MIRACLES HAPPEN Y’ALL!!!

This Easter week has been nothing but a miracle… it’s SO incredible! So we have Amanda getting baptized on Saturday (AHHHHH SO EXCITED!! 😁) and so we’ve been finishing up her lessons and getting her ready… and first of all, Amanda is pretty tall so we were kinda getting worried about finding her a white dress to be baptized in, but our Bishop’s angel wife said that we could have her old temple dress! Talk about divine inspiration! And so on Easter Sunday Amanda tried the dress on, and I seriously couldn’t help but cry. She looked absolutely beautiful! As she twirled in the dress outside the chapel I could just envision her twirling in the Celestial room (and she would totally do that! haha love her!)!! It was so incredible, she has come SO far since the day we met her 3 months ago, her whole countenance has changed and she is already becoming the “new creature” as spoken of in Corinthians. The Gospel works mates, believe me!

Now it would be pretty cool if that was the only miracle of Easter.. BUT WAIT there’s more!! We were actually quite terrified that Amanda wouldn’t come to church the week before her baptism, because she hasn’t been feeling well and she said she would have family in town. And when church began, the minutes dragged on, and no Amanda… so our hearts started dropping because that would mean we would have to push her baptism back and they had JUST announced it for the ward… when we got a text from her saying “we’re here but they won’t let us into the chapel!” they had just closed the door for the sacrament! So we told her to wait and we’d see her soon! 🙂 When the sacrament finished her kids ran into the chapel and sat down next to us and then proceeded to tell us that poor Amanda was in the toilet because she had food poisoning! The poor thing was so sick, but she knew of the importance of coming to church and her adorable kids helped force her to stay even when she didn’t feel good at all! We had been discussing on getting Amanda a priesthood blessing to help her with her stress and back pain and help staying true to the decision she’s made to be baptized.. so we got Pres. Mahe and Bro. Welling to help out and had them also bless that her food poisoning would go away. It was a beautiful blessing and afterwards Amanda hopped up and said “ok I don’t know what just happened but all of the sudden I feel SO much better!” I am so eternally grateful for the power of the priesthood! God loves us so much that he’s given those righteous priesthood holders the authority to heal us and bless us. And Amanda was able to witness that first hand on Sunday!

THEN yesterday rather than having P-Day (because here in Aussieland, Easter is a 4 day ordeal… so Easter Monday is a public holiday) we had the opportunity to have a wonderful Family Home Evening lesson with Amanda at the Hooper family’s home! Sis. Hooper is Peta’s (Amanda’s 10yr old daughter) primary teacher so it was a wonderful night. We taught a fun lesson about following the prophet and we had the kids all play a game of “Prophet Says” haha it was good fun! And towards the middle-end of the night.. Peta turns to her mum to get her attention and asked “did you tell them?” and it took a few minutes of back and forth for Amanda to know what she meant.. and afterwards she said “OH yes! Peta wanted to let you know that she would like to be baptized with me on Saturday if that would be alright..”………. what the???? OF COURSE THAT’LL BE ALRIGHT!!!!!!!

So we’re now preparing for a double baptism on Saturday with Peta and Amanda(: and in a couple years her other kids will be baptized too! <3 we’re so excited for them!! But now we have an absolute hectic week ahead of us trying to squeeze in all the lessons that we haven’t taught Peta because she was at school when we taught her mom… So we have about 3-4 days (depending on the interview) to teach 5ish lessons… Pray for us! 😱 but really we would really appreciate your prayers on both Amanda and Peta’s behalf. They’re really going to face some opposition this week and obstacle are already popping up to keep them from getting baptized but we know that through faith and persistence they’ll make it to the waters of baptism!

This week has been so great and to add to the greatness, on Saturday our BISHOP came door-knocking with us for 3 hours!!! It was so much fun! and SO much more effective than when it’s just us knocking… We got 6 potential investigators and taught 1.5 lessons! Man if you ever want to make the missionaries in your Ward like beyond shocked/happy/whattheheckamidoingwithmylife just ask to go tracting with them. It was awesome and our Bishop Seumalu is the bomb.com! 👏

For Easter we taught the Relief Society lesson(: and we accidentally preached false doctrine…. (sssshhh don’t tell anyone…) no but we felt really bad and it totally wasn’t our fault. We had been given this seemingly AMAZING quote from Pres. Boyd K. Packer just to find out after the lesson that the quote was doctored (probably by someone on Pinterest haha) and he actually never said parts of it… so that’s awkward… But alas, c’est la vie! Don’t worry we’ve repented and burned the evidence… 😎

Well that about covers it Down Under… I hope your Easter was inspiring and that God blessed you abundantly! I’m so grateful for the Gospel in my life and the knowledge I have of the resurrection and of God’s love <3 If you haven’t had the chance please go take a look at followhim.mormon.org and watch the beautiful Easter video messages that the Church has put out! I love them so much!!! #Hallelujah #FollowMe

​Love y’all heaps!

Sister Swan

​Pictures: (so fun this week!)
1: Mates… hot cross buns EXIST!! They’re not just a nursery rhyme that we played on a recorder in year 3!! They’re pretty good.. you can get chocolate ones of the original ones which have sultanas (raisins) in them!
2: Do you like snakes? I like snakes.. and Australia’s got ’em! This is a 2.5 meter long Olive Python (pronounced pie-thnn… lol the handler guy corrected our apparently incorrect American pronnunciation of pie-thOn haha last time I checked there was an “O” there but I could be wrong…) we were at a Less-Active member’s home and they had a TON of reptiles there! She is a wildlife conservationist and so she rescues stranded or injured reptiles. And their cousin was in town and he’s a reptile show performer! so he had heaps of neat snakes and lizards that he let us hold and look at! So stinkin cool! haha Sister Stott wasn’t as impressed though 😂
3: We were walking down the lolly isle and saw these gems… don’t worry.. we didn’t partake. 😅 #missionaryhumor

Much love,
Sister Swan