That time I serenaded all of McDonalds

Hello everyone!!

This week has been pretty fantastic. Like I mentioned in my email last week, we have had a third sister with us, Sister Cox. We've been working both in our area and in hers, so we've been jam packed with lessons. With how organized we had to be, Sister Ririe and I actually doubled what our goal was for lessons. We thought it was going to be a slow week but since we focused in our planning we were able to go above and beyond all that we thought we would. Heavenly Father made it possible for us to get everything done that we needed to this week. Miracles definitely happen when you stop and listen to what the spirit is telling you to do. :)

The first story I want to tell is about Mark. Mark is the son Shirley, one of Sister Cox's investigators. We went to teach Shirley and Mark came downstairs, satdown next to us and just started crying. He told us that he had just found out that he had brain tumors because of past choices and asked us to pray for him. As we talked he said that he felt like God didn't love him anymore because of his choices and he just wanted to know what God's plan was for him. Miracle - we had planned on teaching the Plan of Salvation that day! And we wanted to visually teach it in a way that actually spells out LOVE. We taught him and he just soaked everything in that we told him. At the end of the lesson we invited him to be baptized. He said he didn't know and walked into the next room. A minute later he came back and said that he would. He said that he didn't know why, but he knew that it was what he needed to do. We came back later in the week and taught him about the Restoration. Again, he just took everything in and loved every second of it. We gave him the Book of Mormon and he agreed to read. A couple of ward members came with us and gave Mark a blessing. He said that the whole time he felt warm and knew that the men blessing him held God's power. Since then he's been reading and he loves it!! He's incredible and being baptized in January.

The next story I want to share is about McDonalds. We go to McDonalds sometimes to use their WiFi. When we went this week we ran into 4 teenage boys and started talking to them. They had never met missionaries before and knew nothing about the church. We told them about the temple and the Book of Mormon and about what missionaries do. They honestly seemed really interested. We gave them the phone number for our Elders and they gave us their numbers so we can contact them. And then I sang a Polar Express song with one of them. In the middle of McDonalds. Hahahahah. You all know me, my voice isn't exactly quiet, and this guy had a beautiful voice. The whole restaurant listened in. And that is the story about how I serenaded everyone in McDonalds.

The last thing I want to share is about Alice. Alice, my amazing, wonderful investigator, was baptized yesterday!! It was so amazing. Sister Ririe and I were running around the entire day at church with filling the font, making sure the programs were printed, getting the right sized jump suits, everything was crazy. So many things fell through and were improvised, but luckily my District is incredible and they helped us out with EVERYTHING. But we were still pretty frazzled. And then as I stood on the side of the font watching Alice walk down into the water I felt such a calm, happy feeling. She was so beautiful and so happy. When she came out she smiled at us and said "I'm clean." It made everything worth it. This is what it's all about. This is the missionary purpose. Alice and her boys will be forever blessed because of the covenants she made and the ones she'll work toward making. She prayed and she said "Thank you for sending me the missionaries to save my life" and my eyes completely teared up. Even with the chaotic mess that we were originally seeing, Alice was baptized. The spirit was there. It was beautiful.

Here's some fun pictures from this week. The baptism. Then me and Jane with the best hat in the world. Jane called me a Ding-a-Ling while I was in it. And then Sister Boyoue taught me how to tie the African headdresses. :)

I love you all!

Sister Petrick

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Sister Rachel Petrick
700 Darby Road #201

Havertown, PA 19083