Wonders from the Land Down Under: 12 December 2017 Letter

Well Christmas is coming very quickly, its already the 12th!

This week has had some disappointments, but of course many miracles as well, enough to overcompensate for the disappointments.

The main disappointment was that the mother of our 18 year old investigator, Jake, came home from jail and told us that he is not interested and that he had just been too kind to say no. We know that that is not the case, but that he also does not want to disappoint his mom now that he has her home again. We are not sure where to go from here, but his fellowshipper, Aki, who is a returned missionary went around to his place to see how he is and invite him to church. He said that the mother was kind enough to him but that they were just busy this week. I am thankful that he is still in contact with Aki and hopefully he can help him to have the courage to keep learning and progressing towards baptism should he want to.

A miracle this week was our 11 year old investigator, Piripi, came to church on his own this week for the first time, even though his mum, who is a less active member was not well enough to go! He came with bishop's wife and two kids. Bishop gave him permission to go to young men's because he turns 12 soon and there are more friends his age there. He is so good!

The Halak family from Iraq was not able to come to church yesterday, but hopefully we will be seeing them soon.

Another miracle was that we both felt that we needed to try a former investigator, we only dropped last transfer named Quoc. We both felt that we hadn't given him enough effort before dropping him because the difficulty was simply meeting up. We stopped by on Saturday and miraculously he was home and brought some chairs outside for us all to sit on. We ended up sharing a lot about the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was talking about how people are more blessed when they are not compelled to believe. Both Sis. H and I thought of Alma 32 that we had studied together just the night before about more blessed are those who are humble without being compelled to be by their circumstance and Sis H related it to baptism. After sharing that, he said that we convinced him, that he knows he needs to be baptized even though he already has been in a different church, and that this is the right step for him on his journey of faith. He is amazing! I don't even know how it happened because it was basically as though he talked himself into it without us realizing. Unfortunately he is going out of town until January, but we are excited to help him to be baptized soon!

We also had unexpected interviews with President and Sister Bingham this week, which was greatly needed to be uplifted and strengthened by them. I am grateful for this area and the wonderful things happening in it ! I am especially grateful for Sister Haretuku who really makes up for where I lack. I am so grateful that we are put into companionships!

Hope you all have a great week! Light the world wherever you are this week!

Love,

Sister Pace

Beautiful sunsets outside our flat window happen so often, but they my camera usually can't do them justice:/