Life Across the Pond: I am Grateful for...

YOU! That's what I'm grateful for on this beautiful Monday morning! (Among a host of other things).

This week was simply amazing! I felt the love this week :) Main highlights of the weeks were:

MY BIRTHDAY!

It was a good one, which extended into a 2 day birthday. Sister Appleby is sneaky and pulled in the pillowcase you guys made me, Savannah's bracelet and the stickers and hid them so they were sitting there in the morning when I woke up. (I'm glad she did it, then I had birthday things to see). I LOVE the pillowcase with your little messages on it.I stared at it all the time when we were in the flat during lunch and cuddled with it :) I got Belle (the princess) in my kinder surprise (chocolate with a toy in it) .We made crepes for breakfast, we did some finding and did a lot of laughing! We had dinner and ward coordination at the ward mission leaders house, so I got to blow the candles out on the dessert. We also got to train to Cheltenam that evening so we could get to zone conference early to practice a muscial number because trains didn't run from Swindon to Cardiff early enough. That was a fun adventure. The next highlight:

ZONE CONFERENCE

It was SO good. President Teixeira and his wife are so cool! I learned so much from them both. They talked about raising our expectations, finding people to teach and a few other things which were really relevant to our missionary work in this area. I also got to see Sister Miller (my trainer) which was amazing, and a few other missionaries who I've served around in the past. I also got all my birthday packages and letters at the end of Zone conference. I was on cloud 9! THANK YOU (friends and family) for your letters heartfelt of words of love and encouragement. The next highlight:

We taught Ab a couple of weeks ago, and he kept on canceling our lessons because of work etc. We were finally able to meet with Ab on Friday and guess what?! He's read most of the Book of Mormon and knows its true. We taught plan of Salvation (which he said seemed 'familiar to him') and then committed him to be baptized on April 12th. I could have jumped for joy! He is SO cool. He found the truth and just accepted it. He's a champ!

Its been a good week, and hopefully next week is even better as I raise my expectations and my faith! There is so much to be grateful for. I cannot believe how fast my time in the mission field is going... it's going way too fast!

This week, I want to share my testimony with you of the power of prayer. Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers. He always does. As I have made more of an effort to have a conversation with Heavenly Father, pour my heart out and to truly try to feel the Spirit and let it guide my prayers I have noticed a difference. When we do this we can close our prayers feeling truly uplifted and supported, rather than like it is just another thing we can tick off the checklist of things we should do. I have felt the very real power of prayer this week.

I am so grateful to be serving as a missionary and for the many people out there who are serving.