So many miracles ...

So many awesome things happened this week! It's crazy all the miracles and cool things that happened. 

On Tuesday, we went and had a lesson with the Waters family. They have 12 children and their oldest, David, who is 24 yrs old was less-active for a while and has recently just started coming back to church and he just received the Melchizedek priesthood a few weeks ago. I've become pretty tight with him the past few months cause we play basketball a lot with him. So we have a lesson with their family and at the end of the lesson Sister Waters asks for a blessing because she has cancer and is going through treatment. She asked David to give the blessing and it was his first time ever giving a blessing. He starts giving the blessing to his mom and then he starts crying because the spirit was so strong. He gave one of the shortest yet most powerful and sincere blessings I have ever heard, and everyone in the room was bawling. You could just feel the spirit of God in the room, it was so awesome.

On Wednesday, we had Zone Conference and Elder Merrell and I gave a training on Real Intent. It went well!... And I found out that Barbara (the person I baptized out in Mt. Hood) had her nephew move in with her a couple months back and he was baptized this past week! I was so pumped to hear that! Crazy how you can see God's hand in everything.

On Friday, we started the new member lessons with Tuesday! She is doing awesome. At the end of the lesson she bore her testimony about how the Book of Mormon is true and how the gospel has blessed her life. She's so solid.

Time for a crazy story... a few months back me and Elder Miller started teaching a 12 year old named Jacob LoGreco. His grandma was a member and she had just passed away. So we were starting to teach him and help him work towards baptism, but after a couple months of taking the lessons he wasn't taking it seriously and didn't care. He didn't want to come to church or read the Book of Mormon. So we told him that we couldn't come back and teach him anymore because he didn't want to keep his commitments, he was a little upset but he just said okay. Then on Thursday, night I was on a split with one of the youth in the Ward, and I felt impressed to go see Jacob (it had been four weeks since I had seen him last). But I talked myself out of it because I didn't think it would be an effective use of time. I got the prompting again to go see Jacob, and so I was just like fine we will stop by to just see how he is doing...We stop by and Jacob was super excited to see us. We go in and he says, "I can't believe you guys are here! You will not believe what happened today." He said, "earlier today I was thinking about you guys for some reason, and so I decided to make a bet with God. I made a deal with God that if none of my friends could hangout today then I would go to church with you guys and get baptized. I don't know why I made that deal, but I felt like I should. And today literally none of my friends could hangout. Not a single one! So I said okay God you win, I will get baptized. But I didn't know how it would happen since you told me you weren't coming back anymore, but then 3 hours later you show up at the door!!"...... You can imagine my excitement as he told me all this. I was freaking out, but I was also overwhelmed with gratitude that the Lord led us to his house. We then had a lesson with him and set a baptismal date for February 25th! He came to church on Sunday for the first time and he loved it. He even said the closing Prayer in his Sunday school class, and in his prayer said how much he liked church! Talk about miracles. 

There were a lot of other small miracles that happened. This past week was such a testimony builder for me that Heavenly Father knows us. He loves us. None of this is just a coincidence. He has a plan specifically designed for each of us; I have seen it in my own life and countless times on my mission. The Lord has His hand in our lives, we just have to be willing to recognize it. I love serving the Lord and I am thankful for all the experiences I have had.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Hill

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