Hello, friends and family!!!
Hope you all had the best 24th of July and enjoyed Pioneer Day for me! Those of you who are in Utah, know it's the best state ever! Did you know Utah used to be part of Mexico? Brigham Young and the pioneers went with so much faith knowing the Lord's hand would be in their work and he promised that, now look!! UTAH IS NOW IN AMERICA AND THE BEST PLACE EVER!
It's always freezing in our apartment
This week we put Nathan and Matthew on date. They are 9 and 11!! I'll make a really long story short! But anyway, when I was serving in the Piedmont Ward, we would reach out to Sister Grayson (their mom) all the time and she would never get back to us! She is from El Salvador and her husband isn't a member and he's never home, so the Elders couldn't work with them. We stopped by this week and introduced ourselves. She invited us in and told us she really wants her kids baptized, so Matthew and Nathan came running in and we asked them if that's what they wanted, too. They both said yes! They have been going to church their whole lives and things just started getting in the way. So, this week we are having all the lessons with them and looking forward to them being baptized on August 20th!
We also had a lesson with Makenzie this week, she is 11 and her grandparents were recently baptized! So, while we are teaching them the new convert lessons she has been joining in and we are teaching her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we were talking about Jesus Christ, she stopped us and asked who Jesus Christ was and said she doesn't know who God is. When we got in the car, me and Sister Stauffer talked about how lucky we are and how we are so excited to help her understand more about the best person there is!
I'll share something funny that happened to us the other day! The Elders warned us about this guy named Danny! They didn't tell us anything more and said they wanted us to find out for ourselves haha! So, Thursday we get a call from him, and we answer and the conversation starts out great. We are talking about our faiths and our religions and how much we just love God! At this point we were like this guy is awesome we don't know what they're talking about... then he starts going off about the Bible and how we don't read it and we told him that we do but we also have the Book of Mormon! I did not believe in Bible bashing and what people said about it until it was happening to us... we could not end this conversation without him getting more and more into it all! But it made us laugh, and we know that Danny is a great guy with even greater faith!
To finish, we had Zone Conference this week and it's always the best thing ever! Hearing the advice from President and Sister Hutchison is so inspired. They shared this week with us about becoming "NEVER FALL AWAY SAINTS" and to build our testimonies so much that we can say, "I have learned for myself..." (JS-H 1:20)
This puts everything into a bigger picture for me, such as asking myself, "How can I become a never fall away saint?" The answer is simple it's to become anchored to our Savior! In Mosiah 3 when King Benjamin is talking to the Nephites and testifying of our Savior and his ministry he says:
"19. For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."
When we put off the natural man and use the Atonement and remember our Savior always, we can become never fall away saints! I have learned for myself that this Gospel is true and that the Book of Mormon is true and Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God!!! I love being a missionary and seeing the Lord's hand in this work is EVERYWHERE!
We didn't take like any pictures this week, so sorry!!! (I usually skip to the pictures too) Love you all!! Read the Book of Mormon! It's the best!
-Sister Copeland
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