Hello!!
Sorry now for the short letter. Not much has happened this week. We had lots of meetings and are still on the search to find! Sister Spiel is amazing. We are getting along great and she is teaching me so much!
I opened up my email to find an email from a girl I went to High School with. I wanted to share it with you all. She says....
Hi Emily!
This is Megan, we went to high school and i think jr high together too.. So for some reason today I felt like I should try to contact you to tell you something. I feel like it's a testimony builder when anyone joins the church, so I thought I'd share the news with you that I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! The only people in high school that I knew were Mormons were you and Josh. I already told him and then I looked you up on Facebook and saw that you were on a mission! Congratulations! That's really awesome. I was baptized Dec. 1, 2012. So it's been a year and a month since I've been a member...and I love it more and more every day. It is honestly the best way to become closer to God. As a Catholic I kept praying to get closer to God but I never had any opportunity to progress and grow as a person and disciple of Christ...I felt stuck. Then I started dating a Mormon guy, and he wasn't that active but as we talked about what mormons believe, I kept having more and more questions and wanted to learn more. And reading the Book of Mormon brought the spirit back into my life and I couldn't get enough of church. He ended up going on a mission at the age of 21 even though he thought he would never serve a mission, he's in Berlin now. We broke up before he left so don't worry I'm not one of those girls waiting haha (not that there's anything wrong with that, I just don't think I'd marry him). Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you, I think it's kind of funny and shocking that I'm Mormon now...because I have had a mormon as a best friend all my life, and she never really talked about her faith too much, and i went to church with her a few times, but i did research on the religion and found a bunch of anti mormon stuff that made me really against the church when i was around 17. So being a mormon is the last thing i couldve ever imagined for myself. And i was so closed off to the church before...but when i became curious about the church in a more positive way (i saw that my boyfriends family was really close and really down to earth and actually really believed what they practiced...i started to take the religion more seriously and wanted to learn more)...so another convert that i was introduced to when i was investigating the church suggested that i should pray for an open heart...best advice because the Lord did soften my heart and i was open to learning. it took a while (6 months of missionary lessons), but I'm now converted to the gospel and know that no mater how seemingly closed hearted someone is, or how stubbornly they're against the gospel, people change. And this church is true, is resognates with peoples hearts and minds, it makes sense.
Sorry for all the typos I'm in a hurry right now, but I just really wanted to share this with you. I know I look forward to the future when people I used to associate with tell me that they've found the truth too. I think that would be really neat to hear.
I removed last names for privacy. But wow! All my life I had heard of people knowing other people from high school get baptized but I never thought it would actually happen to me. I am so amazed at her faith and conversion. Her testimony is an inspiration to me! If I could change one thing about my teenage years it would 100% to be.. share the gospel more!! I have a strong testimony of change and I know that the true Gospel of Jesus Christ is on the earth and that any person can get closer to God by following its precepts.
This week I had a testimony building experience. We had planned to go on exchanges friday night to saturday. I was staying in our area and another sister was coming in to be with me. On Thursday Sister Spiel and I were planning what the other sister and I were going to do Friday night. We had 2 lessons scheduled that I thought for sure wouldnt cancel. Sister Spiel said we should have a back up just in case. I didnt think so but I wrote a name down of a less active woman in the ward just in case. Friday night rolled around and guess what.. both of the appointments canceled! I then decided we would go to the library and do our facebook time. We were right in the middle of 2 libraries. I started driving towards one and then immediately felt like we should go to the other one. I did a U-turn and started driving to the other library not thinking anything of it. We pulled up to the library and it was closed.. totally forgot they closed earlier on the weekend. We were then stuck in the parking lot, it was almost 8, both appointments canceled and library was closed. I then just wanted to go home and start planning for the next day. The other sister with me asked if there was any less actives near by we could visit. I didnt want to bother anyone on a friday night but then the woman we wrote down thursday night came into my head. She lived right by the library I ended up driving to. Our dinner appointment sent us home with cookies. So I then figured I will text her and see if we can drop by some cookies. She immediately texted back and said we could come. When we got there I could see something was wrong right away. After talking for about 5 minutes she just broke down. She began to tell us that she has had the worst week ever and that she feels like God isn't answering her prayers. She was on her knees crying and praying to God explaining that she didnt even know what to do anymore when she got our text.. She knew that God had sent us there to be with her that night.
God was preparing us Thursday night to go and visit this wonderful woman.. If Sister Spiel hadnt pushed writing one more name down I never would have thought to visit her.. If the other appointments didnt cancel we wouldnt have been able to see her.. If I had driven to the other library we would have been no where near her house and wouldnt have visited her.. If the other sister missionary didnt suggest visiting a less active nearby her name wouldnt have come back into my head.. If the family we had dinner with didnt send us home with cookies I probably wouldnt have bothered her for a visit on a friday night.. If we didnt go and visit her that night she would still be wondering if God hears our prayers. I can testify that God is in every single detail of our life!! He loves us more than we could ever know. He absolutely hears every single one of our prayers and is always with us. Trust in him, he will never let you down!!
This is the greatest work.
Thank you for all your prayers and love and support!!
Love, Sister Judd
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