Sealings!!

Dear family,

First things first, BENNETT AND VERNA HAVE AN OFFICIAL DATE FOR THEIR SEALING!!!!! The date is October 18th, in the Seattle temple. Because I was able to teach them before they were baptized, I should get permission to go to their sealing! I can hardly wait, it's been a year since I've been to the temple, and 8 months since I've seen either of my two favorite "instigators." (Gotta love Verna) I still think about them almost every day. October is a long time to wait but it'll be worth it!!

We had an amazing lesson with our investigator Elizabeth this week. We taught about the Book of Mormon, which she had already started reading, and before we even started the lesson she said, "I really believe that this is true!" Then she smiled really big and said "And you know, that makes me kind of nervous." She was just beaming. She explained how she knows that her knowledge of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon makes her accountable and that that would mean she would have to make some changes in her life that support her new knowledge. I love when the spirit testifies of truth and all of a sudden investigators just get it.

Recently in my study I was thinking about how the repentance process works in our daily lives, not just as a missionary, but in real life too. Every morning immediately after we rise we commit to the Lord that we will do everything that we can to follow Him. Every night before we go to bed we account to the Lord on the days activities. It's important that in this time we are very specific in our gratitude, requests, and apologies for the day. We mentally go through every activity of the day, from morning to night, so that Heavenly father knows how much we really do appreciate His hand in our lives and in the process of us becoming like Him. When we talk about enduring to the end, it means we follow this process for the rest of our lives: commit, account, reccommit, account, reccommit, account, and "so on and so forth and what have you" (shout out to Bennett Harris.)

Hayley and Lily are still progressing amazingly, and our investigator Colton is now preparing to be baptized on August 16th. He lives all the way in Maltby on a ranch with over 30 horses. It's killing our miles when we're not able to get member rides there, so Sister Bartsch and I decided we're going to borrow one of his horses and just ride to our appointments from now on :)

Love, Sister Slade