Enjoying the End :)

Hello everyone!

We started teaching a special new investigator this week, Sis Marissa. She is the sister of an active member who has been coming to church for about 2 months now and we are so excited to be teaching her because she is deaf and doesn't know how to read or speak. It's amazing how the Spirit is a language that anyone can speak and feel and understand. Sis Gregory and I are teaching her using pictures and hand signals and her family to translate. We showed her pictures of Jesus Christ's baptism and a baptism in our time, and asked her if she wanted to do the same and she enthusiastically nodded yes and gave us the thumbs up :) We are so excited to see her desires to learn the gospel of Jesus Christ! She gave the closing prayer, speaking the words of her heart that only Heavenly Father could understand and even sang along in her "words" as we sang I Am a Child of God. We love Sis Marissa and are continuing to look for creative ways to teach her!

Bro Rick is doing so great. He readily accepted the Wow this week and is loving learning the plan of Salvation. He accepted an invitation to be baptized in February! :) We are so happy to see how prepared he has been throughout his life to receive the Gospel and how willing he is to act on it. I'll keep you updated on his progress!

This week, as I start the last 8 weeks of my mission, I think my motto will be "enjoy to the end". Eight weeks is so short and I want to do all I can to live and love every moment, even the challenging ones. Enduring to the end is a great thing to do, but it's useless if we are not enjoying it. I was thinking today about how important it is to choose to enjoy everything- the studies, the exchanges, the meeting, the planning, the work, the challenges, the members, the ward, everything! 

This week I invite you to continue not only to endure to the end, but to enjoy to the end :) Heavenly Father loves us soo much and wants us to be happy, so wherever you are this week and whatever you're doing- just enjoy it! It's a Plan of Happiness not a Plan of Endurance :)

I love you all!

Sister Gustafson :)

PS- I have some great pictures of me with the fish I ate earlier and me on exchanges with my dear trainer, Sis Gallego, but they don't want to be sent right now. Something to look forward to for next week :)