Fort Lauderdale Proper!

Sisters Merrill & Houghton--at the Fort Lauderdale Temple

Dear family,

I am finally in Fort Lauderdale proper! Fort Lauderdale ward, in the area of Ft. Laud West to be exact. My new companion is Sister Merrill, whom you can see in the baptism pic I sent. She is 20, from Farmington Utah, and has been out one transfer less than I have. We are assigned as sister training leaders, which means we have six companionships of sisters whom we are responsible for. We go on full-day exchanges once a week, hour-long exchanges twice a week, and account weekly. 

S at his baptism, with Sisters Merrill & Houghton

S is the other one in that picture. He is 17 and one of the nicest people ever. A gentleman and spiritually very self-motivated. He has member friends who introduced him to the church and he is already very involved with the youth, keeps his commitments, etc. He is so awesome! I had only met him once before his baptism, but I will get to know him better this week. 

I was happy to hear that most of the family spent the day at the temple on Saturday!  We were there too, on the last day of the open house. We got there at 6:45, and the shift ended at 8:30 pm. But we had kind of an important obligation... we had a mission conference with several general authorities starting at 2:30pm. So they drove in 18 sisters from the Tampa mission to take our spots between 12 and 5:30. They arrived at 10:30 and we were planning to gather them in the staff tent to train them. But a well-intentioned coordinator just started assigning them to tents so the sisters in each tent got to train them! It worked out all right in the end, it was just crazy. And the Tampa sisters were weird. They didn't wear cardigans, they had their tags on the wrong side, they thought that Spanish missionaries could only serve in Spanish areas... Oh, and they had IPADS. What?? I cannot imagine being a missionary and having an ipad. 

On an exchange yesterday: We were knocking doors and after 30 minutes still having no success.We needed to change something, so we made some plans (talk to everyone, no matter what), and said a prayer. We looked up and saw a lady mowing her lawn. When we started talking to her we had the most amazing experience. She hadn't been able to go to church for 3 years because her husband didn't want to her. We felt the spirit strongly and testified that the Lord had sent us to her at this time because He had softened the heart of her husband and wanted them to both get baptized into His church. She was crying even before the prayer and committed to work towards the 11th of May. The sisters should be following up to be able to pray with her husband as well. I know that the Lord sent us to her. The rest of our blessings throughout the night were from OYMs (open your mouth). Oh and interesting fact: I have never knocked on a door and had that person get baptized. But I have had many, many OYMs get baptized. The Lord is willing to put His prepared children literally in front of us!

I love you all!!!

<3

HH

P.S. I pestered various people until I finally got a copy of the video we showed in the tents at the temple, so look forward to seeing that in a few months, those of you at home!

P.P.S. The more time I spend with the sisters in our stewardship the more I am humbled. They are amazing. They have so much talent, desire, and spirit. They inspire me to be better.

P.P.P.S. Sister Olsen, the new greenie in our apartment, is diabetic too! We were comparing pump supplies the other day :) And Sister Merrill's mom is a diabetes educator :)