This week I have felt the spirit like never before!!! The missionary work has been going good, we have 2 solid investigators, and we had 4 investigators at church yesterday, that was exciting! And a miracle!! Now if only we can both be healthy the work can progress even faster!! This week we had the greatest spiritual experience of my life. On Thursday night we were invited by the Branch President to do an FHE at the Women's Correctional Facility (the women's prison).
I didn't know what to expect going in, I was a little nervous to be honest, but the experience was so AMAZING!! We got all checked in, they previously did background checks and such on us, and we went into the little room that they set aside for the church on Sundays and Thursdays. We had been asked by the Stones (Branch President&RS President) to teach the first lesson, but sad thing is we're not really allowed to proselyte, which meant we couldn't invite them to be baptized, we could just give them the information.
There are 4 less active (LA) members that are currently at the facility so when there were 5 women we assumed that it was the 4 LA and 1 non-member. Afterwards we found out that only 2 of the women there were members and the other 3 were non-members. As we were teaching the Restoration the spirit was SO STRONG! Especially when we started to talk about the Atonement and how everything that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. These women need that Atonement, obviously they had made choices in their life that have led them to where they are today. The thing that was so amazing though was that they now had made the choice to turn their lives around when it matters. They truly understand that Christ can and will forgive them when they turn to him! So we weren't allowed at the end of the lesson to invite them to baptism, which was hard because all 3 of the non-members would have said yes. I KNOW they will all join the church when they get out, they pretty much told us as soon as they had the opportunity they would be baptized.
One of the ladies, Mary, was incredible, and I know we were there for her. She told us afterwards that our personal experiences we shared helped her to see the truth of the gospel, and she had had questions about Joseph Smith, but we had helped her. The best thing she said was "When I came in today I was on the fence about the whole Joseph Smith thing and my legs were over the side of it being wrong about to jump off, but after tonight I think I hopped over the fence to the side of knowing it's true." Man, I almost cried, it was more spiritual than the MTC, which sounds weird, but its completely true!! I wish I could explain and have you experience it, so AWESOME!! I can't wait til they ask us to come back again!! We're trying to get permission from President to write letters of encouragement to them, hopefully we'll be able too!! They are such incredible ladies!! One of the Less Active ladies was in there because her family wanted to come back to church so to complete the repentance process she had to confess to something she'd done in the past and do some time, she was telling us how grateful she was to be back, even if it meant having to go through the correctional facility. Her son is planning on serving a misson as soon as he graduates high school and she couldn't be more proud. I love the gospel, its so incredible!!
I am so grateful to be a missionary and to be able to know the things I know and to be able to share them with the people here in Washington!!
I love you ALL!!! Have a great week!!!
I LOVE YOU SOO MUCH, EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU!!!!
LOVE,
Sister Thomas
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