Yesterday and Saturday we had Stake Conference and Elder Villareal from the Seventy spoke to our stake along with the Temple President and the Mission President and their wives. Elder Villareal talked about a girl who was preparing to go on her mission and her twin sister was unable to go on a mission because of health reasons. She told her pre-mission sister that she would have to work twice as hard for the both of them. She responded that she would. She had her things ready to go and asked her father the night before for a ride to the station. He told her that she couldn't go. When she went to sleep he stole her luggage thinking to himself, "That'll stop her." When she woke up early to walk to the station her luggage was gone. She showed up to the Columbia Mission Training Center with nothing but her purse. As I listened to this story, and many others, I was brought to tears. I have been worrying about some really unimportant things. This sister was so faithful and determined to honor the calling that she had been given. Are we honoring our callings with such diligence?
At this same conference, President Slaughter talked about a girl that he had interviewed to be baptized, He asked her how her story. One day she was working at the blood bank when a man came in wanting to donate plasma. He asked how her week was going and she said it wasn't so good because of boyfriend problems. He pointed at the church magazine in his hand and said that she needed a mormon boy haha. She looked up info online and found the missionaries. She didn't know who that man was or how to thank him but she asked the mission president to find him and have him baptize her. He said he would. He went to random chapel in the east stake to try and find him and he bore his testimony and shared this girls story in the meeting of a random ward and asked that if this man was there that he make himself known to him afterwards because the girl wanted him to baptize her that saturday. The next woman that got up said that that man was her husband and that he was in the foyer with the kids. The mission president went out afterwards and told him the story. The man, emotional, said that he never had a baptism on his mission and that he had gone that day to the blood bank to get a little extra money by giving plasma because his family was struggling. What a miracle!!!
This week I fasted for a bunch of people and that same day that I fasted we got texts from two of those people. One we hadn't heard from in two weeks and we thought he was dead until he texted us that day! The other texted us saying that he really appreciated the daily scriptures that we send through text. The latter also came to conference and it changed his life! He had previously been feeling like God didn't love him and that he had never felt the spirit before. When he went to that saturday session and heard about the girl who wanted that man to baptize her he felt an overwhelming feeling of God's love and he told us that in that moment he knew that God loves him! This experience made me smile so big haha. I love the gospel. I know that fasting is powerful. I know that God lives. I know that the Book of Mormon is true.
I love you!
Hna Hopkins
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