Hermana Mary DeWitt: Lessons, Blessings, and Following Promptings!

It's been a bit of a crazy week, so here are some highlights!

We went and visited Kumiko (a less active member) and taught her and her two kids about the Gospel of Jesus Christ on Wednesday! We taught a lot of it to the kids to keep them engaged, but I think it also helped Kumiko realize some important changes that need to happen in her life before she can go to the temple with her family! We still hadn't met her significant other, so we asked if we could come back on Sunday and teach all four of them together! When we went back on Sunday, Kumiko told us that her significant other didn't want to even come out and say hi to us, which made us really sad. Hopefully, the Lord will soften his heart and we can help them progress towards marriage and being sealed in the temple!

On Friday, we had a lesson with Kylie (another less active member). They've just had a loss in the family, so we decided to teach the Plan of Salvation and focus on the Spirit World and temple work. We also taught them how to pray and invited them to pray together as a family each day.

Also on Friday, we had a lesson with Fabiola and reviewed the Restoration. She's still having health issues and wanted to wait to get baptized until she gets better and doesn't feel so nervous about it. We asked her if she would like a priesthood blessing, but she said she was too nervous to even do that! We explained that she really just has to sit there while the Elders put their hands on her head and give her a blessing (not scary at all!), but she still said she wanted to wait (for what, I don't know!) Then, on Sunday, she randomly called us (on someone else's phone, because she doesn't have a phone) and asked us to come "right now"! We were eating lunch with the District, so we asked the Spanish Elders to come along and just give her a blessing, even though she didn't ask for it! I was feeling a little bit nervous aboutit, and prayed that everything would turn out ok! We met her at the park and when she saw the Elders pull up, she said "Oh good! You brought the Elders! Can I get that blessing now?" We were BLOWN away! They gave her a blessing and we said we would come back the next day to have a lesson. On Monday, she opened up the door and quickly said "It worked! It worked! That prayer with the oil worked!" She told us about how since that blessing, she's felt SO much better and is so glad she got that blessing! We talked about baptism, and she's finally going to move her baptismal date back up to December instead of February (hopefully!)! We invited her to pray about December 18th vs. 25th!

On Friday night, we had dinner with the Goetz (pronounced "Getz" because Americans don't know how to pronounce German names for some reason). We had planned to teach them the Restoration, but during the dinner, Sister Goetz started telling us her life story and both Hermana Shumway and I quickly realized they needed a different message. Suddenly, the video "You Never Know" (made by the church back in 2014) popped into my mind and so I mentioned it. (If you guys haven't seen it, I encourage you to go watch it!) Neither of them had seen it before, so Hermana Shumway said, "Let's watch it together!" I pulled it up on my phone and we watched the video. As we watched it, I kept thinking, "I really hope this is what Sister Goetz needs...", but when I looked over at her towards the end of the video, I saw her wiping away tears and smiling! I was SO glad we followed the Spirit and were able to help her recognize the good things that she does.

Here's my Personal Study excerpt for the week:

2 Nephi 6:17 - "...the Mighty God shall deliver His covenant people. For thus saith the Lord: I will contend with them that contendeth with thee."

---When we've made covenants with God, He promises to deliver us and help us during our trials! We've chosen to be on the Lord's side in this battle of good and evil, and spoiler alert!: Satan LOSES! As long as we keep our covenants and remain His covenant people, everything will turn out in the end!

I invite you all to study about the temple and review your covenants (especially if you haven't been able to go to the temple in a while!) I promise that as you study and review your promises with God, you'll be more able to fully keep them and retain the promised blessings!

Love you all and have an amazing week!