There is no 6ft rule with God!

 Happy Monday everyone!!! And happy back to school week!!! I hope this last week was great and I hope this week coming up is even better!!

This week was the first week in the new transfer and BOY was it a good one!!! We have been able to work with more and more members and they are just the best! We had a lot of fun with teaching our friends this week and it's been a week of a lot of work! 

Little story! A few days ago, we were calling Mia and she didn't answer which is SO WEIRD because she always answers. There was a knock on the classroom door and it was a sweet Online MTC missionary! Her name is Sister Farnsworth and shes headed to OGDEN UTAH woot! We got talking and she just started the MTC a few days ago! We asked her if she wanted to join us for a few lessons with Mia because lessons with cute Mia are in english! It's been so fun! Right after we met Sister Farnsworth, Mia called us right back! What a fun little miracle!! 

I'll give you a quick update on our friends!! 

-Mia has made a lot of progress this week, we were able to get her energy back and she is THRIVING! She is so ready and excited for baptism. We are really working with her mom to get some friends in the church because we feel like once we can get her a little more involved, she'll be more excited about Mia staying strong in the church as well!!

- I said last week how we were pretty bummed about our in person lessons with Ronak all fell through...well we made another lesson this week and the day of, Jose, his dad, texted us and said he had Corona so it wasn't going to ge good for us to come over! WOW! We didn't see it in the moment while we were sad about having cancelled lessons this past week, but God was protecting us!! So crazy!! We have been praying for their family like crazy! 

- Patricia has been progressing a LOT this past week! She has received her answer about the Book of Mormon!!! On one of our calls this week, she started laughing and said that we had trapped her and that the spirit has been helping her believe these things she never would have believed earlier in her life! The next call she told us she believes the book to be TRUE. She is praying about her thoughts on being baptized and we have been praying right along side of her!! 

- Okay also!! We were able to start having lessons with our friend Karem again!! She starts cancer treatment again on Monday but she wants to keep meeting with us. 

- Last but not least I want to tell you about our NEW FRIEND Eloy!! He was a self reference from our first week here in Largo and we haven't been able to get a lesson with him. Whenever we had prayed about dropping him and allowing other missionaries in the future to see if it's his time, BUT whenever we would do that, he would answer the next call so we have kept him in our contact pool! This past week we FINALLY had a lesson with him and it was GREAT!! He all of the sudden started having time haha!! We love it!! We had another lesson with him on Sunday and WOW he has the strongest spirit!! After we told him about Joseph Smith, he looked at us and sat back and said "wow. How beautiful." He wants to more lessons and we are SUPER happy to be able to teach him!! God is good and this is definitely his work. 

I have seen the Lords hand more than ever since being a missionary during this Corona Virus time! I want to share a quote from Elder Holland haha I know what you're all thinking, a week without a quote from President Nelson?! I know I know haha. I LOVE this quote from Elder Holland and it says: 

"I promise you He is not going to turn His back on us now. When He says to the poor in spirit, “Come unto me,” He means He knows the way out and He knows the way up. He knows it because He has walked it. He knows the way because He is the way. Brothers and sisters, whatever your distress, please don’t give up and please don’t yield to fear"

Think of how much JOY and HOPE we can receive just by TRYING our hardest. We aren't in this crazy thing called life alone:) We have our Savior, Jesus Christ who has walked each step and is there waiting for us to ask for him and to follow him:) 

My challenge for each of you this week is to find and attribute of Christ and study it and really try to incorporate it EVERYDAY. As we continue to become like our Savior, we will find MORE HAPPINESS than we could ever imagine. 

God loves you! Christ loves you! I love you! HAVE THE BEST WEEK!!!

Love, 

Hermana King :) 

Pics Abby has sent from Facebook Messenger and Google Hangouts

 

Keeping the hype in Largo!

 Hi everyone!!! I can't believe we are about in the second half of AUGUST. Time is flying!! Today is my two month mark in Florida! I cant believe it's already been 2 months! I've loved every second!! 

This week was good!! I LOVE it here in Largo!! We found out transfers and Hermana Marler and I are staying here together!!! We couldn't be happier! 

I thought I'd fill you all in on what's been happening!!

This past week we've had some pretty high highs and a few lows but that's what makes the work so fun! Ronak's dad cancelled a few times on us, but we didn't let it get us down!! I want to share a few of the miracles that happened!! 

WE MET MIA AND HER WHOLE FAMILY IN PERSON!! It was such a miracle! They showed up 10 minutes early to the church, dressed in nice clothes, just completely ready! We gave them a tour of the church and they loved it! Her mom, Magaly, is a convert of 20 years but is inactive(for now) and her husband and 8 year old son as well as Mia aren't members (yet!) We were able to teach all of the Plan of Salvation and they ALL participated! Mia is the definition of progression!!! Another miracle happened last night! Ronak and his dad had cancelled again and we were feeling pretty bummed. We knelt down and said a prayer! We felt like we should call some formers. We called someone named Juan thinking that he was part of a family that was being taught that was dropped awhile back BUT turns out that we called a middle aged Juan, who'd never been taught by missionaries, lives in Clearwater(which is IN OUR AREA) AND had never heard of the other 2 people we were trying to connect him with! WHAT! We taught him right there over the phone and he is READY for the gospel! We made another appointment with him. HOW COOL. God has a bigger picture perspective and he knows what he needs us to do. Yes, it was disappointing in the moment to have a cancelled lesson BUT our new friend Juan probably needed a message more than Ronak tonight! This really is Gods work and I love being a part of it!! Our friend Patricia is SO GREAT. We are in contact with her everyday and every time she texts us on one of her work breaks telling us how excited she was to fi ally have a break at work to read the Book of Mormon! Talk about the best kind of break, right?! Haha! She is SO great and she is also the DEFINITION of ready for this gospel! I don't think I ever wrote about what she told us about why she felt so open with us! Weeks ago she had been praying and told God she was getting a little bored of the Bible and wanted something new. Right after that, we called her! She knew this was part of her answer! God is SO AWARE of all of his children. I want to promise you all that God is aware of each of YOU as well! 

This week we gave talks in our virtual church and we were able to have more friends at church than we ever have since being here! It's so crazy--The work of the Lord is just THRIVING around the world. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Miracles existed yesterday, they exist today and they will always exist! The work of the Lord was the same yesterday, today and forever!

I am going to brag about how AWESOME our prophet is!! I have loved reading a talk from him everyday! This week his talks helped me a TON. I want to share a few that I loved! 

"Thanks to Him, each body will be restored to its proper and perfect frame. Thanks to Him, no condition is hopeless. Thanks to Him, brighter days are ahead, both here and hereafter. Real joy awaits each of us"

"Our faith is never unappreciated."

I LOVE these quotes. Because of our Savior, Jesus Christ we can have HOPE, COMFORT and most importantly an overwhelming feeling of JOY! Something else I want to add is about the last quote. As I said I was able to speak to the branch on Sunday and I really wanted to focus of giving each of them confidence in their own personal testimonies. I told the story of how I decided I was finally ready to serve! I told Bishop Call maybe I wasn't the most ready to go because I didn't know enough. Bishop Call looked at me and asked if I had a testimony. I told him I did!! He smiled and said that a TESTIMONY is what I needed to serve a successful mission. I have never forgotten that. He told me that there are people in the world that need a simple testimony to help them understand and develop a testimony for theirselves! We should ALL have confidence in the faith we have and our testimonies!! God has SO MUCH trust and faith in us, so we should have trust and faith in ourselves!!

This week I challenge each of you to try something new! Maybe a new recipe, or making a goal of reading the scripture, doing a service for someone you usually wouldn't. I promise you as you push yourself to try new things, you will be able to develop this FAITH and TRUST in yourself as God has for you. 

I love this gospel and I am SO GRATEFUL that I have the opportunity to share my testimony everyday with the people here in Florida!!

LOVE YOU ALL WITH MY WHOLE HEART!

Hermana King :) 

9 months and MIRACLES!!

 Wow!! What an eventful, miracle filled week it's been here in HOT Largo!! Happy almost MIDDLE of August! Time is FLYING!!

I hit my halfway mark this past week and I can't believe it! What an EVENTFUL past 9 months! Haha! I have loved every minute of it!!

Well! I want to share a few highlights/miracles with you all today!!

First I want to share about our new friend Ronak!! Ronak is 13 and just so great. He is part of a part member family! This past week Hermana Marler and I had the feeling we NEEDED to call them so we did and the dad, Jose answered right away! We set up a time to come share a message with them and they shared with us that Ronak has been wanting to get baptized for YEARS but something always came up but he wants to do it now without anything getting in the way. We have had 3 GREAT lessons and he accepted an invitation for baptism!! His dad is just the best and wants him to get baptized!! We are praying hard that we can get everything in order for the permission of the mom:) He has the sweetest testimony and he is just so great!

Also!! Patricia and Mia are progressing SO WELL! WOW! Patricia attended our virtual sacrament meeting yesterday and LOVED it. She sent us a two minute voice message all about what she learned and how much she just loved listening to our branch president! We are grateful for her!!! We are finally able to meet with Mia in person this week!! We are SO excited to meet our cute 9 year old best friend face to face!! As we were dropping something off on her porch for a lesson, we ran into her mom, Magaly and so we got to talk with her for a few minutes!! She recognized us right away!! We have only ever had phone calls with her! 

This week was SUCH a good example of how God is not stopping or even slowing down the work He needs done! 

For my spiritual thought this week, I want to share a quote from our prophet!! I hope this gets you as FIRED UP about living life as it did for me!! 

"When I see how carefully Heavenly Father has prepared and planned for my present circumstance, how can I be frightened about my future"

Our Father in Heaven as personally planned a full LIFE for each and every one of us! He LOVES US. We know who we are. There's no need to worry about what's to come because we KNOW what's ahead. Behind each trial and hardship and blessings that God is ready to give to each of us. 

My challenge for you all is to read Mosiah 27. This chapter is when Alma and the Sons of Mosiah get put into their place a little bit. Alma talks about how he had been in the darkest abyss until he felt our Heavenly Father comfort and help him. We can experience this same love from our Heavenly Father. 

I promise this week will be a good one! I love you all SO much!!!

Love,

Hermana King :)) 

Halfway mark Flowers from the family!

Holding a GATOR!

Prettiest sunset right by where we live!!

We are supposed to take 2 hours on top of meals to take breaks so we went on the FUNNEST little night run!

The humidity here doesn't do my glasses any help haha

We went and did some contacts at the funnest park!

Hermana Marler's parents sent a pinata for her birthday!

We had a member lesson with the sweetest member, Aila! We got to meet her pet birds haha!

Another cute member, Norma :)

FUN MUGS we found in the apartment that we made cazookies in haha!

We call ourselves the Hype(h)ermanas

Wowza! Talk about a great week!! I hope you all had a super awesome week! HAPPY AUGUST! I cant believe it's AUGUST! Time is FLYING!!

Well this week was a 12/10! 

Mia and Patricia are progressing SO MUCH! They were both able to attend virtual church yesterday! Speaking of virtual church, we had our first church broadcast yesterday! It was one of the BEST testimony meetings I've ever been a part of. Something that has really strengthened my testimony this week is how no matter what, God keeps his work going. We have SO many video calls but yet we can feel the spirit as if we were sitting in the chapel face to face. Were there issues and a few hiccups during the church broadcast, for sure there were BUT the Spirit couldn't have been stronger. How COOL! We really do have the knowledge of the TRUE church! SO awesome!

We did a lot of service again this week! Washing cars and cleaning off drain gutters have become our favorite activities! I honestly have LOVED being able to go see members and serve! One of the members gave us super official car cleaning supplies! Whenever we set up car washes for members they always ask what we'll need from them! It's fun to say we will come with our own stuff. Haha! We love it!! We have been able to start sharing short messages with members so after every service, we've spent some time with the members! It is SO fun to be able to teach face to face. The members here are AMAZING! 

For those of you from my ward back home, Elder Miller and I are in the same district (!!) and we worked on filming a video as a district for the Spanish page and it will be up this week!! We've been able to put videos together for Facebook this past week and it's been fun to get creative with how to do mission work!

For my spiritual thought today I want to share a quote from President Nelson that I read this week from his talk, "We Are Children of God" and it says:

"Who are we? We are children of God. Our potential is unlimited. Our inheritance is sacred." This really stuck out to me this week! Our potential is UNLIMITED. Never should we ever think we cant do anything. When we have doubt, we can look back at this quote from our prophet! We are children of God! We are not limited! That has really helped me especially with this new way of missionary work! Has the work stopped? No. Is it a lot different than before? Oh yes. Haha! But even with everything going on, God hasn't let the circumstances stand in the way of becoming better disciples of Jesus Christ and furthering his work! 

I want to challenge all of you to read that talk from President Nelson! If you are in need of a pump up, he for sure is the guy for that!!

I sure do love you all!! I have felt a lot of prayers and support and I just want to say thank you to you all!!!

Love,

Hermana King :) 

Got a package from the family!