Elder Rindlisbacher and I also got to give talks today in church. I didn’t realize it but I accidentally spoke for twenty minutes instead of ten. It all worked out okay, though. Afterwards I heard from a couple of investigators that we had there, they told me, “Brother Anderson, I don’t care what you do for the rest of your life, but you need to continue with the preaching of the word”. So at least talking for twenty minutes didn’t scare our investigators away.

Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a verse that stuck out to me from 2 Nephi 20:27. This verse is one that talks about the spiritual liberation we can receive through Jesus Christ: And it shall come to pass in that day that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

Jesus Christ is no longer just "The Anointed One", or The Messiah, rather, He is The Anointing one and anoints us that we might be able to become joint-heirs with Him, as we jointly work to overcome the yoke of sin.