From The Waters of Mormon

A baptism! A baptism! We had a baptism!

Well, we had two :)

Both Manuel and Alejandro followed through with everything, passed their interviews and were baptized and confirmed!!! The changes we've seen in them have been absolutely mind blowing. It's so amazing to see the changes that the gospel of Christ brings into people's lives. It makes me realize how blessed I am to have known it all my life. As they came out out of the water, I was just filled with the purest joy I think I've ever known. To say the least, it was awesome :)

Other than the baptisms that we had this week, the work moves on. We've been doing a lot of the same. Ya know, missionary work haha. This week we had intercambios and another Hermana came to my area and I was the one in charge. That was interesting because I'm still in training! She also just finished training but everything went well and I learned to step out of my comfort zone even more. 

Not gonna lie, this weekend was difficult. I felt super inadequate. I felt like I was never gonna learn Spanish well enough to preach this gospel, like I was an awful companion, like 18 months was going to be an eternity, you name it and I felt it. 

Feelings of inadequacy can happen really easily here because there's a common thought that all missionaries are perfect and without flaws. I mean we should be! We wear the name of Christ over our hearts. We are his mouthpiece, here to testify of Him in these last days! We should be perfect! But, let me tell ya, we're still learning too. I can't tell you how many times in lessons we have been teaching a principle and the Spirit starts to whisper to me saying 'Hey, Hermana Thompson, you should probably work on that too ya know.' 

I'm learning everyday about literally everything. But all's good in Juarez. I've realized that we can't get rid of our weakness, but we can work to make them strengthens. It's just that. It takes WORK and it takes the ATONEMENT of CHRIST to make it happen. There is no other way. If you ever read the Book of Mormon, it'll tell you, pretty straightforward, that the only was is through Christ. For everything. Everything we do should be for Him, by Him, because of Him. He's the reason we're here, the reason we can get where we need to go, the one who brings us joy, comfort, peace. In my first few weeks here, it kinda slapped me in the face. So just passing along some information ;)