Brownsville, Letter 6

Hola Familia y Amigos!

So this week has been great as always. The greatest thing ever, General Conference!!! Us missionaries get so spiritually hyped for conference! It's also a fantastic opportunity for us to invite nonmembers to come and see what it's really like to listen to the voice of a Prophet of God! Conference was incredible, and so was Easter, when we got to celebrate the most important day in all of human history, when our Savior rose again. What a blessed week!

This week has been full of beautiful experiences and powerful teaching moments. We were able to watch conference with two different investigator families, and it was great for them to be able to hear the voice of the Prophet and the other servants of the Lord. Conference was also, for me at least, a fountain of revelation for the investigators we are teaching right now, and a powerful tool we have used to strengthen less-actives we are working with as well.

We are also teaching this really cool guy named Arnold, and he is a military veteran with wife and kids, devout Christian and nicest guy ever! We met with him and he was so nice but SO full of questions! Hahaha he had all the stereotypical Mormon questions about cult and prophets and polygamy and who we worship but was super receptive to the answers we gave him. We taught him a bit about the restoration, and he was asking things like "if this is the true church then why aren't there more members?" And "shouldn't there just be one big church? Don't all the Christian churches have truth?" So I don't think he understands dispensation and the apostasy well

enough to understand the need for a restoration, and all of that haha but that is what we are planning to teach him next time! He also had a lot of questions about missionary work and who we are and what we do and why we do it and if we get missionary bonuses when we baptize people lol and if we are forced to come out here and how we know the Lord sends us here, etc. He really is the coolest guy though!! Super respectful and nice and I feel that if we can be the teachers he needs, he can really progress in the Gospel. He really connects with me and my way of teaching though I think haha. Whenever he texts us he always says "hey Clarke!" Haha. But during the lesson with him, we brought up General Conference, and I was teaching and testifying of modern day prophets and all that and he just stopped me and said "her eyes, they're just jumping right out at me they're like shining! It must be because of your green shirt haha" and I was like no it's not cause of my shirt it's because of the Spirit!! Lol. And then we taught him about BOM and gave one to him and invited him to read 3 Nephi 11, and a few days later he texted and said he read it! And so we asked him what he thought and he said "honestly I just thought about you when you were talking to me how sincere and deeply you came across. I could see it in your eyes how deeply you feel. Kind of like Jesus saying it's His doctrine and He's the one we need to follow."

It was super cool just to see how the Spirit has been using me to reach other people and hit them right in the feels!!! I have seen patterns in the way that the Spirit speaks through me, and usually it's pretty boldly. The Spirit goes through my mouth and hits them right in the feels. It's a pretty cool thing! There have been teaching moments when that has happened and the Spirit is so thick in the air you can almost taste it. The Spirit uses me to say things that are bold, and probably not quite like what normal sister missionaries say or the way normal sister missionaries say it - I have definitely noticed that hahaha - but it's been an incredible experience to be part of that, and see that evidence of the power and reality of my calling, because I sit there and marvel that the Spirit can come that strongly because of something I've said. I marvel that we as missionaries have the power to do that and to bring that. It's a spiritual rush, and also so humbling that the Lord would condescend to use me, flawed and imperfect and human as I am, as an instrument to manifest His spirit so powerfully. I'm humbled when I think of it, and it makes me want to be better and more worthy of that calling.

Our sweet Reguenes family is doing fantastic! We watched conference with them during the Sunday Afternoon session, and their home was filled with the most powerful Spirit. We watched Brother and Sister Reguenes get teary-eyed during the conference, and when President Nielsen spoke, Brother Reguenes looked over at us and said, "do you feel that? That guy's the real thing!" And my heart was so full of joy that Brother and Sister Reguenes were not only able to feel, but also recognize the same powerful witness of the Spirit that we felt, testifying to us that President Nelson is God's chosen prophet for us, in our time, and in our day, today! Sister Reguenes, after the conference, told us that she loved the feelings she had as the Prophet spoke. She said she felt the Spirit so strongly as he spoke and as the choir sang, and even though she could hardly understand what he said, she felt the powerful love and the Spirit that came from the Prophet's words. It's funny, every week that I am out here on the mission, I think I've found the greatest joy in the mission field, and each week I discover something new - but I am convinced that the greatest joy of the mission field is seeing that "click!" In an investigator, that click moment, where they recognize and know, "I feel it. It IS real. It is true!" The moment when they realize that this is the truth, and that Christ is beckoning, and they know they need to follow Him.

Jasmine and Alexis both have baptismal dates officially! We are so excited to see the growth that has happened in this sweet family, and to see the extensive preparation the Lord has taken with them to prepare them for this time, as we are about the fourth or fifth set of missionaries to work with them, and they are finally prepared. We are so excited for their faith to keep growing and for them to come back to our Heavenly Father.

Each week is filled with greater blessings from God, and this week I am especially grateful for the sustaining of our new prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, the opportunity to hear his words, the celebration of the Glorious resurrection of the greatest being who ever walked this earth, and the opportunity I have to help others come unto Him and partake of the blessings that we have because of what happened that first Easter morning.

I love you all! Until next week,

Hermana Clarke

Write to Rachelle at rachelle.clarke@myldsmail.net