Tuesday 28 April 2015

Here it is the last email...

Welland let me tell you.. it is going to be the best one yet. It has been a week full of many miraculous miracles. Here are a few weeks highlights for you:

The Seminary teacher has been out of town so the Elders and us have been teaching. We needed to teach five days so we had a contest with the Elders to see who had to do 3... unfortunately we just BARELY lost! So we had to get up at 5:20 3 days in a row to teach early morning seminary! Let me tell you I respect those kids so much for doing that every single day. Sister Montague and I were so tired from it!!! It was incredible though to spend that time with the youth. It really helped me to see how much I have grown and matured on my mission especially in teaching the Gospel. It was a lot of fun. 

On Thursday we had dinner at the Bishop's house with the Elders. Together, we talked about how we could really magnify our faith with the Day of Service Activity to get people to teach from it. We all decided to fast together the next day. So on Friday Bishop, his wife, the Elders, and us all fasted. It was an incredible experience of missionaries uniting with the members. Bishop's wife texted us and told of the tender mercies they were seeing and we texted them back ours as well. It was such a unifying effort it was great. I have grown to love Bishop so much. I am so grateful for the trust that we have developed with him. The ward really needed that.

Saturday was the annual Indian River County Day of Service. Our church hosts it every year. Different organizations and congregations all get together and do different service activities. The kick off is at the church. It was great!!! So many non members everywhere... It was so great to see church vans pull up and get out at our church.. haha Sister Montague and I were put with the Bishop, Stake President, and a  Rabbi and his congregation for our project which was a highway clean up. It was amazing to work along side these wonderful jewish people. You can imagine our conversations. We were able to give one of them a Book of Mormon so we were thrilled about that. It was great to see the community come together and serve along side each other regardless of what religion we are. They are amazing individuals in this community with sincere desires to help others and serve the Lord... now if they would only read the Book of Mormon... 

We had an incredible island miracle this week! There is so much that went into it but I will give the short version... Lets just say we biked over 6 miles on the island until we found a street we could actually knock... we knocked the whole street and no one would even open the door and the people we contacted on the street quickly shewed us away... Both Sister Montague and I were doing all we could to keep our faith high. We just kept saying, "God's prepared people on the island. God's prepared people on the island." and guess what on the LAST door when we were about to stop we found them! An amazing couple that accepted all of our invitations. Miracle and I know they will be baptized. Island miracles are the best. We work hard for them so when they come it is a sweet sweet experience. 

We continue to bike everyday. The other day a UPS guy stopped us and said wow you are everywhere.. we asked "O you have seen missionaries before?" He quickly responded "No you TWO are literally everywhere on those bikes. What are you doing?" He said he has seen us all over as he does his various routes everyday. I KNOW that biking brings blessings. Physical and Spiritual. haha 

My heart is truly so full. I can't believe that it has been 18 months. Words cannot express how I feel. I know that this is the Lord's work and I will never stop doing it. 

I will see you all soon! 

Love,

Sister Hartley 

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