know that I KNOW

My dearest loved ones,
How art thou? I miss you all so much! I love where I am! I have had
amazing spiritual experiences this week and I will try to type fast.
;) MUCHOS Milagros.
So, yes indeed, Sister Miole did arrive safely in San Diego. Right as
we were done emailing and filled up our car tires we got a call, from
President saying to make another trip over to the airport to pick up
our companion! I love getting new companions, the first hug is always
the best! :) She's super sweet, she's 22, and served for 6 months in
the Quezon City north Philippines mission. She has excellent English,
she just got along with us right away! She has 9 siblings and a
strong  testimony of the gospel! But since we picked up Sister Miole
and President Schmitt had to go over some stuff with her we got to
have dinner at the mission office! Win! I love the Schmitts. And we
put the trio to work! 

 California Burritos!!

We had a YSA member go with us to make daily contact with Gail, so I went with Katherine and then the other 2 went
to go try some other people. We had a quick in and out lesson with
Gail, whose baptism was AMAZING by the way! :) And when they came back
they had added 2 investigators!!!!! WOOOHOOO!!!! Trio fire is BACK!
They are the Touchet twins, Emma and Kate. They are 11 years old and
really cute! They have been taught before but things came up. And now
the Lord has prepared them even more! They said they wanted to be
baptized! But they were scared to commit to a date. And when Sister
Miole went back, they were still a little scared. It was so cute, one
of them said, "I want to be baptized as soon as possible but I also
want to wait..." We just need to get their whole family to church! And
at the lesson I was at their was a miracle, we weren't able to
find a member to come with us but when we got there the twins had a
friend over and friend was a member! And they remembered going to her
baptism! She even helped us teach, greatest member present ever! :)We
are calling Sister Miole, Miracle Miole! Then we went over to our
favorite, Stacey! She described to us this amazing dream she had where
she had been healed and able to go back to work, but they put her in a
closet. And in the closet part of it was completely white, and she
heard this voice. It calmed her, but it was only in the closet. Then a
woman in white appeared and told her she wanted to show her everyone
else who was LDS. And they were all in white too. So cool. And a great
transition into talking about the Temple! SHE WANTS TO GO!!!
YAYYYY!!!!
Then Wednesday was the last day for MTES. And I got to be in Santee
with the lovely Sister Miole and Sister Cortello!!!!

 Ah I love Sister Cortello.

I went to the MTC with her. She is the sweetest missionary
ever and reminds me a TON of Sister Pilkington! :) It was a miraculous
day! We got to see Vanessa who has been fighting her own battles and
we were able to show her the Mormon message, "You never know." It's a
good one, you all should watch it and then watch it again. :) We then
treated Sister Miole to her first outing at In-N-Out Burger, she's so
funny. :) She refuses to eat vegetables, no matter how tiny, but don't
worry we are working on her slowly, she ate a tiny salad last night.
:) Then we had a great daily contact with Gail with the perfect member
present, I love it when that happens. :) But poor Gail she went to the
doctor and realized she has to have surgery, and recently without
knowing it she had 2 strokes! Satan is just flinging everything at
her! She's making it though. :) We then ran over to Ilene and Johns,
who Sister Purcell and I had found a couple of days ago. We taught the
Restoration and John was singing and crying throughout the whole
thing. He's an amazing guy. When we got to The Book of Mormon, he said
he had read the whole thing! I asked him if he knew it was true, he said
YES. Sister Cortello then invited him to be baptized, he said,
"Probably." We asked him why he said that, he then goes onto say, "I
don't want to get water in my ears, I'm afraid of water." Hm. Well we
then testified to him about the importance of following Christ. He
started crying, he loves Christ so dearly. We invited him to be
baptized on July 2nd and he said, "Probably." Ay John. We committed him to
pray about it. And then last night some of the greatest members, the
Astes, invited them over to dinner and to have a lesson in their home.
It was wonderful! Spirit was strong and the Astes were amazing hosts!
And as we again started to talk about the Book of Mormon, he hadn't read it
and he hadn't prayed about baptism. I can now understand how our
parents and especially Heavenly Father get frustrated when we don't do
things we know we are supposed to. But repentance is real and
hopefully John will take a hold of the opportunity! But back to
Wednesday, we then afterwards went over to Brother Nelsons, who has
recently been coming back to church.

  But due to Sister Cortello being a genius and a great missionary...

especially with inspired questions,
we ended up teaching repentance and it was awesome! Great guy.
The follow up to MTE was also fantastic! Here are some of the cool
lessons that I had learned and wrote down:

-When the wheat is white, it means it's ready to spoil, so we have to
RUN. Don't lose them. (In reference to D&C 4)
-"I believe their can be no casual Christians. If their are casual
Christians, then they will become Christians Casualties." - Elder
Jeffrey R. Holland
-chase out darkness, by following-up
-*Don't look back* What helps us over come EVERYTHING is asking if we
love God. If you're not committed to this work, you don't fully love
him.
-The white handbook are commandments to us and we have covenanted to
keep them. -your mission should change your ministry for the rest of
your life. Always do what Christ teaches you.

All good things. And then after MTES we celebrated by getting Sister
Miole her first California burrito! She loves everything meat! :) We
then headed over to the Whitlocks to try Doreen, their neighbor who we
did service for, she was too sick. So we then tried their neighbor
they referred us to, he was too sad. Better luck next time! The
Whitlocks are awesome though, I'll miss them when they are in Colorado
for the summer! But we saw a MILAGRO at dinner! We were at the Wyers
and their daughter brought her nonmember friend over, Kelsey. We
taught the restoration, she accepted a copy of The Book of Mormon and
she couldn't set a return appt but she said we would see her at
church, hopefully soon! So cool! And she's YSA age! MILAGROS!! The
Bishop was also able to come over with us to Gail and they had a good
heart to heart. Bishops are great like that. :)
And then the day finally came, Friday! The day when we all got blown
away from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. I wish I could of just recorded it
and send it to you, so good. But I will do my best to sum it up. I was
asked to play the piano and I played prelude for 1 hour, they asked us
to be there super early and we practiced singing the mission song
before he came, and man oh man. Talk about power! President Schmitt
had asked us to truly prepare ourselves and sanctify ourselves in
every way possible, and walking into that chapel you can tell everyone
did. The spirit was so strong and it was even stronger when we sang our
mission song. Here are the words:

"A marvelous  work  is  about  to  come  forth   among the children
of men. O ye that  embark  in  the  service  of  God,   Serve him with
all your heart. The field is white and is ready to harvest, and ye are
called to the work. So  thrust  in  your  sickle  with  all  of  your
might; Labor to do your part. For  faith,  hope,  and  charity,
virtue,  humility   qualify you for the work. Remember  the  worth  of
souls  is  great  in  the  sight  of  God,   and great will be your
joy. When  you  seek  first  the  kingdom  of  God  and  labor  all
of  your  days   To  bring  forth  the  cause  of  Zion  Amen  and
Amen." (Second  verse​ :  Half  the  group  repeats  1​ the other half
sings “The Spirit of God”)

So powerful! When Elder Holland walked in, boom power. He's also
shorter then you would think but that's beside the point. ;) He's
double the power! Everyone went around to shake his hand and I played
the piano as they did that. But lucky for me a nice woman offered to
play for me so I could go shake his hand. I said my name and where I
was from, he looked into my soul and said, "Welcome." And then I went
back to the piano and as he came up on the stand he approached me
again, shook my hand and said, "I am so grateful that your Mom made
you practice all those years!" Once again, thanks Mom! But what made me
so happy is that as he approached the stand he said he was pleased to
report that as he was shaking our hands he had interviewed each and
every one of us. That he truly didn't care where we were from and he
wasn't going to remember our names, he just wanted us to be there long
enough so he could interview us. Intense. And he said he was pleased
to report that we are a very obedient mission and that only a few of
us were struggling, and then He said, "Welcome to life." Haha good
man. He spoke for about 90 minutes and in those minutes it was life
changing. He told us that it had been 53 years since he came back from
his mission and that every day since then he has thought of his
mission. Their hasn't been a day that's gone by that he hasn't thought
of his mission. He then started to talk about how we can NEVER go back
to where we were before our mission. Even with his fist slamming on
the pulpit and everything, President Schmitt even widened his eyes
when he did that. So powerful, he just put tears in my eyes! He talked
about how we are the most important convert we could ever make on our
mission, and if we've at least done that, we would of been successful.
And he told us that we are the shepards, and that no one should be
looking for us. And I could go on and on. But here are some great
quotes from him:

-I want you to love every minute of your mission; to cherish your mission.
-"This is your apostolic moment." You are “little a” apostles. You are
doing work as close to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and First
Presidency as you will ever have.
-"The most important thing in the universe is the salvation of a human soul.”
-I cannot promise you any number of other converts, but I promise and
demand at least one convert – yourself. You are the most important
convert.
-"You can never go back to what you were before!”
-“You are God’s investigators and He is teaching you lessons.”
-LOVE THE BOOK OF MORMON. Go home with a testimony of its divinity.
This is the keystone of your life.

And then to make it even better, after he left, the Assistants
announced that next week, June 3, we will be having another Mission
Tour with Elder James Hamula! And he's coming to MLC too! Yes, we are
a blessed mission. Time to sanctity myself even more! And right after
that when we got into our area, we got bible bashed pretty hard core.
But hey, it didn't matter, because the Savior was standing right
beside me as it was happening. It doesn't change anything.

 And then to make it even better, Gail got baptized on Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah. I honestly never pictured that day till it happened. Who would of known that talking to a woman at her car would lead her to being with her Heavenly Father someday.
Everything you do and say matters, it leads to something. Gail is a
miracle. It was a wonderful service, great talks, music, and then the
baptism. I'm not sure if I told you but Gail is PETRIFIED of water. It
was a huge leap of faith, but she took the leap! And by her own
request she was baptized forward. Whatever works! It was done by the
priesthood and she went fully under so we are good! We then presented
the Restoration which was so powerful because we had 3 members help us
by bearing short and sweet testimony of one principle in the
restoration, really powerful. And Gail was just beaming after her
baptism and what made it even better was that she walked out bare
foot. Nice. :) I love her and I'm so happy she is a member of the
church now! And then we had a miracle at night, as we got out of
eating dinner I saw someone in the parking lot and I walked after him
and started talking. He was going to get his hair cut but he said we
could come back later and teach him! Sweet! So he called us when he
was done and we went on over. His name is Marco and he is awesome! We
taught him the restoration and we added him! And the we met with him
again on Monday, he had read up to 1 Nephi 6! And when he was telling
us what it was about he restated the stories perfectly! And he didn't
even look at the book! He hadn't prayed about it yet, the puzzle is
almost complete! :) He does have a concern with some of the
commandments but he's very open and wants to know the truth. He said
he would be baptized! I'm excited to work with him more.
Sunday we had a huge miracle. The first miracle was I remembered how
to work the organ, they asked me to play in YSA. But the actual
miracle was when a random man walked into the church. His name is
Daniel. He's an older YSA And he has read through the Book of Mormon
and the Doctrine and Covenants. He was offended by some missionaries
in the past but his friend I
Who introduced him to the church was really pushing for him to go so
he came. He had some interesting questions, very tiny details. But all
I could tell him to do was read and pray. We set an appt for Monday
but he rescheduled. Ah well, Thursday will come! So that was a major
MILAGRO! And the other one was that Gail got confirmed! Yay! And also
I got a wedding invite to one of our recent converts wedding in
Hawaii. So cute! AND STACEY GOT A CALLING!! She's so excited and I'm
so excited for her! She went to a devotional this week where John
Byetheway spoke! Super jealous! She loved it! We then had a miraculous
dinner at our YSA RS presidents house where her atheist friend was
there. And missionaries have tried to help him many times but he's
pretty closed. But then he just asked us a question about prayer and
it was awesome. We gave him a talk to read, he said he would read it.
The Lord is preparing Hunter surely yet slowly. It was awesome! We
then awesomest the night with an awesome street contact where many
people are ready to listen to us! Yay!
Monday Monday. Always a fun day! I just love my trio, I love trios in
general! They hasten the work and it's super fun! We had the senior
luncheon for the missionaries and Gail even came! So sweet! We had a
lesson with Gail on family history and she is so excited to go to the
Temple! Yay! And the YSA had a fun FHE tonight with a BBQ and bouncy
house! It was hilarious and many less actives and nonmembers came so
that we awesome! :) We stopped by Junior Raglands as well and they
have a tough situation where they have to move and haven't found a
place yet. My heart goes out to them, I have faith God will take care
of them!
I know God is taking care of me too, I have seen so many miracles on
my mission. I can't even begin to express and I know do an awful job
through email. But I just want all of you to know that I KNOW that this
is where God wants me to be, that this is his church, and his work. No
doubt about it. I know The Book of Mormon was written for me and for
YOU! All we have to do is read and apply. Miracles will happen, I've
seen it with my own eyes. God is good and he is here with us. I'm so
lucky to be a representative of Jesus Christ. I try to honor and live
up to it everyday. Thank you all for your endless support, I'll always
remember and cherish it. I love you!

Love, Sister Whitcomb