Sister Hartley Serving in Florida. : Florida Here I Am!

HELLO!!! I have so much to tell you I don't even know where to start! First off thank you so much for all the emails and prayers. They bring so much strength and motivation, for I couldn't do it without all of you! I am in the Palm Beach zone and my first area is Boynton Beach south. It is crazy to see all the snow at home because it is so nice here! The humidity hasn't bothered me. Everyone says that I came at the perfect time because I can gradually lead into it. There are so many Haitians here! I have yet to have taught anyone white! I didn't see very many white people until church on Sunday! I love the Haitian people. They are so nice and welcoming and super prepared for the Gospel! Sorry I have so much to say I hope this all makes sense. I will start with my trainer. Her name is Sister Stegelmeier. I love her so much! She is tall, she is from Morgan Utah and has been out for 15 months so I will be her last companion. She is such an amazing missionary and I am so blessed to have her. She is an amazing missionary. I mean it 100% when I say she is the best sister missionary in the mission. She just finished being a sister training leader and even president told me how blessed I was to get her as my trainer. I love her and know if I follow her example I will be a successful missionary.

I am so excited to be a Florida Fort Lauderdale missionary. This is an amazing mission. Gods work is moving fast in this area. With the Temple coming everyone is so prepared. We are a baptizing mission. It has been number one in North America on and off for the past year. We even had a baptism yesterday! Her name was Patricia. The sisters before us taught her almost everything but we taught her the commandments and committed her to the Word of Wisdom. She accepted and was baptized yesterday! I had a baptism on my first sunday! I am so blessed to have played a part in conversion. It was so amazing. I want to baptize every sunday because it is awesome! We have an amazing finding tool called harvesting. We knock on the persons door and tell them we are representatives of Jesus Christ and he has sent has to there door to leave a powerful blessing on there home and family. They let us in or we say it on the front porch. The elders bless them with the priesthood but us sisters say "Our Heavenly Father, in virtue of our calling as missionaries and representatives of Jesus Christ we ask for the Saviors peace and blessing to be upon ___________. We then proceed to bless them as the spirit directs. The spirit is always so strong as we finish. We then talk about the Holy Ghost and commit them to baptism right then! At first I was worried that no one would accept but the spirit is so strong and people are so prepared that we almost always have people accept right away! It is so awesome! Harvesting is such an amazing finding tool! I love it. We have seen so many miracles already from it. I want to share one quick story. We had one hour left on saturday night before we had to be back. We are commanded to harvest for one hour. We had a family we wanted to go see but we hadn't harvested yet so we decided to do that. We knocked on a door that we felt prompted to and were immedieatly let in. His name was Jean and his family was there. They recently came from Haiti. We blessed them and the spirit was SO STRONG! He told us how he was a Jehovah's Witness and had been to many churches and was comfortable with them but that he had never felt the way he was. He told us that he wasn't planning on being home that night and he is always super hard to catch but he felt he needed to stay home that night. He said that he knew God sent us to him! It was so amazing. I have been praying hard for Charity and in that moment God answered my prayer. I all of a sudden felt such a love for this man and his family. I wanted them so bad to get baptized right then and there so they could go to the temple! It brought tears to my eyes as I shared with him how much I loved him and that he was my brother and that he needed to be a member of the church of Jesus Christ. The spirit was so strong it was amazing! I want every teaching experience to be like that. I felt prompted to give him a Book of Mormon which he readily accepted and said he would start reading it right away. Man I just love being a missionary! I really want to teach them but they would do better in Creole so we will pass them onto the Elders.

There is our companionship and two sets of Elders that cover this particular area... we are all over the same ward. The ward is awesome. We have so many willing members that will come teach with us. We have only been here since Wednesday and already have had 9 member present lessons! That is such a miracle. This area has so much potential between the members and people being prepared we are going to see so many miracles! Missionary work is so awesome. I have so much I want to say but I don't have a ton of time so please just know that this is God's work and I am but an instrument in it. I love all my brothers and sisters and want them so bad to enter the waters of baptism that they might begin that path back to there loving father in heaven. We see so many miracles each day. So many that I honestly couldn't count them all. Thank you for all the prayers. It is the reason we see so much success.