Week 49: Happy 4th of July!

Hi everyone!
I hope you all had a great 4th of July! We saw a ton of people that
day! And then we had a really good bbq dinner at our ward mission
leaders house. We weren't able to see any fireworks, because our
apartment is on the first floor and there's a ton of trees in the way.
But we sure could hear them haha!

Well, this week was a pretty typical week, nothing super exciting. But
we did get a new investigator! His name is Brad and he's 12. His mom
is less active and his older sister is mostly active. He wants to get
baptized so he can pass the sacrament! We're super exciting to keep
teaching him and preparing him for baptism!

Janice is doing great! We're starting Personal Progress with her and
also a few other sisters in the ward. Janice should be getting a
calling soon and she wants to start working on her family history!
Yay! And we're super excited this week, because we're going to start
setting goals and making plans for her to go to the temple! Sis.
Cannell and I have basically planned out our trip to Boston to go to
the temple with Janice haha! I'm so excited to go to the temple with
Janice someday! It'll be so awesome!

With 4th of July this week, I've been pondering a lot about the
Restoration. It's so cool how Heavenly Father planned out every detail
for the Restoration to happen. 1 Nephi 13 talks a lot about the
pilgrims and the Revolutionary war and it's so awesome! I'm so
grateful to live and serve in a free nation!

Right now I'm reading the war chapters in Alma. I used to not like
them, but now I think they're pretty awesome! I really love Alma
50:1-12, and we can relate it to building our spiritual fortifications
to defend ourselves against temptation. Captain Moroni builds these
super huge fortifications in every city to protect them against the
Lamanites. He starts with a giant dirt mound surrounding the city.
These mounds are so high that you can't even shoot an arrow over them!
But Moroni doesn't stop there. He builds tall timbers and pickets and
towers on top of the dirt. Then his armies built a fortification in
the wilderness to cut off the Lamanites so they wouldn't even get
close to the city. Holy moly so much preparation! But we should do the
same things to protect ourselves spiritually. We should build our
fortification with prayer, scripture study, church attendance, temple
attendance, faith, repentance, obedience and many other things! That
will help us to stay strong and victorious against the adversary!

Well, transfer calls are this Saturday... Sis. Cannell and I are
pretty sure that we're not staying together another transfer, but we
don't know who's staying and who's leaving. We'll find out later this
week! I love you all and have a fantastic week!
Love, Sister Harper