Week 10 - Baptisms, The Savior loves you, and priesthood blessings

Hi my sweet family. :) I LOVE YOU. We had a really special week with a lot of miracles and blessings.

A***** and L***** were baptized. :) It was absolutely incredible. Both of them were so excited and could hardly wait to be baptized. The service was absolutely incredible. The spirit was so unbelievably strong. There were so many people there and it was just amazing. I felt so grateful to have been apart of these sweet kids special day. President Woodbury changed some appointments and canceled some plans that he and Sister Woodbury had so that they could come to the baptism as well. Isn't that amazing? He made us feel so special. He put in a lot of work to be there to support us on Saturday and it really meant the world to us. After the baptisms he pulled me and Sister Hansen aside and in the most tender and gentle voice he told us that we were doing a good job and that Heavenly Father loved us very much and was so grateful for the work we were doing. It was such a tender mercy and made Sister Hansen and I so happy. :)

President Woodbury is amazing. Honestly Saturday morning I threw up and wasn’t feeling well, so I prayed and said "Heavenly Father, I am going to need extra help today." He blessed me with an incredible personal study, I learned so much and felt the spirit SO strong. Then while I was getting ready President called and just wanted to see when our baptisms were I told them they were at 5:00 and he said "That’s too bad, I have appointments all day, so I won’t be able to make it." so I told him that was alright and how grateful we were for him and then hung up. He called back literally 5 minutes later and said 'Sister Watts, I have rescheduled my day so that I can come to your baptism." :) Heavenly Father knew that I needed to feel special that day, and President and Sister Woodbury were a total answer to that prayer. I was SO grateful!!!

Our Book of Mormon night this week was so special. Kimberly came and Sister Paulson came. It as less than is normally there, but it ended up being a really sweet lesson. We asked Kim how her Book of Mormon reading was going and she said that she was trying so hard to read, but that she wasn't understanding all of it. So we answered the questions that she did have and then started where she was at and just got to read with her. It was awesome. :) I love the Book of Mormon so much. It was really cool to watch her go from being a little bit confused about what she was reading to just loving what she was learning from it. In hopes of having more people at our Book of Mormon night we changed it to Wednesday night, which is mutual night. So that hopefully when parents come and bring their kids to mutual they will just stay to study with us. So Kimberly brought her whole family with her to the church on Wednesday. :) The kids absolutely loved mutual.

Cute picture for Sis Watts

They had so much fun! When they were leaving one of her sons who just turned twelve said "Thank you so much for inviting us Sister Watts, can we please come every week?" :) They are so stinking cute and I just love their family so much. They all came to church yesterday and loved that too. We had an appointment with the family last night and a dinner appointment right before it. We forgot to check our phone in between appointments so we missed a text from Kim that said "I have to cancel. :( It is mass chaos over here." So because we didn't look at our phone we missed her text and just went right over there after our dinner appointment. And it was such a blessing that we went over. Kim has a 14 year old nephew who is living with them right now who is just the sweetest little boy in the whole world. His mom has recently stopped paying any attention to him and has pretty much abandoned him.

He is absolutely devastated. When we walked in he was in his room just hysterically crying because he missed his mom so much. It was one of the most heart breaking things I have ever seen.
Since we were there Kim asked us to try to help him feel better. I was a little intimidated by the task because he was so distraught, but I said a prayer and asked for the spirit to be there and to comfort him.
We talked to him about how much Heavenly Father loves him and cares about him and is aware of him. We talked to him about how much Jesus Christ loves him and knows exactly what he is going through and how he feels. We told him that he is never alone. I have never been filled with so much love in my whole life. I had never met this little boy before, I hardly knew anything about him, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love him more than we can even comprehend. He is so special. When we started talking to him he had tears coming down his checks but as we told him how loved he was and how he could always turn to Heavenly Father in prayer and find a friend in Jesus Christ he was smiling and happy. It was a miracle. :) We gave him a picture of Christ so he could look at it and always remember what we told him and for the whole time we were over there he held onto the picture, he carried it around with him everywhere he went. He refused to put it down. :)

We have amazing members in our ward who do so much for us we are so grateful for all they do. So this last week we tried really hard to serve our members. :) Whenever an appointment fell through our back up plan was to go and help a member. We showed up on some of their front porches with a bag of cleaning supplies and said "we are here to clean for you." :) We scrubbed floors, did dishes, cleaned the tops of refrigerators, and vacuumed. I felt really grateful to be able to serve them and help them. We knocked on one sister’s door and told her that we were here to clean and she said "who told you?" Confused we said "told us what?" She replied with "That today was my cleaning day??" Haha. :) she had recently had a lot of family over at her house and was working on fixing everything up after and was feeling a little overwhelmed right when we knocked on the door. It was really fun for us to not have any idea why we needed to go to that member’s house right then, but we showed up and were able to really help. Our members are just amazing; they really just treat us like gold, so to be able to help them as really awesome. I love doing service in a skirt. :)

On Thursday both Sister Hansen and I woke up sick. Almost all of LaPorte has been super sick over the past few weeks so we were bound to get it sooner or later. We ended up calling the mission nurse and spending the day in bed. It was kind of a bummer to spend the whole day inside, but we seriously we were so blessed that day. :) Our sweet members were so amazing to us. News spread like wild fire that we were sick and everyone was anxious to help us. We got tons of texts and e-mails of people asking if we were ok and asking what they could do to help. Sister Brown just showed up at our door with two big big bags of groceries for us. :) She bought us soup, sprite, crackers, and lots of other things to help us feel better. Later Sister Scroggin brought by Ginger Ale and medicine. And to top it all off that night we had two Priesthood holders from our ward come over and give us blessings.

Miss a question, draw on your face?

The blessings we recovered were so special and brought us a lot of comfort. I love the Priesthood and I am so grateful for it. :) In the blessing I got on that night Brother Hill said "Heavenly Father is answering the prayers from the people who love you back home, and is blessing you tremendously." THANK YOU. :) That was such a tender thing for me to hear and a powerful thing for him to say. I know that because of your faith and your prayers we are seeing miracles and blessings every day. I wish I had words to describe how grateful I am for the love and the support I am getting from my sweet family and friends. I love you all so much, thank you for sending blessings my way. :) Have an Amazing week.

-Love Sister Watts

After a response was received from both Tammy and me Mckenna said this...

We are the funniest family. :) haha I cry when I read your e-mails every week and both you and dad replied by saying that you were crying as you read my e-mail. I love how much we love each other. :)