Miracles from the ashes

Hello everyone! This past week has been absolutely amazing. It has stood in stark and utter contrast to last week, and it reminds me constantly of all the many scriptures and quotes that speak of how trials and suffering purify us and sanctify us in order to receive the blessings of the Lord. Our last week was probably one of the hardest of my mission emotionally, but it was all in preparation for this.

Our week seemed fairly normal until Thursday evening at about 7. One of the girls in our branch, a recent convert named Tonya, had brought her friend, Marina, who had come to English and church a few times but never really seemed too interested. After English we had a spiritual thought about baptism, where one of the sister missionaries here, Sister Muradyan from Armenia, talked about everything that baptism represents and means, especially talking about 2 Nephi 30 and how Christ was baptised although he was perfect and sinless. After, I shared about how baptism was like a contract that had to be stamped with the proper authority; just like how an important contract isn't real until the government places the proper stamp on it (at least here in Ukraine), so baptisms must be not only done properly, but by the proper and actual authority of God in order to be real.

After the spiritual thought, Tonya came up to me and said that Maria had a question for us. This question turned out to be, "How and where did your church get the proper authority?"

This is one of those "golden questions" that missionaries always wish their investigators would ask.

We went aside to the next room and taught her about the priesthood in the church of Christ's time, then about the loss of authority that came with the great apostasy following the deaths of the apostles. We finished by telling her about the restoration of the priesthood to Joseph Smith, and the fact that that allowed for all the necessary ordinances--like baptism--to be done once again. Maria sat there quietly for a little bit, then said, "I know your church is true. Tonya's told me all about it these past few months. I'm going to be moving to Italy in about four days. Is it possible for me to get baptised this Saturday before I go?"

After a little bit of stunned silence, we jumped into action. Friday was spent almost entirely teaching her all the lessons from 1 to 3 and all the commandments; her friend, Tonya, had done such an amazing job being a member missionary that I think we taught her 2 principles she didn't yet know and believe. When we asked her what she already knew about the Book of Mormon, she gave us an answer so complete that we had absolutely nothing to add. We just kind of said, "Uh...yeah...yeah, that's exactly right. Um...moving on."

On Saturday, Maria Dmytrivna Sorochan received the ordinance of baptism and bore her testimony of how this church is truly a living church--about how that's not just a story, not just a legend, but a true actuality. On Sunday she received the gift of the holy ghost and is now a member of the church, almost exactly 40 hours after agreeing to be baptised.

This kind of thing absolutely never happens in our mission. This is definitely the greatest miracle I have seen on my mission, and it's one of the biggest miracles I've seen in my life.

I hope you all are having a great week as well! This has been a week of miracles all over the mission, and I hope that it extends to all of you as well.

--Elder Hurst

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