Sister Allie King: January 11, 2016

WOW, WHAT A WEEK!

The Lord just loves putting me into situations where I have to stretch myself immensely. But it's been great! My new companion is Sister Larsen, she's from Charleston West Virginia and went to BYU for 3 years before her mission, computer science major, she’s been on her mission one transfer longer than me, and she's AWESOME! We are co-companions (no senior, no junior), and we have a lot of fun. In south Bakersfield. Which smells like cow poop but that’s okay, north Bakersfield smells like onions. The road where we run in the morning is full of chicken coops and I always hear like 10 roosters screaming so THAT wakes me up.

My new address is:

Sister Allie King

600 Hosking Avenue

Apt. 15B

Bakersfield, CA 93307

It rained A TON and I could not only see the mountains, but DETAILS on the mountains! It was so exciting, there's usually too much smog to do that so we're all very grateful.

A Rainbow in Bakersfield!

There were a lot of miracles this week and we found a bunch of new investigators that are all pretty solid! A few of my favorites include an older Hispanic woman who had a son pass away 8 years ago. She's still really hurt from the experience so we told her of Christ's atonement and His plan for us to be with our families forever.

There's also this guy in his 20's and said he'd been "church hopping" trying to find the right one, and we're all "well you’re in luck, we have the message for you!" It was awesome.

There also is a really cool sister investigator who has been through a ton of tough times in her life, but is learning to rely on our Savior more for peace. It's crazy how much I take for granted, I'm so used to feeling God's love and Spirit in my life I forget that others aren't as lucky. It's just a strong reminder of why we're out here serving the Lord, I LOVE helping people draw closer to our Heavenly Father.

We ALSO had an amazing lesson with a great family, the mom is a less active member who's starting to come back and she has 2 kids who aren't baptized. When we asked her son why he wants to be baptized he said: “so I can have Jesus in my life," and he said it with his HUGE smile and a light in his eyes, I almost started crying. That actually happened a lot this week, almost crying.

It's really interesting how much people will tell random strangers who knock on their door trying to tell them about Jesus. I get whole life stories at least 3 times a week from people I don't know. The spirit does strange things to people.

But on Wednesday we had our Mission Leadership Council and it was fantastic! We have doubled our Mission Standard of Excellence goal, which was a real stretch when it was set last April, but now we are exceeding it! In December we found 1,706 new people to teach and had 61 baptisms, all because God's spirit is just spewing everywhere during Christmas time. It's such a blessing to be a part of this amazing work.

Sister Larsen and I were in charge of the role play at our Zone Training Meeting, and we spoke on extending commitments to people, relating it to repentance. How cool is it that, as we set goals to be better and then KEEP them, we can receive a peace that can only come through cleansing ourselves from sin? Like, keeping commitments is literally repenting, yet it seems so simple. This whole gospel is simple. God doesn’t want to confuse us or lead us astray; He just tells it like it is. Like in James 1:5, He gives to all men LIBERALLY and upbraideth not! I've just felt so much of His love this week. Even though we had 6 appointments in a row fall through, it was still awesome!

Our ward mission leader calls this place "The Shire," like we're in England or something. And I love being able to connect with other sisters in the mission, we have exchanges this week and I'm super excited!

Fun story. The young daughter of a recently reactivated family was talking about God. She said "I have my Heavenly Father, and His Heavenly Girlfriend (she meant mother, I hope), and Jesus, my Heavenly Brother, that’s so cool!" It IS so cool, we come from a heavenly home. I hope we never forget that.

My new ward’s pretty awesome from the looks of it! Everyone’s nice and we get fed a lot.

I love you all, sorry this is super scattered, my mind moves a million miles a minute now! You’re da BEST!!