Email No. 44

Hello hello hello family!!!

So. Our iPads broke. More specifically our AreaBook. My recollection of what happened this past week down to about zero. Planning has become quite difficult, but nothing that we can't handle. We don't have any paper planners so we are using the good ol' calendar app.

But, Keri did end up getting baptized!!!! We met with her last Monday and it ended up that she went to a "College Days" somewhere in Maine.  She had brought her Book of Mormon with her and apparently a professor saw it and pulled her aside and proceeded to tell her the craziest anti-Mormon things I have ever heard in my life. We met with her that night and smoothed things out and she walked away feeling a lot better. But then. We woke Saturday morning. I looked at the phone just before we started exercising and we saw that we had received a couple texts from her. I won't say what she said, but basically one of her friends had emailed her a ton of anti-literature and she no longer wanted to be baptized because she was confused. Sister Hoopes and decided that it would be prudent to meet with her and see what happened. What commenced was the most amazing lesson. We went over and talked it over. Sister Hoopes and I prayed that we would have the Spirit with us. We went in and talked and it was amazing. The Spirit always directed us towards the Book of Mormon. By the end, we asked Keri, "So what do you want to do?" She said that she wanted to be baptized. She then gave the closing prayer and in it she said, "I know that I don't have a lot of light yet, but I have enough to move
forward and get baptized." The baptism was beautiful and she was so excited. I cannot wait to see what she does in Christ's church.

I love this gospel and the longer that I am a missionary, the more I love it. I have grown and learned and I dread the day that I have to come home. I hit my ten month mark this past week and I feel like the months are going by faster and faster. Sister Hoopes and I were talking with some elders today about how missions change you and then we talked about the Atonement. It seems that my thoughts and conversations are always directed towards the topic of the Savior. And I love it.

I feel as though I will never be the same. Watching the Atonement change me and change those around me has been the best experience of my life. I used to think that the Atonement soul just fill in the gaps of where I mess up. And I realized that that is not what the Atonement is. As Brad Wilcox says, "Christ doesn't make up the difference; He makes all the difference." If I could pick a hymn this week of how I feel it would be "Come Thou Fount":

Come, thou Fount of every blessing;
Tune my heart to sing thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise the mount; I'm fixed upon it:
Mount of thy redeeming love.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, as a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for thy courts above.

I love you all. Remember who you are.

Love,
Sister Grace Sewell