Sister Jennifer Bradley, Indianapolis Indiana Mission : The best thing you'll ever seen on TV

Hey hey there friends and family! It has been a fantastic week!! First off, Linda, our 80 year old investigator, got baptized!!! :D what a special and touching experience it was to be able to find, teach, and baptize her. She was so prepared!!! We met her April 27 and she was baptized literally a month later on May 27. I am not sure there are enough words to describe how wonderful this experience was (you'd be here all day). Linda was very guarded at first and hardly talked at all, but a special light has come into her eyes now. She knows who she is, and why she is here on this earth. And now she can start to do work for her family to bring them the same joy that she has just experienced!!! :) God is so good.

We had the COOLEST experience with Peggy! Backstory, we have kinda been struggling with how we can help her best. We can only meet with her short amounts of time because she is so weak, and she is too weak to come to church and struggles to concentrate to read the scriptures. Pretty much all she has been doing is praying, which don't get me wrong is great, but there is more to spiritual nourishment than just prayer. We weren't even been sure if she really knew the Book of Mormon was true or that Joseph Smith was a Prophet and we had asked her to pray about these things lots of times. I felt prompted that we needed to show her the Restoration video, and not just a short clip, but the whole thing. We came to her house and said a prayer and put in the video. I was praying in my heart that whole time that she would feel the Spirit and that she would know the message was true. She was engrossed the entire time and after the video was over she said, "that was the best thing I have ever seen on TV!" Peggy had tears in her eyes as she said "now I understand why you girls believe the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a Prophet. I know it is true now too." We all felt the Spirit so strongly in those tender moments, we were crying and Peggy was crying as we bore testimony of Joseph Smith and the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For once in Peggy's life, she was speechless (and she loves to talk!) she hardly had words to describe the way she felt. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is true my friends, and it is one of the most important things we can come to know here on this earth.

We taught Lisa this week and she is 108 pages into the Book of Mormon! It was so wonderful to see her progress and honestly a little humbling for me. It helped me remember that I am honestly here to just invite and teach, and then the Spirit does all the conversion. The Spirit changes people, not me. We have been trying for weeks to get Lisa to read, and now she finally is because she has been open to the Spirit and the Spirit is working in her life. We did share a cool analogy though that I thought you all might like, and it can work a couple different ways. When relating it to Jesus Christ and His Atonement we can see that living the Gospel is like going to the gym. We can buy that membership and we can drive to the gym, but if we just sit there and don't work out, nothing is going to happen for us. We will be stagnant, and unhappy and our muscles won't get stronger and we won't get into shape. This is exactly like knowing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not living it. Jesus Christ has performed His Atonement, the equipment is there, and it is our choice and more importantly our job to partake of of His Atonement by living the gospel (having faith, repenting, making and keeping covenants, and enduring) and only after we do those things can we receive the blessings of the Atonement. This is where we find forgiveness from sins, and peace and real, lasting joy. Don't just standby, be active in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

On a funny side note, we got invited to two parties this week! One was by this guy in the ghetto who said his party was super fun and we should come, but then he told us there would be weed and alcohol and we had to politely decline and tell him that isn't really the type of "fun" we like haha Next we got invited to a Ramadan party by this Muslim guy! We might actually consider going to that one ;) haha

Serving with a Smile,

Sister Bradley