The Most Amazing Week... 3 baptisms! 4/28/2014

Most amazing week of MA LYF!!

We had a miracle this week because of obedience! Saturday was our biking day and we usually have to leave our area around 7:30 to get home by 9pm. Well, we got to talk to so many people that it was already past 7:30 when we realized we needed to head up to our apartment. But thank goodness for Sister J. If we pass someone without talking to them, she is racked with eternal torment. Even though we were running late, we stopped and talked to 2 men, we were able to answer some of their questions and give them pamphlets, it took a while but then we started for home. And we passed 3 Spanish men outside the laundry mat. We turned around and in our broken and simple Spanish, testified of Jesus Christ and invited them to church. They were really interested and will be in contact with the Spanish Missionaries. When we finally left to go, it was 8:30. We called the district leader to let him know we would be home late and finally left. And holy cow!! We got home at 9:15. A bike ride that always takes us 90 minutes took 45. And from my own personal strength I know that would not have been possible! Heavenly Father warped time and angels were pushing on my pedals to get us home on time. We really wanted to be obedient and get home on time.. and we really wanted to be obedient and talk to everyone. He blessed us for those desires and gave us a miracle!

EVERYONE IS PREPARED! We prayed so hard for our investigator Phillip's daughter, Heavenly, to be baptized the same time as her dad.. on Sunday. And her heart was touched by the Spirit! The Lord helped us do everything in time and it was a beautiful day! It is the most fulfilling joy I have ever felt to see families follow Christ together! I am thankful everyday that I get to share the importance and the sweet happiness that comes from baptism!! I have such a strong testimony of the redeeming power of baptism. Because of Christ, we don't need to stew in our sins, we can start new. Yesterday I was able to witness 3 of God's beloved children start new. I was able to start new with the sacrament. I LOVE THIS GOSPEL!

I can't stop thanking my Father in Heaven for this miracle and for the blessing it is to see! Phillip and Heavenly got baptized on Sunday!!  So, we were already planning on Phillip getting baptized on Sunday, but his 10 yr old daughter hadn't committed yet.  We knew that she needed to and had in a couple of weeks.  She decided the day before!
We had a lesson planned where we were going to get Phillip a baptismal suit, walk through the baptismal service, and then share about the why of baptism and the simple qualifications.  We started sizing Phillip for his suit and then all of a sudden Christian just casually mentioned that Heavenly was getting baptized the next day as well.  I was basically like, "WHAT?!!" :D
So we sized her up as well, walked through the service, and taught her A LOT in about an hour.  Our District Leader was able to make it down for an interview.  It was such an amazing miracle.
We knew they both needed to be baptized together on Sunday.  We had the faith that Heavenly Father would make it happen, we just weren't sure how.  They were baptized together and they were so happy!  Phillip said he felt "fantastic!"  Heavenly was beaming. They love each other so much and are so excited to work towards an eternal family.

Alexa was our third baptism!! Thursday night we got a call from Yolanda (her mum), she is a recent convert and hasnt been to church in a while.. but she wanted her daughter baptized on Sunday! We went over the next day and taught her all the lessons! It was crazy!! people are just handing it to us now! :)

See you in a week,

I love this work!

Sister Ormsby

Golfing Fun!

There was a squirrel on our bike rack!  I was so excited!

This picture is a little blurry... but there was this GIANT Bird of Paradise!

We had an ironing competition at district meeting and 
I beat Elder H(our zone leader)..it was awesome

Got your Easter package! THANK YOU!!

This bunny is the best!

This is Victoria and Lynn's father's birthday party.  Walter turned 98!!!!!!!

 Christian with Phillip and Heavenly

 Phillip and Heavenly, they were so happy!

 Sister J. and I with Phillip and Heavenly

Alexa and us!

Giant Brownie!  :)

Easter Joy & 7 baptisms! 4/21/2014

This week has been phenomenal! We have been soooooo blessed and I have again and again learnt that their is such a spiritual strength and power that comes from faith-filled prayer!!!

We set FOUR baptismal dates!  So now we have an incredible grand total of 7!  What?!?! 3 of them are going to be on Mothers Day!!! (that's May 11th, right?)

One of them was a former investigator! Bonita! I think I told you a bit about her before.. but if I didn't, she is awesome and she has been praying about what we have taught her. 

Another is Linda's daughter Brianna! She has such a bright spirit and she has a strong desire to change her life and be better!

And a part member family that we have been teaching! Sister I. hasn't been to church in a while, and she has 3 teenage girls. the youngest, Nina (10), hasn't been baptized and she wants too!!  She will be baptized on Mothers Day!  And she is sooooo sweet!  They are an awesome family and they came to church on Sunday!!!! :D

Chuck's step-son Dylan wants to be baptized too!  So that is the other one! Heavenly Father is preparing EVERYONE!  I feel like I just get to watch it happen!  It is pretty crazy!

Phillip is still super duper fantastic!  He is getting baptized next Sunday!!!!  His daughter Heavenly is really great!  We love them both soooo much!  They are so close to the spirit and the definition of prepared(GOLDEN)!  Phillip is reading the Book of Mormon faster than us!  He is already passed Mosiah! and he quit smoking without us telling him about the word of wisdom!   I think I told you that last week.. but maybe not.. anyways, he is on FIRE!  I can't wait for his baptism because he already has such an awesome light, once he gets the Holy Ghost he will be GLOWING! :D

Amazing things have happened this week!  And you will love this, I have been writing it down!!  I have been writing a sentence a day in my journal since dad asked me to.. haven't missed a day!  And there is the odd oober special day that has like 12 miracles that day that Sis. J and I will take turns writing out.

One thing I keep wishing, overwhelmingly... that I could speak Spanish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ohh, the possibilities! :)

For now, I am satisfied with my basic 3 minute conversation I can hold and my Spanish-English missionary guide book Elder S. gave me before he left. 

OH! PS!  We have new Spanish sisters in the ward now!!!  So it is ALL SISTERS in Apollo Beach! :D

First off.. PRAYER IS POWERFUL.  We take it for granted.  It is a gift and a blessing to communicate with God.  If we ask, He will give.  A simple principle that stands firm through all tests and circumstances.

Sister J. and I went to a taco truck on Friday night for dinner.  We each had about 3 Finding Faith in Christ pass-along cards in Spanish and before we got out of the car we wrote the Spanish sisters phone number and the church address on each.  When we were ordering a Hispanic man and his little daughter were in line.  Her name is Ally, she was so sweet and she complemented out pretty dresses.  We told her we like her dress and she couldn't stop smiling.  When we got our food she hollered at us to come sit by her.  We sat across the table from them and her dad didn't know hardly any English.  We had some small chat and Roberto(the dad) eventually got up to leave.. Ally told us her house was a big blue one and he told us to come over tomorrow.  We asked him for an address but he couldn't tell us a number, we just made out the street name and that there would be a green truck. 

Not much to go off.. but I love the Spirit. We prayed hard that night to know which house to find them at. 

Saturday comes around and we are in the neighborhood so we drive around that street and count 16 blue houses.  Not a single one with a green truck.  Or even the red Honda we saw them driving to the taco truck.  We circled the street about 3 times.  I was praying the whole time, and nothing.  We were pretty close to knocking on each door! hahaha

But we had another appointment so we resigned to come back.  Later that night we were driving and Sis. J. missed the turn so we were going the long way to our lesson, on the street Ally and Roberto live, when a little girl on her bike darts out in front of us and we realize its Ally!!!  She was so happy to see us and she immediately pointed out her house to us and told us to go see her family!  MIRACLE! Right?!  We were on our way to a lesson so we promised to stop by later. 

Skip to later, because when we got there... It was Roberto's birthday party!  His whole family was there and they fed us some delicious rice and beans and chicken and corn!  Turns out Roberto's older daughter was taught by the missionaries before she moved to Fort Myers and she didn't know there was a chapel so close to where she was!  We gave her the information she wanted and we are going back there with the Spanish sisters next week!  I WISH I SPOKE SPANISH! hahahhahah, but holy cow, did the Lord answer our prayers!! :)

I love you soooo much! 

See you in a week!

Sister Ormsby

Abe needs the gospel too.

Sometimes we are children and get happy meals..

Sister J. and I realized this week that we are OJ!!!! :)

We had an Easter feast on Friday! 
(Gyros, hummus, grape leaves, dates, falafels and grape juice)

UNICORN TREE! 

We drove by and saw this tree so we had to stop for a quick pic!!

I FOUND IT. THIS. IS. AUSTRALIAN. CHESSE. It tasted like home!

Sister J. made AMAZING baklava for Easter! It was ohhhh sooooo tasty!

 Easter Basket from the Briones Family

Little Easter treat baggies we gave to our investigators with Candies that we related to Christ!

Easter treats!!

Still in Apollo Beach! :) 04/14/2014

Hey mum!!
Your date night sounded great! Sushi is sooooo good!!! I miss it!! We
were actually able to find a pretty good fish n chips place here in
Apollo Beach a few weeks ago! Add it to the list of places you need to
come to when we visit here again.
 
Your assumption was correct and I am staying in Apollo Beach for
another transfer!! That is half my mission for sure and hopefully it
will turn into a year!!!! ;D
 
Here is a little update on our investigators and a couple miracles this week:
Wade is currently not progressing towards baptism so there was no
baptism yesterday. We haven't been able to see Aurora or Monika for a while.

BUT! Phillip is our shining star!! We taught him a few times this week
and he is doing sooooooooo good! He is really excited for his baptism!
(We set the date for April 27th but since we are having the Ft.
Lauderdale temple dedication on May 4th in place of normal Sunday
meetings, that would mean he would have to wait 2 weeks before getting
the gift of the Holy Ghost and that would be soooooooo hard!!!!! So we
are trying to see if he can get baptized maybe the 23rd and this is a
really long parentheses.) We taught him The Plan of Salvation this
week and he loved it. It made a  lot of sense to him and he has been
reading The Book Of Mormon. He LOVES it! As he read 2 Nephi 2 (amazing
chapter. read it. study it. Love it.) he got his answer that the book
is true. He felt such an outpouring of the Spirit and he could not
deny it. He told us he has read it several more times just because he
loves the way he feels as he reads it. He has The Book Of Mormon app
and he even listened to the chapter and read along once! He was so
excited to set the date to be baptized. And his daughter,
Heavenly(10yrs) is excited too! He is going to let her decide if it is
something she wants, but you can really tell when she feels the spirit
because she gets so happy and has this wonderful light. We are
basically thrilled!!! They are awesome.

Next, I want to tell you about Chuck(27yrs). He is equally awesome and
legit. We were walking on Saturday and he biked passed us we both
kinda looked at each other like we didn't know who was going to stop,
but then he just turned around to talk to us and took out his
headphones. He really wants to change his life. We set up a time to
teach him this week(tomorrow actually) and we invited him to church.
He told us that he wouldn't have a way, so we promised we could get
him there and he got really excited. Our High Priest Group leader
picked him up and before sacrament started we sat with him and he was
asking us why he has had to go through so many hard things. We got out
a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and talked to about opposition in all
things. That gave him some peace and he started flicking through the
pamphlet. On the back of the pamphlet there is a line that says,
'prepare to be baptized on....' And he pointed to it and asked if he
could get baptized! NO JOKE. Before church even started!! It was
basically amazing! Everyone in the ward was sooooo friendly to
him(because Apollo Beach is awesome). The speakers were awesome, and
in Sunday School we talked about families being eternal and it was all
incredible! Chuck really loved it! He felt the spirit so strong! He
was so happy! And after church he called his mum and told her how
happy he was and that he was changing his life and that all he wanted
to do was learn the word of God and be a missionary, traveling and
teaching people how to follow Jesus Christ. NO JOKE. He is basically a
dream come true. He called us after church and was so excited to tell
us about how much he loved it all and he asked us about the Ft.
Lauderdale temple open house going on right now (the ward is taking a
trip there on Friday). He wanted to know what it was about and if he
could go. He also asked us again what he needs to do before he can get
baptized! Keep praying for him, because he is seriously
awesome!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahhhhhh!!!! So many other awesome things happened! Christian and Tracy
went to the temple and got to be baptized for his mum!! Isn't that
cool?!?????
Also, just FYI our elders are both getting transferred! So we don't
really know what's happening! But my address hasn't changed!
 
I don't know what else!
But I love you heaps!!!!!
See you in a week,
Sister Ormsby

Companion Love

Pictures taken while at a 5K run last Saturday

                                                 

                       

Officially 8 months out! 4/7/2014

Where did the last 8 months go??

Well, I have officially been a missionary for 8 months.. today! How weird is that?! I feel like its been about a week.. There is still sooooooooooo much I need to learn! Remember the morning I went into the MTC? We went to Kneaders, sometimes that feels like it wasn't that long ago. I remember skyping Thea and my sisters before I was set apart. And the last song I played on my uke was "We are as the army of Helaman" hahahhaha, I'm getting all sentimental... but it really doesn't feel like 8 months have past!

General Conference this weekend was incredible!! I felt a theme of stepping it up. A lot of them made it clear we need to know what we are standing for, and if necessary, stand alone. I also got the overwhelming feeling that we all need to love more. Love our Heavenly Father, Love the Saviour, and love each other. I will share a few of the beautiful apostolic commandments (advice from an apostle, is a commandment) that touched me before telling you about my miracle-filled week!

-Elder Rasband taught that in serving others, we grow in testimony, faith and love.

-Sister Reeves mentioned the only things that really need to be accomplished in the home is daily prayer and scripture study and weekly family home evening... I know how important that is since being out here!!

-I LOVED PRESIDENT EYRINGS & ELDER SCOTTS WORDS!

-LOVED Elder Bednar- "it was the load!"

-Bishop Stevenson's parallel to this life being our 4 minutes was awesome!

-Elder Christofferson bore powerful testimony of the Living Christ. (We are best friends, if you remember, so I gave him some of my notes..)

Amazing what potential we each have, huh?! :) There were sooooo many more to mention but it was all truly fantastic! what themes or messages touched your heart?

This week has disappeared (much like every week does out here).

BUT we did meet some wonderful people! Add them to your prayers!!

Aurora- we met her when we had one of the young men out with us last Sunday. She is SO sweet! We prayed with her and told her about living prophets. Since then we have gone back and we were going to teach her The Restoration, but before we started I asked her how she felt God's love before. She told us about her brother passing away from cancer last year and she asked where he was. She has been asking people(religions) this question for some time. We were able to teach her about the spirit world and testify of life after death. The spirit was so strong and it brought her peace to know that. She is excited to come to church next week because she has work off, and we are going to her house tonight for another lesson! I LOVE Gods plan of happiness for us :)

Monika- I have told you a bit about her before (Sis L. and I helped move her family a while back). It has been hard to meet with them, but we had a great lesson with her this week! First of all, everyone knows something for sure. So many people have different beliefs, but there is always(at least in every person I've met) a basic knowledge of some concept or principle in Jesus Christ's gospel. There is always something that someone will just KNOW. (I hope that made sense).. Anyway, we found out that Monika KNOWS that her family will be together after this life. She has never believed in 'until death do us part'. She knows that we are more that our mortal bodies, we are spirits, destined for greatness. We testified of the temple  and the spirit was beautiful!!

Phillip- our miracle!! We walked past his house because we didn't notice his parents outside until we were down the street, so we turned around and started talking to them/ Mary is the sweetest (she reminds me sooooooooooooooooooooo much of Nana!) she let us into her house to show us her painting of the last supper. She was so excited and she told us that when she is sad, she will look at that picture. Then her son, Phillip came out, with his daughter Heavenly (10 yrs). And he was glowing! Like he had the most beautiful vibe that I haven't seen from anyone before! He was really friendly and said we could come back for a message. Long story short, we've started teaching him and he is AWESOME! He cant wait to be baptized!! and he was really excited to get the Book of Mormon. :) He is our golden! 

Thats all for now! I cant think of much else.. although there have been many many miracles this week! The Lord has really blessed our work here, we went from 15 lessons last week, to 21 this week! :) I am sooooooo glad I get to be a small part in helping the work of salvation! I LOVE IT!

I LOVE YOU ALL!

See you in a week,

Sister Ormsby

                                                      AHHHmazzing food at Christians this week..

           SUPER CREEPY turtle we met... do you know what kind this is?! its sooo icky!! hahaha

                                                                wheatgrass shots! it was terrible...

April Fools 3/31/2014

Your week sounded lovely!! Mine absolutely flew by!!! I don't even know where it went actually.. We are already on week 5 of this transfer and that, to me, is insane!!!

But this week has not been without its miracles!

I have barely cried, actually!!! Hahaha, and when I did, it was because of the outpouring of the Spirit that I felt! Particularly while watching the incredible General Women's Conference on Saturday night!!! As soon as the broadcast began Sister J. leaned over and said; "our mums are watching this right now too!" Well, that just got me!!!! I was overwhelmed because I felt so connected to you as they spoke of the love and beauty of the sisterhood that connects all the women in the world.

There were a lot of the same themes as last year, I thought. Namely, a focus on the covenant path we are all taking to return to our Father, and the love we should have for each other. It was incredible!!!! It was beautiful when the young girls sang "teach me to walk in the light"! What a sweet reminder in such simple words of our mission in this mortal existence. I loved it as well when as a worldwide sisterhood we were able to raise our voices to witness that we are God's children! Ahhh!! It basically got me super excited for General Conference! And I don't want to wait a whole week! Hahaha

On to other news! We had a really great week! We were able to find so many new potentials by talking to everyone!!! We also had one of the young men meet us at a lesson (we were going to teach a family that he knew), but they weren't home so he came street contacting with us for a few hours! And this kid has such an awesome testimony! He is waiting on his mission call, and he has such a strong spirit when he invites! It was such a blessing to have him with us, we were able to teach a few lessons and schedule countless appointments! Members make such a big difference in this work! You have NO IDEA! 

On that note, we have an awesome new thing we are doing this month in our ward. It is called: Feed His Sheep! (Based off of Matthew 18:12-14) So basically, for the month of April our ward goal is to give 750 invites! An invite can be so many things, not just to church or to meet the missionaries, but essentially to feel the Spirit, ie; dinner in your home, Family Home Evening, ward activity, a Family Proclamation, and so many other things!!! And it counts for any of those and more! So for the month of April, Apollo Beach ward is going to be full of extra miracles and amazing stories! We are so excited for the ward to feel the power that comes when we do our part and invite! The Lords work, is missionary work! :)

And with that as a good thought, here is my not so subtle segway!..

Thursday we had a surprise mission conference for all the sisters. And there were some crazy developments... Our mission, along with 13 others worldwide has been chosen to try something new!!! (Story of our lives haha) Starting this week, all the sisters in our mission will have the choice to stay out for 24 months.

They are giving us the next month to fast and pray and decide, with our families if we will take this opportunity! So what I want is your honest opinion. How would you feel if I stayed out until August next year? I haven't made any decisions, but the thing that I keep thinking is that I was called here, to this mission for a reason, right? And maybe it was because I need to be here longer. But I don't know!! Tell me how you would feel! And dad's opinion too. This will be my question for conference, obviously! I just want to do what's right. They made a point of telling us this isn't something the sisters should feel obligated to do, it is just an option. So, yeah that's kind of the big thing.. :)

Other than that this week has disappeared! I have an awesome tan line on my feet now, I'll send a picture!

I love you a lot!! 

See you in a week,

Sister Ormsby

PS! I forgot to tell you about this week! Sister Jenkins and I are going on a Car Fast! We are praying for and fasting for the part-member families in our ward. It is going to be so crazy hard, because we live out of our area.. But we are going on faith :) and I know that The Lord will bless the hearts of those people we need to teach! I am super nervous and excited to see what will come from this! :D

PPS! That part about sisters staying out was an early April fools! I love you :)

GOT YA!!!!! :)