Choose to Believe!

Love hearing about how everyone´s doing. Oh my gosh, I can´t believe Noelle saw Gloriana in concert! #jelly Okay, I´m back to being a missionary now. Fun to hear about the California road trip. I hope that Grand Dad eventually moves up there too... it´d be so good for him. And that´s so awesome that Tina and Garth gave Steven a world cup ball! Why are they so awesome?  Yes, Courtney, e-mailed me! Holy freak, I´m so dang excited for her! She´s going to meet Sister Custódio´s family! haha So proud of that girl for the decision she´s making. And for all the young men in our ward too. Super happy for everyone.

So this week was incredible. I can´t tell you all how wonderful it was to have a full week of work again with the world cup being over. So good! It was also ridiculously cold... is that even possible? But the week was filled with TONS of rain! The first few days I spent soaked completely through and the others, it started to calm down again. Like I said, it was so good to get to work normally again. We managed to follow up with our investigators find lots of new, wonderful people to teach and are seeing lots of progress. We began teaching a family that´s all grown up but still lives together here... the mom, her three daughters and sons-in-law, and two grandchildren. It´s been really fun teaching them because they´re super warm and show lots of interest in what we have to say. I was a little shocked when we returned a couple days after the first visit and they had all prayed. And then I was shocked again when they showed up at church yesterday. Usually to get people to church here, you have to walk around waking everybody up because they don´t answer their phones or leave that part to the members. So we did this yesterday morning, but no one that we visited showed up at church. I had tried calling this family before leaving to bring people to the chapel, but no one answered. So when we showed up at the church without anyone, I was a little disappointed. But I got all happy again when Sister Smith said that someone had called and said they were on their way. And about half an hour later, this family showed up! Wow, I was so happy to see them there!

So many more great things happened this week that I´m so grateful for, but there´s not nearly enough time to write it all. I just am so grateful for the mission. I´ve never passed through so many hard times in such little time, but I´ve also never experienced such joy. It´s amazing the happiness that the gospel brings to us when we really make an effort to apply it in our lives. Here´s just a little quotation to finish up from Presidente Uchtdorf:

"We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ."

When you have the choice between doubt and faith, don´t ever choose to doubt. Choose to believe. And the unending blessings of faith will follow. I love you all! Have a wonderful week and hurrah for Israel!

Com amor,

Sister Ball

The power went out Monday night, so we had to stay in our house and had a fun story-telling party

Happy 10 months, Sister Ball