"Sister Metal Chex"

Hey everyone!

First off, A GOT BAPTIZED on Saturday and it was SO special and SO awesome to see him make that first covenant with Heavenly Father. It was definitely an experience that I'll never forget. He is going to be a wonderful example for his family!! I can't wait to see all that the Lord has in store for him! 

We are still teaching J and he is definitely progressing and doing awesome! We have had some really awesome lessons with him this week... and we heard him pray for the first time! The missionaries had been trying to get him to pray during lessons since before I even got here. He always said no because he sees prayer as something that is VERY personal. We respected that, but continued to invite. Because his baptism is on Saturday, we were getting a little concerned and decided to focus our follow up on prayer.... We found out that the reason he hadn't prayed wasn't because it's too personal but because he didn't even know how. He has been switched around between missionaries a few times and I guess just never got taught. We felt soooooo bad!!!! We pulled out the pamphlet and taught him how. And once again, invited him to pray. He accepted our invitation and it was definitely one of the most humbling experiences of my life. I can't accurately describe to you, how it felt to hear someone pray out loud to their Heavenly Father for the very first time. It strengthened my testimony of prayer and of Heavenly Fathers love for each of us. I promise you, that he wants to hear from you. It makes him SO happy. Never forget that if it's important to you, it's important to him. Talk to him everyday about everything and anything.

Also, in one of our lessons he was thanking us for all that we've done to teach him. He was trying to think of the word angels, but fairies came out instead haha. So he called us his fairy messengers sent from God to help him. 

And on kinda a different note, we have had a tad bit of drama with his Saline situation. The details of that will be in the video haha. Hope you enjoy:) 

His baptism is on Saturday and we are super excited for It! 

We have a couple of new potentials! One is named C and the other is A. We are teaching them today and tomorrow so we will see what happens:) 

We had a mission tour on Thursday this week. We went with a couple of other zones so there were about 100 missionaries. it was wayyy awesome. 

Before I begin, I need to backtrack and tell you about the adventures from Wednesday. 

As you know, we are only allowed to drive a set amount of miles every month. We wanted to save some miles, we didn't have any lessons, and we wanted to SPT (short powerful testimony. It's a method president wants us to use) 20 people so we decided to ditch the car and walk all day long:) it ended up being really good. We talked to tons of people, and had some cool experiences with people asking us to pray with them because they know; "we're legit"... but they still don't become interested? 

Also, we were fasting the whole day and had the best homemade French toast I've ever had at a members house that night. I love that family! Hahaha

Now, zone conference was in Bloomfield which is about an hour away from our area. And getting there is not considered write-off mileage. Because of that, we wanted to carpool with the Ann Arbor 2nd ward sisters... but in order to do that we needed to have a sleepover:) because ZC started at 8:30am. We called the APs and they gave us permission as long as we could get to their apartment by 9pm. So we walked home, got our stuff ready to go, and went out to the car to leave.... only to find out that tiwi (the little voice box that talks and tracks our speed) was broken and drained our car battery.

The jumping of the car was a very interesting experience... how many sister missionaries do you think it takes to do it successfully? (I'll let you come up with your own answer to that one lol) but, I definitely learned a lot, and nobody died so it was successful hahaha. 

After we got it jumped, we drove to their apartment and all was well! I will send a video in case that makes no sense hahaha. 

The next morning we went up to Zone conference. It was SO GOOD. I received so much inspiration and I learned tons. Elder Dyches talked all about becoming a master teacher and the importance of the Book of Mormon. He said lots of super awesome things but one of my favorites was this: "Excuses never produce results and never correct mistakes". 

It hit me, and I realized that I have wasted so much time by making excuses for different things throughout my life. They don't bring us any closer to the Savior, they don't increase our testimonies, they don't open the door to improvement, and they don't fulfill the missionary purpose.... so why do we make them? Because of fear. When we are afraid of change we think up every reason we can as to why we don't need to change. So how can we move past the trap of excuses? Act in Faith. 

Tell yourself everyday that "you can do hard things!" And trust in the Savior. He can do so much more with us than we could ever do by ourselves! 

This is definitely a process that I am still working on and will be for the rest of my life! But I'm grateful for the knowledge that I have that as we do our best, the Savior will magnify our efforts. 

A couple of little things: 

1. There is the cutest little girl in our ward. She is two years old. She LOVES missionaries so she prays for us every night. We got a text from her Mom last night saying that she said; "please bless Sister Metal Chex" hahaha. How cute is that?! She definitely needs to marry Brigham one day. 

2. I saw a black squirrel. I've been waiting my whole mission(lol) and I finally saw one! 

3. President Cleveland is one of my favorite people. He's way funny and super great. Our mission is famous for making shave ice. After zone conference on Thursday, the senior couples set up a little drive thru for us and gave us each a snow cone (they are the best ever). It was a super long line... and we were lucky enough to get president Cleveland making our shave ice hahahaha. He made us all his signature flavor. It's called the Ferrari... couldn't tell ya what's in it but it was pretty good! 

4. I saw the temple! Conference was in Bloomfield right across the parking lot from it. It is so cute and so little. I can't wait for when we get to go!! 

Thank you all for the support!!! 

I am so grateful for each of you!

Love you all! 

Sister Sedlacek