Sister Akayla Juliann Ferrara: Gingerbread Festival :)

This is been a really amazing week. Sister Durrant have had some extremely hard days, but Heavenly Father sent us SO many miracles.

First off...I wanted to share a very personal, special experience that we had last Saturday during weekly planning. Each week for weekly planning we discuss the needs of our investigators and less actives and then say a big long prayer for each of them. Remember Pam and Ray Myers? The awesome family that we're teaching? Ok, so Ray was set for baptism at this point for December 13th. It was my turn to say the prayer, so I start going down the list of the people we were focusing on and I get to Pam and Ray and just paused. I immediately started crying and had an overwhelming feeling from the Spirit. I was speechless and didn't know what to say. When I heard Sister Durrant sniffling, I knew that she was crying as well and that she had felt exactly what I had felt. Well, I ended the prayer and we discussed what we felt and it was obvious that Heavenly Father has spoken to us very clearly and told us that this family is ready and needs to be baptized by the end of the transfer. We made some goals and plans and decided we would fast for it every single week and pray for it at every prayer. Well, we went on with our weekend and Tuesday came along. Tuesday we had exchanges and I stayed in Lake Cunningham with Sister Cragun, and Sister Durrant went to Bellevue with Sister Mahlstede. It was a pretty great day! Lake Cunningham was...different. It's a bit of a sketchy area where everyone does illegal drugs and things like that. We saw some pretty great miracles as well! At the end of the day, we all met up at the Trail Center and the second Sister Durrant got out of the car, she said that the whole Myers family is set for baptism for December 13th. I ran right to her screaming and gave her a huge hug! It was a very happy night. I know that I am still in Bellevue because of this family.

Thursday we did service for Carla and helped her move out of her apartment and got to meet her new boyfriend, Mike and his friend Tony, and brother Miles. They're all major hillbillies with rotten teeth. It was an interesting experience...and then Mike hugged us before we left! AHH! We both about died. Kinda weird...

Friday was a very big event at the TC. Ribbon cutting for the Gingerbread Festival! We had a string's group here playing Christmas music which I absolutely loved. Made me really miss playing my violin. The senator of Nebraska came to do the ribbon cutting, and lots and lots of people came to watch. It was very exciting :) First day of gingerbread! Sister Durrant and I were supposed to be on chat, but no way...it was way too busy. In just a day, the TC went from died, to CRAZY busy. Worse than summer! It's been so much fun! Now we get to take turns going downstairs watching people as they go down to look at the gingerbread houses, and then we are to try and get as many people as we can to go upstairs for a tour. We've seen so many miracles and have had SO many non members come for this. My gingerbread house that I made at the Chappells is even on display! Woohoo!

Saturday was an awesome day! We weekly planned, and then went in our area around 4 and tried a less active who we have tried 3 or 4 times, and she was finally home so we got to set up an appointment with her for this week. Then we had about 30 minutes before our dinner appointment, so we prayed to know where we should go and we had a couple less actives in that area that we could've gone to see, but both of us just didn't feel like we should see them. Sister Durrant suggested that we just walk around and try to loan a Book of Mormon out. It was a fairly nice day so lots of people were outside raking all their leaves before the snow came. We saw this cute family raking leaves and decided to go talk to them, so we parked our car around the corner and went and talked to them. Turns out they were raking leaves for their elderly neighbor, so we asked if we could help! They were so sweet, but you could tell at first they were kind of hesitant, but as we did service with them and got to know them, their hearts were changed and we were able to give them a Book of Mormon and they are now a potential family! The old woman they were raking leaves for also came out and started talking to us and we gave her a Book of Mormon and she became a new investigator! In only 30 minutes of raking leaves! It was so awesome!

Anyways, that was my week! It was really great! Hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving! Love you all!
Sister Ferrara :)