Oct 28

This is me in front of our mission logo. I love the NCRM! (North Carolina Raleigh Mission)!

Hello family and friends!

Time goes by so fast here I cant believe it! I feel like it was just yesterday I was writing you all telling you about C's baptism. It has been another fabulous week here in North Carolina!

C is doing fabulous! We will continue to meet with her. This week we taught her about family history and then taking the names of her family member to the temple to be baptized so that they can enter into the kingdom of God. We pulled up the wonderful familysearch.org website. We typed in the name of the only deceased family member she knew. We were then able to track her family back a little while. She was so excited to see the names on the computer of family members that she had heard stories about before. The church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has the largest collection of family history and genealogy resources.What a wonderful resource we can all use to find our deceased family members! She is excited to get names put together to take and do work in the temple for them so that they will be able to feel the same peace and happiness that she has found by being baptized by the proper authority of God.

M is doing just wonderful. I have so much love and respect for this woman. A single mother trying to survive raising her children and do the right thing. She will be so blessed to have this gospel in her life! This week we went and saw her. We were talking with her at the end of the lesson she says "you girls want to hear a joke I heard yesterday. My co worker said that mormons cant drink coffee. The rumors people say are so funny". We then started laughing and kindly told her that that wasn't a joke and she had complete shock on her face. M loves her coffee. We told her we were grateful she wasn't believing all the rumors that she hears and we would come back tomorrow to teach her the Word of Wisdom and the blessings we receive by being obedient. The next day we went over prepared to teach her this commandment. When we explained that our bodies are a sacred gift from our Heavenly Father and we need to do everything we can to take care of them. Just like when you buy an expensive car or item we will do everything we can to protect that certain thing, we need to do that for our bodies. Just like alcohol or drugs, coffee is an addictive substance that can come in control of our bodies. Addictions are dangerous for many reasons. M then said that this commandment was an answer to her prayers. Her doctor has been telling her for years that coffee is ruining her intestines. She explained to us that she never has been a drinker but recently she has been drinking wine with her friends. Every time she has something inside of her tells her that it is wrong but she didn't know why. She is grateful now for the explanation and has committed to living her life following the word of wisdom. We know that the Lord never gives a commandment without blessings in return for obeying. She will now be blessed with a healthier body and mind in which the spirit can more heavily reside. We will all receive blessing when we obey the commandments. 

As I said last week we had a fabulous visit from 2 general authorities. We had Elder Zwick and Elder Pino if the seventy. The whole mission gathered together in Fayetteville North Carolina. This is the first time the whole mission (over 200 missionaries) has been together in over 18 months! There was a wonderful spirit in the room! Elder Pino and his wife both bore wonderful testimonies. They are from South America so their talks were translated by a spanish speaking elder. Elder Pino shared this story with us. A little while ago he was invited by an apostle to sit in on missionary calls being assigned. He said as they were going the apostle stopped on the North Carolina Raleigh Mission and said "this is a great mission". As he was with us yesterday he said he could now see why and he was grateful to be here. I agree that this is a wonderful mission and I am so lucky to be here! Elder Zwick gave a fabulous talk also. He talked about the scripture found in Mark 1:16-17..

16 Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.
17 And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become^afishers of men.

He pointed out the word become. We are all becoming. It is line upon line, precept on precept. None of us are perfect, we are all learning. We are all becoming better. He stated that we must not stop ourselves on what we think we can do but we must allow the Lord to expand our capacities. We must trust in the Lord because through Him all things are possible!! I can testify of that.

I am out of time but I hope you all have a fabulous, blessed week! I pray for you all! 

Thanks for all your love and support!

-Sister Judd

This is the pumpkin I painted at our Relief Society activity this week. Inspired by my wonderful farewell cake Heidi Hunt and Mia Brooks made.