June 26, 2018

This week has been great! We had interviews with our mission president and he said he still hadn't figured out what areas he is going to combine, but that it is possible our ward, Oak Harbor 2nd will combine with Oak Harbor 1st ward..So if it does, i'm probably getting booted out, but we will see. There are around 20 missionaries going home this transfer and none coming in so we have to combine about 10 areas and won't have the luxury of having missionaries in every ward. But it's exciting, we are welcoming in the Bothel, Shore Line, and North Seattle Stakes into our mission today! We are picking up a couple new languages as well! We will have Russian, ASL, some Chinese language and something else haha! There will be one lucky sister missionary who will have to switch to learning Russian... yikes! Hopefully not me:)  

We went to the temple today!! It was so amazing. We have been on a 2 day 1 night exchange since Monday Morning. I am with Sister Price from Oak Harbor 1st and we were able to work in both our areas yesterday. It was so fun, we both had the feeling to knock a specific door and we were able to meet Zach! He is 17 and just graduated, he is going into the air force, but he is way cool and wants to develop a relationship with Christ! so we were able to set up a return appointment with him, but we forgot to pray with him, so halfway down the stairs I was like, "why didn't we make him a new investigator!?" I was determined to, so we went back up and knocked again. He said, "Back so soon??" haha, so we prayed with him and it was great:)

Updates:

Our investigator John who has read the entire Book Of Mormon and up to D&C 110 is now on date for August 25th! We are way excited for him!

Sad News...5 of our investigators dropped us for some reason or another last week.. it was very heart breaking..But that just leaves room for those that are elect and ready to accept the gospel in their lives.

I am so grateful for the opportunity we had to be inside our Lord's Holy Temple today, It has been 9 months since I have done an endowment session and it was just amazing. Our wonderful member Sister Marriott drove us down and we were lucky enough to be in a live endowment session with a girl who was going through for her first time! Shout out to my family for hooking me up with a name to go to the temple with last minute, it was very special. We went to a farmers market on the way back in Mount Vernon and got the best ice cream in a waffle cone and fresh strawberries and rasberries! I also bought Tayberry Jam:) super fun.

The Gospel is real and will improve the quality of each of our lives and bring us greater purpose in this life. I know that we have a Loving Heavenly Father above who is mindful of us each day, He never goes on vacation, He is there 24/7. His whole purpose is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" Moses 1:39. I love you all, remember that you are watched over every second of everyday, it's up to us to reach out to Him.

Love,

Sister Stokes