Sweet Is The Work: the pure love OF Christ

Hello lovely people :)

Hope life is treating you all well! This week has been good!

Tuesday was transfer meeting!

Can I just say how sad I was to send Sister Johns home?

So. Flippin. Sad. We're like besties, so that was a bummer.

But it all worked out because I got an awesome new companion :)
Her name is Sister Nordstrom! Yep, just like the store.
And that's totally my favorite store, so its obviously meant to be ;)

She is super sweet! She is my same age, from Elko, Nevada, went to LDS Business College before the mission, has been out for 10 months,
and I'll be training her to be a sister training leader!

So it will be a great transfer.

This week we spent a lot of time going to visit all the sisters in our zone and get to know them and set goals with them and things like that. We're over 5 sets of sisters and all of them are training a new missionary, its kind of crazy. Lots of new sisters! But its fun.

On Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with our recent convert Austin!

He is just my favorite human, he kills me.

We were teaching him the new member lesson on the Plan of Salvation and I asked him what part of the plan has made the biggest impact on his life and he said that it was the Atonement and knowing that he can change and be better and that simply knowing he can be forgiven has made all the difference. I love seeing the Atonement work in people's lives!

And the craziest thing is, Austin had a friend growing up that was just crazy and partied a lot and when Austin was investigating this friend was giving him a really hard time. But! Guess what. The Chippenham YSA missionaries in Richmond tracted into Austin's friend and because Austin just got baptized he let them in! And now his friend is preparing to be baptized. :) So crazy! And Austin got the priesthood yesterday so hopefully he will be able to baptize his friend!

So many miracles happening, makes my heart happy :)

We had a lot of people not show up to lessons this week though.... which is super lame. So we are just trying to find the elect! They're out there, so we just gotta find them.

We had an awesome day on Saturday though! So the community puts on this thing every year called "School Dressing Days". Its pretty much a clothing and school supply drive that less fortunate people in the community can come and sign up and just get free backpacks, clothes, shoes, supplies, etc for their kids as they go back to school.

It was such a great experience to see all of these cute little kids who have nothing and how happy and grateful they were to just have enough for their needs.

We even got to wear Mormon Helping Hands vests, which is like my dream, nbd. ;)

Service is the most rewarding thing though! I love it.

I have been studying a little bit about charity lately, and something that my mission president said has always stuck with me.

We have all heard the scripture in Moroni 7:47,

"But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him."

Usually when people talk about that verse, they say that charity is the pure love that Christ has for us, which is true. But, what my mission president said is, what if charity is exactly what it says, the pure love of Christ? The pure love that we have for Christ.
If we truly love Christ with a pure love,
we will automatically and naturally,
love and serve and have charity for those around us.
So the more we love our Savior, the more we love our brothers and sisters.

Things are going great though! The work is good and I love this city and I love Virginia
and I love the people in it.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and look for those little opportunities to love and serve!

XOXO,

Sister Fowers