August 17th, 2015

Dear Family,

This week has probably been the most craziest week that I have had yet on the mission, and this week that we are in will just be even crazier! This whole vision that we have had as a zone has been such a rollercoaster I have no idea where to start. We have been planning a Masive wedding and a Noche Blanca for this weekend and we have went from having 2 weddings to 4 to now 7 weddings and we might have a possible of 8! It has been so crazy to be right in the center of all of the paperwork and the phone calls. We have seen so many miracles with all of the weddings that we are pulling off, and that is just the start of the miracles. 

For the Noche Blanca we started with 10 baptisms. After a week we lost about all of them, but this last week we have been praying and have been trying to do the work of the Lord, that this last Sunday we came out to have 13 baptismal dates firm and ready to go for the 22 of August, with a possible of 14! This last month and week have been so crazy! We are super excited to see the results of this vision that we set just about a month ago! The Lord truly does bless his servants and prepares the way. I was reading an old conference talk by President Eyring and he said that one day he asked President Monson how he never got worried when things started looking bad in the church and he simply replied, President Eyring, I have trust in the Lord that everything will turn out the way it should and so I just have faith that it will.

This last week I have been thinking about faith and the role that it has. Faith is the first and probably the most important principle of the Gospel, because without Faith, God couldn't have created the world nor us. Faith is what makes everything go. It is how we make decisions. I have thought long and hard how Satan was trying to take away our agency. In all reality, Satan was trying to take away our Faith, because without faith, we aren't able to choose. It is faith that he is after and he works so hard to take it away from us. My testimony of faith has grown so much in the last couple of months and continue to grows. The Gospel is so true and it is based on our faith. I love it and I love the plan that Heavenly Father created for us, and because of it, we are able to have faith.

Love,

Elder Thorpe