Farmington Week Eleven

Hello, friends!! This week was all over the place (as always) and I'm not even sure what to talk about!

To summarize:

• I got to spend a day with Sister Butler in her area (5th ward) and now I've officially spent a day in every sisters area in Farmington! Woohoo! I've seen it all!

• Sister Butler spent 2 more days with me here in 2nd Ward and we had some great lessons together! It has been lots of fun getting to know her the past couple weeks. She is from Georgia and graduated high school the year after me and went to BYU and wants to go into nursing. And she is a greenie powerhouse! SO much energy for the work!!

• One of our returning members (Sister Pete) started working on her family history and found a bunch of family names to take to the temple for baptisms! We've been trying to get her to the temple for so long and finding the names was just the push she needed to start keeping her covenants again and talk to Bishop to be able to go! She's headed to the Albuquerque temple on September 22nd!! That was the BEST news!!!

• We watched Finding Faith in Christ with another returning member, Shawna, and it touched her heart so good. The very first scene in the movie is Christ calming the stormy sea and the whole time she said she was just thinking about that because she's in pretty stormy waters now in her life and she knows she needs Christ to calm them so she just needs to let Him in. It was very powerful.

• On Friday I was eating a salad for lunch in our apartment and I thought, "I wish I had Brianna's poppyseed dressing right now" (but I didn't have any). FAST FORWARD to dinner that night. We ate with a cute young couple in the ward and GUESS WHAT dressing they had?? Brianna's poppyseed dressing. It was a little thing, but just reminded me that God is in the details of our lives!!

• Met with Jane again and finished teaching her the Plan of Salvation. She still has some questions and things she doesn't understand about it, but she's getting closer. The past 3 lessons we've had, while we've been talking about the Plan, I've been drawing it out in a special way that ends up looking like "LOVE" when it's all done. When I pointed out that it spelled love, Jane smiled so big. And Sister Butler and I bore our testimonies that this plan really is God's plan, the Spirit was so strong. I am beyond grateful to know He loves us so much!! Side note: When I drew the earth for the earth-life part of the plan I made the worst circle that was very much an oval, and we joked about my oval earth a lot so when I left her with my completed drawing I said, "Now you can always remember how bad at drawing circles Sister Bohman was." And she laughed and said, "That's not what I'll always remember you for. I'll always remember you for how much you love Jesus." And my heart grew 12 times in size. It was the most beautiful compliment I have ever received and yes it made me cry a little bit. I love Jane. I will always remember her for how much she loves Jesus too.

• Had stake conference! So basically all the members of the church in Farmington (10 congregations) met together Saturday night and Sunday morning. Both meetings were absolutely amazing! At the Saturday night session we watched some of the Church's Bible videos (which are amazing) and talked about how the Savior and His disciples ministered. My favorite thing was in the video of Christ healing Jairus's daughter, Jairus runs to him and gets on his knees pleading for His help, and Christ gets on His knees too so that He is right on Jairus's level, really listening to his needs. And then in the video of Peter and John healing the man lame from birth, Peter does the same thing. He kneels down to the man's level and then stands with him. I can't exactly explain why those two little details meant so much to me, but they did. It was really beautiful and something I hadn't noticed when I watched before.

One more thing I wanted to write about was my new favorite hymn. We actually sang it at our Sunday meeting: "Because I Have Been Given Much". I especially love the 3rd verse that says:

"Because I have been blessed by thy great love, dear Lord,
I'll share thy love again, according to thy word.
I shall give love to those in need;
I'll show that love by word and deed:
thus shall my thanks be thanks, indeed."

I love those lyrics. I have been so very blessed in my life with a lot of things, but most of all I have been blessed to have the gospel. My testimony of Jesus Christ is the most valuable thing I have. I have been blessed with great faith and knowledge of the restored gospel and because I have been given so much, I need to pass it on. I have been so blessed by the Lord's great love and now I must share it! That's how I can truly show my gratitude to Him. I get to do that a lot as a missionary, and that's something I'm planning on taking home with me.

It's a great day to serve the Lord!

From Farmington with love,
Sister Bohman