Thanksgiving was great! I don't think I told you but the members we were supposed to eat with cancelled dinner on us! Hahaha so we ended up eating at the sites with a bunch of the senior couples. It was delicious & just lovely! I love them all so much, so it was fun. Thanksgiving was our p-day so after lunch, I took a nap while Sister Esser set up a Christmas tree that was in the basement of the Boynton.
I seriously cannot believe that it is Christmas again already!!!! It feels like a month ago that I was caroling to the people of Shaker Heights, and Cleveland Heights, and South Euclid, Ohio!! And it was a year. TIME FLIES! But anywho, that night at the VC we had a get-together for the sisters and we got permission to watch Emma Smith: My Story. We were allowed to wear p-day clothes so I was in jeans...watching a movie.....it was a scary foreshadowing of things to come. Yikes!
Saturday was Jennie & Noah's baptism! So let's back up for just a second. Last Wednesday night was their baptismal interviews, and the zone leaders found that they were ready to be baptized. President Draper came to talk with Jennie & just invite her to come every week to the Chardon branch since this is the unit she's assigned to. (She'd been going to the Youngstown ward because she has a friend over there who was the one who referred her to the missionaries.)
We knew that President Draper had a been a little apprehensive about a couple things so we talked with him afterwards to see if he felt better. Basically, he gave us his strong opinion that if it were him, he would push the date a few weeks and just make sure that she had a flaming burning testimony. Sister Esser was feeling really stressed and overwhelmed because she was feeling like we needed to move the date. I didn't really feel that as much...I felt like Jennie has a calm understanding of the gospel and is ready. But we decided it would calm Sister Esser's nerves and President Draper's to move the baptism so we resolved to do that.
When we went to see them on Thanksgiving day we had plans of moving it....however, as we talked with Jennie that day and asked inspired questions, we found out more about the beginnings of her interest in the gospel. We found that she had been on mormon.org and read and studied about this before inviting the elders over. We asked that if heaven forbid, Roy, her friend who referred her, was out of the picture, would she still know that this was Jesus Christ's original church? That this was true? And she said, Yes! Sisters, I'm not going anywhere. And we both just felt at peace and felt relieved and didn't feel like we needed to move the date. So we didn't.
Sister Esser was kind of going back and forth on it again the next day but when we prayed to feel that peace again, a line from a blessing that I actually got back in February ran through my mind:"Promptings and impressions may come differently than you may expect or from counsel of others but remember, the Spirit is first." I knew without a doubt that the supreme peace & relief that I felt when we left Jennie's house on Thanksgiving day was the Spirit. And I couldn't look back after that. The baptism ended up being AMAZING!! There weren't a whole lot of people there but the Spirit was so strong. :) WOOHOO!
On Saturday night, we went over the Sarah Brown's house & taught her and her brother Carey!! He actually sat in on the lesson and was really talkative...a lot more than he was at the baptism. SWEET! I love the Brown family! Sister Brown made us a crumb cake and ran and got milk so she missed the lesson part BUT she and Carey came to church with Sarah on Sunday!!!!! SO COOL! When we were leaving church, Sarah ran back inside and grabbed a Book of Mormon to write her testimony in and give to her brother before he went back to college in Columbus that night. SHE'S SO AWESOME! But the best part of that whole thing was that her MOM was the one who told her to go grab a BoM for him!!! Sister Brown totally has a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. She will be baptized one day, I know it. It was just interesting to note how she came to church when Brother Brown was out of town, hunting....hmm.
But back to Sarah, she came with us to the sites on Sunday and shadowed us there! :) We took a tour and made phone calls with her! I know when I first started in the call center, I only called those who were members of the Church but Sarah wanted to start with people who weren't members of the church so she could share her testimony with them!! Isn't she incredible?! Seriously. She also told us more about how she had been planning to join the church in college (for a number of years) and so her requirements when she was looking at colleges was that they had a Russian program and that there was an LDS chapel somewhere nearby. :) I really still am not sure how I got so lucky as to be one of "her" missionaries! I LOVE HER! She loved being at sites with us and said that she wants to come back every Sunday :) We'd LOVE that!
On Tuesday, we had the most wretched training meeting ever! It was a departure testimony meeting pretty much. We never have training meeting on the week of transfers so that was my last one. They had the 10 of us, plus Sister Lyman, who is leaving 2 weeks after us (so she can make it back to BYU in time for the semester), get up and share our testimonies with all the young sisters & the senior couples. Wow. It was pretty much a cry-fest. It was great. I don't know why we had to do it so early, when we still had a week left, but oh well. It was what it was. Sister Debenham wrote a song about Kirtland and a few of us sang it for a musical number in that meeting. We're also going to be singing it at the transfer meeting on the 7th. It's amazing. I'll just share a couple stanzas from the song. It's called Stories of Kirtland:
"And now the path is pointing me home now
It's like a voice, it's calling me
And every time I walk by the brook now
I'm overcome with memories"
I feel that! It feels surreal that it's already been almost 18 months. There is no way!!! Gosh, it goes by SO fast! But no worries all of you who are freaking out, I still have one more p-day left on Tuesday, December 6th so I'm still going to need some emails to read, OKAY!!
We didn't have p-day yesterday because Sister Esser got a call from President Sorensen on Tuesday asking her to train a new missionary who is coming out!! :) She, Sister Tokunaga & Sister Mayer are training. That means I'll get to have a picture with my grandbaby before I leave this place :) So, anyway, the three of them had to go to Cleveland for meetings yesterday so p-day was shifted to today.
I just want you to know that I have a testimony of enduring to the end. I'm not done. I still have 6 days left with stewardship over the Chardon area and I intend to see to it that this area is taken care of and these people are loved and taken care of the way they need to be. My work is not yet finished! I know that the Lord can work miracles in 6 days. So I plan on seeing many. I love you all!!!!!
Love,
Sister Webb
P.S. I forgot my camera in my coat pocket in the car soooo you'll have to wait til Tuesday for any pictures. BYE!
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