Serve the Lord with all my heart!

What a great week. Last night we received transfer news and I will be staying with Elder Biesinger for the third transfer in a row and also for his last transfer on the mission. I am so excited to continue to work with Elder Biesinger and learn from him. He is such a great. We will be staying in Heritage Trail and Merrilltown but will not be covering Heatherwilde ward anymore. We will only cover two wards and not be triple covering which will be nice so that we can be more involved in those wards. We definitely will miss Heatherwilde especially the Marquez family. It has been fun teach them and seeing them grow closer to Christ. I am grateful for the Lord and that he was able to let me teach them the restored gospel through the spirit. Hopefully one day sister Marquez and Jayden the son will be able to be baptized by their father. Maybe I will be lucky enough to still be close and could go to their baptism.

On Saturday Marta from my last area was baptized. I wish I could have been there but due to me serving in Austin and the baptism being in San Antonio on a Saturday we weren't able to go down. I am grateful that she was able to continue to learn from my last companion and other missionaries and that her concerns were able to go away. It is amazing how as we read from the Book of Mormon and do our best to live faithfully any doubts or questions that we may have will slowly go away.

This week we taught the Marquez several times and we had lunch with them on Saturday. We ate menudo which was a pretty interesting Mexican soup. Sister Marquez has been feeling a little bit better and she will be going through another surgery this week to try and break up another kidney stone. They have continually been reading from the Book of Mormon and coming to church. We also have been making a lot of visits to part members and less actives to try and find more people to teach. We have met several new families and we hope that we can meet with them again this week. 

On Saturday a little before we went to dinner we met a really nice lady named Shane. It was a miracle and a great experience of how we ran into her. For several hours before we met Shane we were walking around visiting less active families in apartment complexes. We talked with a lot of people and had some crazy and interesting contacts as we tried and had no success visiting these less actives that we had planned. On the way back to the car there was a lady who looked sad sitting on a bench waiting for the bus stop. As we started talking with her she told us how she doesn't belief in God anymore because of the many trails that she has been through. She was a single mom with a seven year old son. As we continued to talk with her and read a couple verses from the Book of Mormon she started to open up. By the end of the conversation she said how grateful she was that we stopped and talked with her. She expressed how she really needed it and as we left she said God bless. She didn't come to church but we hope to meet with her sometime this week and continue to help her gain a stronger faith in God.

It truly is a humbling experience being able to serve the Lord with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. 

Marta