Living in Spiritual Paradise

I have compose a little poem for all my faithful followers

 

My skin is red

The skies are blue

Florida is GREAT

and the church is true

 

Thank you, thank you very much! :) That's pretty much how I feel about my life right now.  I am convinced that I am living in a spiritual paradise. This week has been the best one I've had here in Lakewood Ranch. It started out by going to my new favorite place in the entire world, Anna Maria Island. Oh my goodness, I have discovered love. We spent P-day walking around the island seeing the sites, checking out all the beach stores and riding the free trolley. Although I didn't set foot on the beach and I could sense that happiness drifting my way. I have a new life goal to move to Anna Maria island, and live on the beach for the rest of my life. I guess I better get use to the seafood.

 

We spent the week visiting members and continually trying to strengthen the ward. I actually felt busy this week and like I was doing something helpful besides just trying to stay busy all day and guess what... it feels great to be needed. We spent many hours planting flowers and helping people get their yards in order for the summer. I love getting my hands in the soil.

 

And... all our areabook work has paid off!! We probably called over 200 hundred people over the last 3 weeks. Well we had a few appointments scheduled from that but my favorite has to be our experiences with Jerome. We called him and set up an appointment for Thursday. Well we went over not really knowing what to expect. As the time went on his story come out. He is from Africa, Liberia I believe. He met with missionaries there and even watched them build a temple. He moved here and over a year ago met with the Sisters once or twice but due to his hectic work schedule wasn't able to meet every often and slowly fell under the radar. He was talking to his fiance, who happens to be from Africa too but moved to Utah randomly and joined the church, and they were saying that they needed to get a hold of the missionaries again because he had just changed his work schedule so he could come to church. Well 5 minutes after their conversation about not having the missionaries number, who do you think calls. Yup, us, the missionaries just asking if their interested in meeting with missionaries again. When he told us that I got goosebumps and I knew that there was a reason we were supposed to call everyone in the areabook!! YEAH!! So cool! Well long story short he wants to get baptized and in a few short weeks he'll be baptized. They came to church yesterday and the ward was awesome with making them feel right at home. (Sister Thomas does  little happy dance just thinking about this) Makes me so happy!

 

It gets better! So then we got referral from an old bishop in one of the wards further south. You never know what to expect with referrals but we boldly walked up to this ladies house and she was SOOO happy we were there. We set up a time to come back and when we met with her again she was just so full of questions. As we taught her about the restored gospel she about died of excitement. She is the coolest lady! I can't wait to continue to teach her!!

 

Well this week has been wonderful. I hope that you are all doing well. Stay Classy!

 

Love

Sister Grace Thomas