A's baptism = best moment of my entire life.

We taught her about temples last week and it was the best lesson of my entire mission. She was eating up every word we were saying. She started looking up pictures of all the different temples on her phone saying wow there are so many to choose from, they are so pretty. Her favorite ones are in Utah so by the end of the lesson it was decided that she will move to Utah and finish school. I told her she will get married in the temple and make lots of Mormon babies! I LOVE A! After her baptism we were eating refreshments and she turned to me and said "I feel so clean, thank you" and gave me the biggest tightest hug. It made every single hard time on my mission worth it. I would do it all again for that moment. Elder Payne of the seventy happened to come to the Duluth ward on Sunday and he stood in the circle when she was confirmed. Pretty legit. The Zone Leaders had a baptism too so lots of the ward came to the baptism!  

  Sister J came to the baptism and she came to church and she loved it.  She threw away ALL of her coffee! We taught gospel principles and afterwards Sister J was handing the gospel principles book back to us and when we told her she could have it she held it to her heart and almost started to cry. We went to see her last night and she had read most of it. She was going through all of her books and movies throwing away everything that had sketchy stuff in it. The Atonement is real people. 

   We had zone training and interviews last week. We had to do some of the training with the zone leaders and it went pretty good! I was really looking forward to my interview with President but I spent half the time trying to convince him that I'm healthy and not anorexic. I'm sitting there asking him how I can better help the sisters in our zone and he keeps going off about how my face is half the size it used to be. Thanks Pres. Thanks.  

   I wouldn't recommend sticking your tongue to a pole. The movies don't lie it really does stick. Ouch! We were tracting the other day and Sister Richardson got her water bottle out to get a drink and it was frozen! Solid ice. Our faces get so cold that we can't feel the snot running down our noses so we have to signal each other when to wipe when we're talking to someone on their doorstep. I love Minnesota. I really do! Sister Richardson is amazing and I am really blessed to be able to be companions with her. We were supposed to go to Bloomington tonight for a meeting but we are on lock down because the wind chill is supposed to be in the negative 40's. Life is good. The gospel is true. And Joseph Smith did restore Christ's church. 

"Embrace this day with an enthusiastic welcome - no matter how it looks"

 Elders Find, we teach

gift of the Holy Ghost. Check. She hates skirts but we got her one anyways but she refused to wear the church shoes we got her

So this week was pretty incredible! We met with A everyday so that we could get everything in before her interview. Aunt Susan sent me a talk by President Monson quite a while ago and it fell out of my binder before we were leaving for the day and we decided to make a copy of it while we were at the church. Fast forward to later that night when we have a really spiritual experience with A and Godly sorrow is spilling from her and we give her the talk and she read it when she got home and it was exactly what she needed. She was texting us all of her favorite parts and she prayed about President Monson being a prophet and she said peace came over her entire body. Thanks Aunt Susan!  I've never been so excited for someone to get baptized. She wants it so bad and she is ready! Heavenly Father seriously knows what He is doing. Me and Sister Richardson have both gone through things that have been exactly what A has needed to hear and she has helped both of our testimonies grow a lot! And I'm pretty sure we are the only sisters in the mission who can handle her sarcasm!  I have never felt God's love for someone so strongly. 

  We had a lesson with Sister J and she had dumped out all of her coffee after we taught her the word of wisdom! She was beaming and we were so excited. And then she got antied and wouldn't come to church. I used to hate when people got antied but now I see that it is needful so that they can gain their own testimony. After we were praying about what to teach her tonight our District Leader sent us a text out of know where saying that he felt we should talk to her about the tree of life and the great and spacious building. We will let you know how it goes next week!

  We have been praying to find a new investigator for the Elders because they keep finding people for us and last night we starting knocking on a street that we had planned and it didn't feel right so we walked down the other way but that didn't feel right either and then a police man pulled up and asked if we were the ones who called about the suspicious looking man. We bolted out of there and then came to a four way and we prayed which way we should go and we both felt like we should go left so we knocked down the left street and we talked to a college guy named A for 40 minutes. We taught him an awesome lesson and set up an appointment for the Elders. 

  Long story short I could sit here ALL day and tell you about miracles and answered prayers. Life is good and the gospel is true. 

Amanda! She found a tie in the lost and found and wouldn't take it off for the picture :)

Yesterday there was a freezing rain storm. We barely made it to church alive and got there only to find out that they had canceled it. We had a 15 minute sacrament with everyone that was there, which was only the missionaries and the ward auxiliary leaders since they were already there for meetings. It's getting crazy up in here. 

 We made the trek down to Bloomington for our leadership meeting and we slept over at Sister Edstroms apartment. It was weird to be with her again and pretty satisfying to realize that I'm not the same missionary that I was when I was with her.

  We had exchanges this week with two sisters who are REALLY struggling so we brought them both to our area. We saw some pretty incredible exchange miracles. We went out to knock and I was praying my heart out that the sister I was with could see see some successful finding and the first one we knocked on a lady let us in and we taught her the Restoration!  A is back from California! Her interview is this Saturday so we have to teach her everything before then which is going to be great. We have been doing lots of less active work. I think about 80% of the ward directory is less active. There are some pretty incredible people we are trying to get back to church. My favorite part of the week was when I was on the phone with a less active. Picture a really old woman with really big glasses wearing a sweater with a cat on it with a tear in it's eye that says hug me. She said "well darling my glasses broke so I wasn't able to read the chapter that you left me but I managed to read 8 verses and it was some good stuff. Come over tomorrow and read the rest of it to me" 

You all are wonderful and I love you. Love, Sister Szabo. Enos 1: 27

lost dog returned. Check!

Surprise! So we aren't allowed to go outside for the next 2 days because the temperatures and wind chill are going to be in the extreme negatives so we get to email today! Everyone is going nuts and they have already canceled school Monday.  We don't even get to go to church. Pray for us. You can only watch The District so many times before you want to pull your hair out. Everyday I think I have enough layers on and everyday I am proven wrong. Unfortunately only so many layers of wool socks fit into my boots before it cuts off circulation. BUT things are going so good here. I have never been so happy and so cold at the same time. 

  A got antied pretty bad by her friend but thankfully the spirit was able to clear everything up and by the end of the lesson A wanted a Book of Mormon to give to her friend. 

    We helped a hoarder pack. I have never seen so much stuff. She lived in an apartment and there was only a tiny walk way throughout her apartment that we had to turn side ways to walk through. Needless to say it would have been more effective to put the place up in flames. We just came from an incredible lesson. It started out pretty rocky but when we started to really teach the spirit swooped in and she was blown away and she was crying. The church is true people. 

  The other day all of our plans few through so we said a prayer and picked a name off of a list that the RS president gave us. Her husband let us it and it turns out that this less active hasn't been to church since she has was a teenager but has been praying for guidance and we had a really really good chat with her. She isn't ready to come back to church but someday her husband and kids will get baptized! 

I LOVE YOU ALL!