The Miracle of Conversion!!!!!!

Hello, family!

Ok let's be really open and honest here... who doesn't feel SO EXCITED to start applying everything from General Conference?! Was that not an amazing conference! I left feeling filled up with gratitude for a prophet, for the chance to be a missionary, for the Saviour's Atonement, and for the principle of sacrifice that the Lord's servants practice so much for us and the Lord's work. I felt inspired to be BETTER!!!

This week was a good one--Sister Bowden got pink eye haha the poor thing, so we ran around town between clinics and she couldn't even open here eye because the light stung so much.Wednesday was my last zone training of my mission, and that was... don't even know how to describe it. Emotional, spiritual, exciting, sad, goodbye-filled. Every zone training/zone conference (held every 6 weeks), they have the missionaries who are about to go home bear their testimonies for everyone else. It was bizarre. I remember my first zone training, on my fourth day in Canada, being exhausted and excited and nervous, watching the other missionaries going home bearing their testimonies and thinking they were so OLD! It was definitely humbling bearing my testimony to people I loved and respected so much-fellow servants of the Lord--and realizing that I'm not just at a sad and epressing step in my life--I'm at an exciting done!!! I've almost completed an honourable mission!! I've succeeded in faithfully completing 17 and a half months of my missionary service! This is exciting!!!

We had some pretty remarkable experiences with investigators this week. We and the elders have combined our teaching pools to increase our unity--we don't have "the sisters' investigator" or "the elders' baptism." Just "Charlottetown's success." It's really neat. I'm happy to be doing it this way. One of our investigators is Sam*. The elders and the sisters taught him his very first lesson together (he was invited to learn more by a member) and we've been teaching him back and forth since then. He's 26 and is preparing for baptism on November 1. It was really neat because the first lesson we (Elders Dudley and King, Sister Thompson, and me) taught him started with him saying, "Now, I don't want to convert or anything. I just have some questions for you and I want to see how you answer them." Sister Thompson and I explained that we'd love to answer his questions (which we did), but we weren't here to discuss religion--we were here to show him the truth and baptize him when he became converted to it. We and the elders answered his questions and bore testimony. By the end of that first lesson, he said, "So, let's say I become a Mormon..." and by the next lesson, he was on date for baptism. He's plunged into the Book of Mormon, knows it's true, and loves it all.

President Hinckley once said that of all the miracles he's witnessed (and that must be a LOT--he's a prophet of God!), the miracle of conversion is the greatest. It is true. I've witnessed it in myself--the miracle of change! And I've witnessed it in others of God's children. It is remarkable. It is incredible that someone's entire lifestyle and even their nature can be changed. They are not the same person they were born being. They are changed for the better. It is a miracle. What a blessing it is to witness that firsthand on my mission, and be a part of it.

Search for ways to be a part of someone else's conversion!!!!! There is no better feeling. Remember the promise in Doctrine and Covenants that we hear all the time... If we bring just one soul unto Him, how great will be our joy in the kingdom of our Father! A lot of people say that one soul can be just ourselves. But it can't! Don't expect to make it to the Celestial Kingdom without trying to bring someone along with you!! Bring hundreds of souls unto Him, don't let yourself stop with just you!

Love you all!!! Go study Elder Bednar's talk like crazy, because even though it was directed at investigators, that was SO DIRECTED AT US.

Love,

Sister Lewis

Saying goodbye to Elder Erickson!!!  (And Sister Erickson, when I see you next, I have a message for you specifically from him! :))

Saying goodbye to Elder Densley, a fairly new elder from St. George, Utah!  I've still got a month to go through a growth spurt!

My posterity!!! Sister Bowden (3), Sister Gochnour (2), and Sister Vera (1).  It was so humbling and exciting that all three of them were in my last zone and were there for when I bore my "farewell testimony"  I LOVE THEM.  They've turned into some pretty remarkable missionaries.