Sister Marli MacLay: Special Sacrament

-literally only in Texas you would find a shopping mall with a giant 10 commandments tablet??

Ahhhhhh this week was so amazing! (Besides finding out that The Office will officially be taken off Netflix)

Yesterday we did our special sacrament we have been preparing for and it was a huge success! They asked me to get up last week before sacrament and tell all the members about it; so I did and then I invited each of them to invite a friend and then promised them some bomb blessings, since I'm authorized to do such. Then we texted them all throughout the week and followed up.

Annnnyyywayyysss, we had at least NINE nonmembers at sacrament and I'm pretty sure that's a mission record Haha. Especially for a YSA BRANCH. And then we had lots of YSA who normally go to family wards come. We asked the stake president to reach out to each of them and personally invite them. And he did AND also had all the bishops announce it in sacrament!

We had our mission president and his wife surprise us by coming. The speakers were me, a branch member, and the stake president. They also had president and sister Hales give their testimonies. We had 2 musical numbers that brought the spirit so strong.

One of the best parts was that Lauren came! She was the only person being taught when I got here, and she's never been to church because of her parents disapproval. Well, she is growing SO much and gaining so much courage and she finally came to church!! She is gaining such a strong desire to learn and grow in the gospel and it's so cool to see. She even invited a friend to meet with us after I asked her for a referral and we got to teach her the Restoration!!

We also had our neighbor, Dusty, who is an older guy come to hear me speak. He cried during the music (': He also took us out to eat the other day and so we had our 2nd lesson with him!

Mohamed came again and brought Merico! How we met them was we were going home and I spotted 2 guys walking down the street a 1/2 mile away, so I told Sis Southard we needed to start walking towards them. We parked the car and walked their direction and like 5 minutes later met them and got to talk to them. We shared the Book of Mormon with Mohamed and then got to go to the mosque with him last week and have a lesson, but Merico wasn't interested. But Mohamed somehow convinced him to come!

Last night we had another experience where we were out contacting some formers. It was 8:10pm and Sis Southard suggested we go home and plan for an event we're organizing for the branch and people we're teaching. I said okay...but I still really wanted to be out talking to people Haha. So I made a little promise with Heavenly Father that the next person I saw outside, I would pull over the car and talk to them...no matter how awkward it was lol. So after a mile of looking down every neighborhood street we passed by, I finally saw a pair of legs belonging to someone reaching in their car. So we pulled over and talked to him (Satan is still good at trying to put fear or doubt in my mind before talking to people....so I had to cast that boi out). Anywayyyysss the guy we met is SO AWESOME and SO PREPARED. We were able to go inside and do a restoration/plan of salvation lesson with him and his mom who is church of christ. Usually they aren't very nice to us but she was civil lol.

Okay sorry about the length of this...I wanted to talk about the talk i gave but this is already so long so maybe i will next week. For now, just remember that Christ's grace isn't just to save us...but to change us.

Love y'all!

Sister MacLay