ALOHA!!!
TODAY HAS BEEN SO JOYFUL!
Such a good end to our Joyful June with our goal of 100 baptisms. We had a mission wide conference call with our mission president and his wife and also President and Sister Hamula the area president. They announced to us that we did it! Something that has never been done before in the history of the Australia Brisbane Mission as it currently stands, that is break over 100 baptisms in one month! We got 105 during this joyful month of June! I am so happy for the mission and mostly for all those 100 beautiful people who entered into those waters. 2 of which were people that I really had a lot to do with. The first was a beautiful young mom who I found and taught in Toowoomba who was baptised earlier in the month. We met her in January when we were following up on some less active sisters for our relief society president. The lady we were originally looking for didn't live there, but I think Heavenly Father knew who we were truly looking for. We taught her and saw her progress and start to truly build her relationship with her Saviour and with Heavenly Father again. I was so sad to be transferred but I knew Sister Fesolai and her new companion would be able to continue to help her and after much fasting and prayer and the softening of her husbands heart she was baptised!
The second baptism of the 105 that I was directly involved in was of Shaun. We had the baptism this weekend. I wrote about it in my letter to my mission president already so I might just copy/ paste that in here so I don't have to type it all again:
Dear President Henderson,
This week was one of the most epic, spiritual, faith building, weeks I've ever had. It was such a hard labour of love getting our investigator Shaun into the waters of baptism, I really can't believe it, but I can because throughout it all even when it seemed impossible Sister Moran and I had this overwhelming sense of peace in knowing that although we might not be able to see exactly how we knew that God would make it happen. On Tuesday Shaun was really flustered. He wanted to wait to be baptized on July 26th. He felt like he wouldn't be strong enough with his smoking to get baptized any sooner and he was not feeling confident or ready at all. We left that lesson not knowing quite what to do but feeling hopeful and having faith that he would in fact be able to be baptised this past weekend. We decided to just act in faith and have him interviewed for baptism anyways. So he was interviewed Wednesday and he passed his interview perfectly fine, which helped him recognize that he really was qualified and ready to be baptised, but he still wasn't really keen on this weekend. We had been fasting on Wednesday that he would be able to be ready and so we had a talk with him and shared scriptures from Alma chapter 18. I could really feel the spirit teaching through me. I shared insights to those scriptures in our lesson with him that I had never even thought of before. It was pretty incredible. In the end we committed him to pray and ask God if he should be baptised on Saturday. Later that evening he called us to say after we left he had gone outside to chat to the neighbours, who are members, and asked them about what they think he should do, and they encouraged him to be baptised "straightaway" so he knew he should go and pray to God about it and he did! He said he received an answer from God that he should do it now! When we heard that news we were overjoyed. The events leading up to his baptism and organizing things are all a blur. I know it was the enabling power of the atonement giving us the strength and clarity of mind to do more than we normally would be able to do as we organized a program, made assignments, found clothes for him to wear, made sure the font was filled and all those other wonderful things that need to happen. We somehow got it all done in time. He was confirmed Sunday at church and said he had a wonderful warm feeling of light all throughout him. I have literally seen the power of the atonement heal this man throughout the time we have taught him and I know now that he is baptised he will only continue to become more refined and more whole. It has been an amazing miracle! Thank you so much for all your love and support and encouragement and faith, our mission is in such a different place then it was just a year ago, it is incredible.
Just to add a few more details. The morning before his baptism which was scheduled for 2pm, at about 12 we realized our new assistant ward mission leader was a bit lost and confused because after talking to him we learned that in fact there was only one confirmed speaker, no program typed up, and no one was filling the font. So off we sped to the library to make a program in about 20min. We drummed one up and added in a few speakers, while he told us he'd sort out the font. 1pm rolls around and we call him, turns out still no one is filling the font.....so we race to the chapel and we have to pick up the elders along the way. Their job was to find him some white clothes, turns out they don't have any pants to fit him. So on our way we pass a sports store and I suggest we just run in and buy some cricket pants, we park in front of an opshop and decide to check in there first and what do we see but a pair of white pants exactly the right size for him! Small miracles like that are what show me Heavenly Father truly is involved in every little detail of our lives. We get to the chapel and hallelujah someone had figured it out and the font was filling, and the rest is history, Shaun got baptized. He did try to sit on the back row of the chapel for his own baptism which was funny but in the end it happened and Sister Moran and I were like too exhausted to even jump for joy. We also got a mini missionary dropped off to our house that morning for the week. So that should be fun!
Sorry for this extra long novel of an email but this week was really just epic.
Love you all!
Sister Rasmussen
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