Coming Unto Christ in Arkansas: Gabriella!

In May, on my first day here in Memphis, we found investigator, Gabriella. We happened to bring one of our branch members with us to visit Gabriealla, which was about 2 weeks after she began learning with us. That turned out to be our last visit with her. After the visit she dropped us because her husband didn't want us to come back.

It was really sad to be dropped by her because we felt she was so ready to hear the gospel. She did say that she would keep reading in the Book of Mormon though, and I left with the feeling that she would join the church one day.

In August, Gabriella and her two kids walked into church with the same member that had gone to visit with her us back in May! We've been working with her ever since! She and
her kids love church, and she has become our top investigator!

Recently, she's really wanted to get baptized but has been really scared to ask her husband. After a lot of waiting and praying for a miracle, she did it! The first time she asked (about 3 weeks ago) he said he would think about it. She asked him again this
week and he said yes!! There have been so many miracles with Gabriella and she is getting baptized on Saturday!

Last Saturday,we were pretty far from our apartment and all of our plans fell through. We didn't want to go home because we had an appointment later that night in the area we were in. So we decided to go try looking up some less active members. We looked on our Area Book Map clicked on the person closest to us, then went to the house and knocked on the door.

Right after we knocked, someone pulled up in a car. We waved, and they dropped off a boy that looked our age. He walked over to us, and when he got to the door, another boy about our age opened it and they both tried to open the glass outer storm door but it wouldn't open. The boy inside said, "go around to the back door," so the boy outside left and the boy inside closed the door. All this happened in about 30 seconds with us standing right there. It was so weird and we didn't know what to do so we knocked again.

The boy that was outside before came and opened the door and said, "she'll be right out." We were a little confused because we were looking for a teenage girl and an adult man and we didn't know either of them. After a few minutes, they both came back and said, "do you want to leave something or...." And we said, "actually we're looking for Juliana or Iriel Velches." It turned out they don't live there anymore but we left them with a Light the World card.