Wow, this has been the craziest week of my mission!!

Hi!!!

This has been the craziest week of my mission! So in the last week's email I mentioned a guy, who accepted a date to be baptized. Well, we went back two days later to teach his wife the first lesson. She accepted a date too! We also found out that the oldest child is eight years old. We went back again this week and taught them the plan of salvation with a cute married couple who are members. We focused a lot on eternal families and by their body language it seemed to be something that they really wanted. We asked the member couple to bear their testimony about being an eternal family and it brought the spirit so strong. They've been reading the BofM and the husband (they're the Franklins) has been talking to church members at his work about the BofM. The struggle with them (and their always seems to be something that hinders an investigator and could keep them from getting baptized) is they both have crazy work schedules and the usually work on Sundays. For someone to get baptized they have to come to church at least twice. So we are praying really hard that when they get their schedules on Thursday that they will have sunday off because this weekend is Stake Conference and Elder Nelson, an apostle, is coming.
We are also teaching another family, the Dikemans. We started teaching this family awhile back but only the boyfriend was interested in learning more and the girlfriend wasn't interested but liked us coming over. Neither were too excited about baptism when we asked if they wanted to be baptized the first time we taught them. Since the first time we taught them, which was over a month ago, we've only met with them 2-3 times. We decided to do a "do or die" lesson with them on Monday night. Which means that if they won't commit to setting a goal to be baptized that we won't meet with them again and use that time to look for more solid investigators.
That night, we asked the boyfriend during the lesson if he believes that this is Christ church. He told us that he does and that he knows it's true. (That's music to a missionaries ears!!) The girlfriend, Angela, seemed more interested during this lesson so we committed her to find out for herself it was true. We set a baptismal goal with them for the 17th (the same for the Franklins too.) An important thing with teaching people, is to have daily contact with them so that they can continually feel the spirit and will know that being baptized should be a big focus. A couple of days later we did a church tour with them so that we could get them in the church building and that they could feel the spirit there. This time the roles switched. The girlfriend seemed super excited about church and the boyfriend seemed nervous. (He has social anxiety so large groups are a problem for him.) The next day at our next lesson, the girlfriend told us that she had a dream the night before the church tour. That night she had been praying about the church and in that dream she was getting baptized. She said that when we opened up the font at the church tour, it was just like in her dream. When she said that, I almost cried! I could see that joy on her face and her strong desire to want to get baptized. Now she is so solid and is doing everything we ask of her so that she can get baptized!
However, during that lesson, they broke out into a small fight about how they've been together four years and with two kids and how they still aren't married. Our eyes were so huge! We thought that they had been married the whole time. We didn't want to tell them that they would have to get married if they wanted to be baptized. Because they were soooo excited about baptism and we thought that we were safe for the 17th. So that night we prayed so hard that God would give us the strength and courage to be bold with them when we taught the law of Chastity and told them that they had to get married since they are living together under common law. The problem is with the boyfriend. He's had bad experiences with past girlfriends that keep him from wanting to get married because he doesn't want history to repeat itself. The girlfriend is all for it and would do it tomorrow if he said yes. We were able to tell him that he needed to get married. He wants to but not yet. But they both came to church on Sunday which was a first for me. All I can tell you is that it is super stressful having investigators at church because you are worried about someone saying something about deep doctrine. We are praying really hard for both families to help them overcome their road blocks and can reach their baptismal date of Jan 17th.
But it has been wonderful to have someone to teach but, man, having investigators is so stressful. I always think to myself, "I prayed for this!?"
Remember the church is true so keep the faith!

Love Sister Sumsion