A NOTE FROM RICHELLE'S MOM: PICTURE ABOVE....AS RICHELLE ENJOYS WARM ARIZONA, WE HAVE BEEN DUMPED ON BY 4 SNOW STORMS IN 7 DAYS...OVER 36" OF SNOW IN OUR YARD (AND ROOF)! ARIZONA IS LOOKING BETTER AND BETTER......
Here's this week's update from Richelle:
Another week... this one with some ups and downs, but I'm learning a lot!
We have been teaching this sweet 19 year-old girl named Francisca from Chile for about a month. She has been here on an extended vacation, visiting a family of members. When we met her she was familiar with the Church and her family has known the missionaries in Chile for years. Some other Elders passed her on to us with the specific instruction that she would get baptized, because how they found her was an answer to one of their prayers (a whole different story...)
Anyway, we started teaching Francisca and we love her! She has such a sweet spirit and loves learning about the gospel. We had invited her several times to be baptized before she left for home, and she assured us that if she received the answer she was hoping for then she would. We kept working with her encouraging her to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. She finally decided she would like to be baptized here, but out of respect for her parents she wanted to ask their permission before going forward with it. However, we were quickly running out of time before her departure date... last Monday.
We have been praying for her this whole time, but when we talked to her on Saturday she still hadn't been able to ask them, so we decided we would need a miracle to pull this all off in a day. We began a fast, and I felt full of faith and knew that things would work out the way they should.
Sunday was our typical long day at Church (7am-4pm), but as you do when you fast I felt especially close to the Spirit and full of God's love. Awesome. Then we had a few minutes after church before dinner, and went to an apartment complex to contact a family. They weren't home, but we started talking to another guy... we had a good conversation with him, and aside from sharing the gospel, we left with almost $300 worth of cosmetics from the company he works for. Sweet.
Dinner time: We ate with a great family (former Branch President) and met a friend from Argentina that is living with them, Carolina. She also has a very sweet disposition (very similar to Francisca) and we were touched by the strength of her testimony as she shared with us her conversion story. Hermana Norton and I looked at each other and realized we were thinking the same thing - Carolina was an answer to a prayer... she was perfect for Francisca so we invited her to come to our 6:00 lesson and share her testimony, with the assumption that after the lesson we would be pulling together a very last minute baptism.
Now, I'm sorry to tell you that this story isn't going to end the way you are probably hoping it will. When we got to Francisca's house Sunday evening no one was home. The family didn't answer their phone, and although we kept trying for the rest of the night we couldn't get in touch with her. Much to our disappointment, she left for Chile Monday without us even getting a chance to say goodbye.
I was sad... I really felt I had had the faith that things would work out! But on the way home I learned that things really did work out... EXACTLY the way the Lord wanted them to. Carolina shared the rest of her story - her family's conversion, which took place over a period of almost 20 years. She and her sister were the first to be baptized.. and they prayed for a long time to see the rest of their family come into the gospel. Finally, little by little her father, then a brother, after years her mother, and most recently her oldest brother were baptized. Now they have plans for their entire family to be sealed together in the temple toward the end of the year (after her brother has been a member for a year).
Sometimes the Lord works in mysterious ways - and He ALWAYS works on His own time. He knows Francisca's needs, and there is no doubt in my mind that she will be baptized when the timing is right. Sometimes we have to trust on the Lord that he knows what's best, but if things are good and right then they will "come to pass".
I also saw how the Lord knew exactly what I needed. The simple act of placing both Francisca and Carolina in my path taught me some very valuable lessons. At a time when I could have easily been frustrated, Heavenly Father placed someone in my path to strengthen my testimony and offer me peace. I've found that he often works in this way, and is so aware of each and every one of us and our individual needs.
Later that night, as we were looking through our new collection of lotions I had to smile as I realized one of the product names was "Miracle". So perhaps I didn't get exactly what I thought I had been praying for... But "who shall say that Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles?" Because to me that day truly "there were many mighty miracles wrought".
"Behold, are not the things that God hath wrought marvelous in our eyes? Yea, and who can comprehend the marvelous works of God?" (Mormon 9:16-18)
Love always,
Hermana Richelle Ouellette
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