Hermana Rebecca Gifford Serves in Oregon: My Child is Now Six Weeks Old

Hello hello!

Well Hermana Bunderson and I have been together for a transfer now. She is doing awesome! We have at least 6 more weeks together :)

I hope all of your Fourth of July was fantastic. We had to be in our apartments at 7 pm for safety. Well, when the fireworks started going off we got really excited. So we ran to the window….But the darn Oregon trees are too tall. So we got to hear the fireworks :) Better luck next year haha.

It was a great week! We had two lessons with Mariana this week. We taught her the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. I was in another area with Hermana Aubrey on Friday for exchanges when they taught her the Plan of Salvation. They invited her to be baptized on a specific date but she said that she wants to know more before she gets baptized. And when she was invited to church again she said that her husband wanted to go to their church. We have a lesson with her tomorrow and I am super excited that we can help her understand that we don't need to know everything before baptism, and the importance of church attendance! We feel that she is really sincere.

We were also able to see Diana this week. We taught her the Restoration. We feel that she really takes in what we teach her. Sometimes teaching people it’s like teaching the wall, but we felt like she was really listening. We invited her as well to be baptized on a specific date but she also said that she didn't know enough. We tried to help her understand how it’s just important that we receive an answer of the truth prior to baptism, and that she could receive her answer at church!! But, she worked on Sunday :( Darn McDonald’s. She said that she might not work this Sunday so we are hoping that we can do a church tour with her.

The update for Socorro…. We were able to teach her twice this week! The first lesson we read Moroni 10. We helped her understand the importance of real intent. Her husband, Nazario, explained to her how Heavenly Father knows of our desires, if we are willing to act on the answer and it was perfect for her.

Socorro has never prayed in a lesson with us. We feel like we have taught her every single possible thing to get her to pray but she tells us the only reason why she won't pray in front of us is because, "that’s who I am". So low and behold our second lesson this week was on prayer. She has been taught prayer multiple times. We felt reading straight out of preach my gospel would help her. She really liked it. We learned that she only asks about baptism in personal prayers about once a month. And she doesn't pray very more often than that. We really urged her to say her prayers and especially to pray about the things we have been teaching her. Not too much progress that we were able to see, but we feel that’s what she needed to hear. And she gave us cheesecake on the Fourth of July so that’s some progress. ;)

We taught Oscar about prayer and scripture study this week. When we were talking about prayer we asked him how he received and answer to prayer about baptism. He told us that one night when we had invited him to pray about baptism, that night he had a dream that his whole family was dressed in white getting sealed in the temple.

It is so amazing how Heavenly Father answers all of our prayers. He loves every single one of us, no matter how old we are or what we are going through. I truly feel that one day his family will be united in white at the temple. What a blessing it is to have been born in the covenant. As long as we follow the Savior and repent daily we truly can be together forever. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father has given us this blessing. I am so grateful that the Lord has called me in this time to serve the people in Salem Oregon.

I hope all your weeks are fabulous! I love you all!

Hermana Gifford