February 24, 2015

Dear Mom, 

Sorry I couldn't write yesterday. We had a meeting with elder Nielsen of the seventy and brother Heaton, the MTC president. They came to talk about the iPad's since we are a test mission. They wanted our feed back before they roll out to the rest of the missions in the world. It was an awesome meeting! Something they said really stood out to me. Elder Nielsen told us that from 1830-1930 the church baptized 300,000 converts. He then told us that in 2014 alone, the church baptized 300,000 converts. Isn't that insane? The work is hastening people! Elder Nielsen is a stud. He told us that "God's work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. He will not fail. If you don't think He will get all of His children, then you don't understand this work." Wow! That was mind blowing. Between earth life and the spirit world, he'll help His children choose Jesus Christ. It was an awesome lesson to learn.

We had such a good week! I don't even know if I can tell you all of it in the short amount of time we have to email. One cool thing was that I got to attend two baptisms this week in former areas. One was sherwood for a kid I taught named Jake. The second was in Gresham for a kid named Mason. I spoke on baptism at Mason's. It was so good to go back and see them! They are both just little guys and so so sweet!

 We had a really cool experience this week. We have been going into the homes of all the members and setting dates with them to find someone for us to teach. Elder Ballard has really been pushing that. We've been going around and doing that and the success isn't immediate I must admit. We really really needed to find new people to teach, so we decided to set a date for ourselves as well! We prayed, set our date, and went to work. We did some tracting and street contacting with no luck, but we were not faithless! As we were out working we got a call from our Zone Leaders telling us they have a referral for us! They met a lady who lives in our area and wants to learn more. Apparently she had already been reading the Book of Mormon and wants to know more! We have an appointment with her for this week so we are pretty stoked about that.

This Sunday was awesome too. A member of our bishopric spoke about how the gospel has blessed his life. In it he talked about uncle Brian! He said that uncle Brian was his favorite missionary growing up. He said that uncle Brian played a role in him going on a mission and he got really choked up! It was awesome to see how missionaries can affect people, even active members. It was really cool that it was my uncle though. It gave me yet another reason to be proud to be a Udall. We had a Skype lesson with Misa is week! Other than that I'm not sure what else to tell you. All my stories would take too long to type. I love you mom! 

Sister Udall