A MIGHTY CHANGE

Hey y'all.

As I've been studying the Book of Mormon this week a couple of verses in Alma 5 really stood out to me...

"... Have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received His image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts?" " and now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, if ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?"

One thing that I absolutely love about being a missionary is seeing this "mighty change" take place in the hearts of people. We have experienced a couple of these mighty changes this week...

Mike. We met mike a couple of weeks ago. He was sitting on his porch as we approached him. He was really kind to us... Until we told him what church we were from. He wanted us to GET OFF HIS PROPERTY. His sister told him to be nice so he listened to us a little bit and we ended up having a nice discussion. He said he wasn't ever interested in learning more but told us to stop by whenever. We have been stopping by every once in awhile and teaching him a little here and there, left him with a Book of Mormon and invited him to read it. ... He won't, because he has the bible and doesn't need more. As we went by one day we felt like we needed to invite him to church even though he would probably say no. Surprisingly he said YES! He came and absolutely loved it! "I love church in general. But I feel something special about this one," he said to us. Sunday night we stopped by to see how he liked church and he told us he'd been reading the Book of Mormon and he wants to come back to church next week. It was amazing to see the Spirit work within him to have this change in his heart occur.

Trevor and Anna. As y'all know, we have been working with them for A LOOOONG time. But guess what! THEY CAME TO CHURCH. *angels singing* They have been reading the Book of Mormon, they're doing well on the word of wisdom, keeping the sabbath day holy and they've just been doing awesome. Anna still doesn't want to be baptized. But she'll get there. The change in them is amazing to see. I'm not sure if they can see it, but we sure can! They're just happier and I love that (: the Ward is going through leaps and bounds to help them as well. Inviting them to game nights, activities and dinners.

And the Ward has had a change of heart as well. When I first got here to Athens, they weren't too missionary minded. It's been a process, but they are helping us so much more and we couldn't be having success without them. #athens1stward

I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to witness all this mighty changes within people's hearts, but mostly, I feel so privileged to witness a change of heart firsthand within myself. I know that the gospel brings so much joy and it causes us to become better and strive to be like our Savior. If you have experienced the joy and peace the gospel has to offer, my question is "can you feel so now?" If not, I would encourage you to read, ponder, and pray. It works, I promise (:

I love y'all. And I hope y'all had a great week as well. Until next week!!

Love, sister Merritt