Kaitlin's Mission

  This is the last weekly I will send as a full time missionary, and I couldn't have had a better end to my mission! My heart is full of gratitude for the opportunity that I have had to be a representative of Jesus Christ for the past year and a half. I have come to know Him in a personal way, and I love Him more than ever before. Serving a mission has been one of the greatest blessings in my life, and I have experienced some of my greatest joys out here. Serving a mission has been one of the greatest decisions I have ever made, and I will be forever grateful for my time here in the GANM! This week we got to go to the temple as a zone, and it is always great to go with a big group of missionaries. The Lord has put so much trust in us as missionaries, and I know that His work will continue to spread across the world. A few days later we got to go to the temple with Josh for his first time! It was one of the best temple trips I have ever experienced. We got to do baptisms for the dea...

  What an AMAZING week! The Lord keeps pouring out blessings upon Athens YSA, and I couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity I have to be here at this time. This week we got two more people on date to be baptized! One of them is Emily who will be baptized on the 27th and the other is Anderson who will be baptized in May! I am so excited I will be here to see Emily get baptized because we have been working with her a lot. She had a rough week and when we had our lesson she sat back and said, " Life would be a lot easier with the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I'm ready to be baptized." I almost started crying because I was just overwhelmed with happiness for her! The day she gets baptized we will go to the temple in the morning with Josh for the first time and have her baptism that night. Sounds like a perfect day to me! Josh is ready to be baptized on the 20th! Every time we see him he has a big smile on his face and says how excited he is to become a member of the chur...

  Conference weekend was amazing, and I hope everyone had the opportunity to listen to the teachings of our Savior Jesus Christ. This week we were extremely busy, and that is the best way to be! We had some great lessons with Josh and he is so ready to be baptized! A miracle that happened with him this week is that he had been praying a lot about who he wanted to be a part of his baptism, and when we asked each person if they could come they ALL said yes! We weren't expecting that to happen because it will be Easter wekeend, but so many of them are changing their plans so they can make it to his baptism! Josh said that he has felt an overwhelming amount of love from the branch and is excited to become a member! Another miracle happened on campus. Maybe not spiritual, but I still count it as a miracle 😉 Anyway, we had about 30 minutes to go contacting so we took a bus to main campus and when we got off the bus I saw A COW! We didn't know, but this week was AG week at UGA! They ...

  Another great week here in Georgia! So many miracles keep happening in this area, and it makes me so grateful to be serving here at this time. Yesterday at church we had a great turn out! While listening to the testimonies, a guy I've never seen before walked up to the pulpit.. side note: the branch is a little ghetto and the microphone doesn't even work 🤣 but it looks nice lol. Anyway, the first thing this guy says is, "I'm not from this church, but I've got something to say." He then began to bear an incredibly strong testimony about family and guardian angels. The room was completely silent and the spirit was ever present. After sacrament meeting we went up and talked to him, and it turns out that he is dating one of the members in the branch! We set up a time to meet with him this week! Another miracle from this week happened with my guardian angel. Last Monday I got to talk to my dad which was great, and during our call I felt a strong impression to as...

  I have two new companions now! This week has been a lot of fun, and I am excited to see what happens this transfer! We had 5 people at church yesterday! It's pretty amazing that we have a branch of about 50 people and 5 of those at church were non members that we are teaching. The Lord is truly blessing this area and so many great things are happening. We have some very solid people we are working with, and I can't wait to see them progress! This week we had a really good lesson with Josh. Every time we meet with Josh, he gets more and more excited for his baptism! I have loved being able to see Josh progress and see the changes he has made in his life. It's only been 13 weeks since I first met him, but the gospel has completely changed him. It's amazing! We are also teaching a girl named Elena. She is elect! She was introduced to the Church by her friend, and comes to church and every activity that the branch has. We hope to put her on date soon! Do y'all emember...

  What a CRAZY week! To start off, we got transfer calls last night. I will be staying in the area, and I will be getting TWO new companions. One is Sister Bronson who is so cute and the other we will be training! So crazy! I definitely did not think I would be training again, especially not my last transfer haha! I am excited though and I know great things will happen. 😊 I saw so many miracles this week. I know I say that every week, but it's because the Lord blesses us so much! One of the greatest miracles happened with an 18 year old named Robert. Friday night we got a call from a random number and they asked when our services were. This phone call turned out to be Robert. Robert is moving from Washington State to Athens in the next week or so, and his friend from school introduced him to the Church! Robert seemed excited to learn so we had a phone call lesson with him the next day since he is still in Washington. This was one of the most incredible lessons I have been apart of...

  I love UGA! Go Dawgs! Serving on campus is a lot of fun.. until spring break happens. The campus becomes a ghost town and no one is home for days! Luckily, we have some sisters close to us that we will be staying with for a couple of days so we can continue to work and be productive. This week we had an awesome lesson with Robbie! We finally got to meet with him again! In the lesson, we talked about strengths and weaknesses. We talked about making our weaknesses become strengths through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. As we were talking, I realized that we have to know ourselves and what we want in order to become better. With that being said, we need to know ourselves before we can come to know who the Savior truly is. Then, we need to know the Savior before we can come to know our Father in Heaven. In John 8:19 it says, " If ye had known me, he should have known my Father also."  I know that Jesus Christ lives and that He is at the head of this work. I absolutely love bein...

  Miracles just keep on happening! I love serving in this branch, and I am grateful for all the Lord is doing in this area. This week I learned a lot about gratitude. There is so much to be grateful for, but we sometimes don't recognize the blessings that are around us. The past 10 weeks I have also learned a lot about perspective and how that changes everything. In the beginning of Come, Follow Me, it says, " What seek ye?" Whatever we seek is what we are going to find. If we only look for negatives about school, work, people, or circumstances, that is all we are going to find. Nobody wants to be around negativity, but everyone wants to be around positivity. I believe I have become a lot more positive since the beginning of my mission. I have a long way to go, but through Jesus Christ I have become strengthened. Last night we had a lesson about our strengths and our weaknesses. We all wrote down our strengths and our weaknesses, and then shared our testimony of how we ma...

  This week was FULL of miracles!! I am so overwhelmed with the many blessings that I've seen this week. The Lord is in the details.. thankfully! Do y'all remember Robbie? He is the super cool guy who hasn't come to church in awhile and we had to stop teaching a few weeks ago? Well, I've got a story for you! I was yellow pad praying last week, and I felt prompted to fast for Robbie. So Sister Cleveland and I did. I've never had a super strong testimony on fasting because I've never personally seen blessings from doing so. Obviously I know there were blessings, but I asked the Lord to help me notice the blessings that would come from this fast. Anyway, fast forward to a few days ago when we texted Robbie and told him that if he read the BOM every day leading up to his test he would get a good score. He said he better start reading, and then we told him that when he got a good score that he would have to meet up with us again. Robbie said that didn't need to h...