Plan of Salvation 🌎☀️

Hey Everyone!!!

Life is great!! This week was good!!

So we have been teaching the Gilchrist family for some time now, and it can be difficult to get Isabel, Sophie, and Charlie to all focus now because they are kind of getting use to use being here. So we decided we needed to change it up a little bit! So for our lesson on Tuesday we planned to teach the plan of salvation and we were thinking... "how can we make it fun for the girls?" Cause they have a TON of energy. So we set up 4 rooms in the chapel, and labeled them "pre earth life", "earth", "spirit world", and "celestial kingdom", and we had an activity in each room that helped teach the doctrine! For "pre earth life" we sang them a song, for earth we gave them each a body and set up some obstacle courses for them to do and if they messed up they had to explain the process of repentance to us. Then for the Spirit world we gave them he wand perfect bodies, and they had to give examples of how to do missionary work with their friends.

Finally for the celestial kingdom we stood at the door and asked if they wanted to come in and they had to tell us about all the things they have learned and when they went in their parents were there waiting for them with candy leis! It was SO cute! Sophie ran up to Karl and said "Daddy I missed you!!" She expressed so well how we can feel when we get to go back to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. It was so perfect! I know that I will be so happy the day I get to be with my family in heaven for eternity.

Also this week we had a lesson with our ward mission leader and his nephew. Our ward mission leader, Brother Banza is from the Congo, but when born in Switzerland. We are teaching his nephew  Jonathan who is having trouble wanting to read the Book of Mormon. Brother Banza has the most powerful testimony of the Book of Mormon I have ever heard. In our lesson this week when he testified of the power of the Book of Mormon he told us that he was a convert to the church when he was a teenager, and he has been a member of the church for 30 years now, and everything good that has happened to him in his life for the last 30 years can be attributed and traced back to the Book of Mormon. The power that comes from knowing that book is true compels people to change and to do things, like serving a mission. The Book of Mormon has completely changed my life, and I walked out of that lesson feeling so incredibly lucky and blessed to be able to FEEL God's Spirit in the abundance I have felt it here on my mission. To be able to FEEL Him so much to have no doubt whatsoever that He is there and all of this is 100% REAL and everything I have learned is TRUE! I can't even describe the peace that comes form knowing what God is like and having a personal relationship with Him.

I came home and cried that night, honestly because I know with everything that I am that this is real. This gospel is true! The plan of salvation that God has prepared for us that the Book of Mormon and the Bible teach us is 100% real. God is SO REAL, and that means that I am going to see my mom again. There is nothing sweeter than to have that knowledge reconfirmed by the Spirit of God. I have a strong testimony of the plan of salvation and of temple work and of family history. I know that we are connected to our ancestors through the ordinances that we do for them in the temples of God. I know that as long as we stay faithful and keep our covenants that whatever family situation we are faced with here on earth will be resolved by a loving Father in Heaven who is perfectly just, fair, and merciful. I hope everyone can have a reassurance of this plan, and if you don't yet, you can find it by reading about it and praying about it.

I love you so much and I hope you have an amazing week! It's crazy that my time here on the mission is winding down. People remind me about it everyday. But I don't feel any different. Nothing changes. I'm grateful for that. I plan to go out fighting. Haha

I love you so so much!!!

Love,

Sister Abby Martinez

3 Cuties!