Sister Rachel McIntosh: 10 October 2016

Greetings, loved ones:

Public service announcement. For the next monthish, my address will not be 1292 Fairview Avenue. If you would like me to smile and be happy, feel free to send things to:

124 S 3rd W

Rexburg, ID 83440

If you have sent something to the Fairview address, I can still go and get it from the lady I used to live with, but for now I'm in another house.

My new trainee is Sister Намуун Ганболд AKA Namuun Ganbold. If you want to see her singing in General Conference, go 6:22 on the Saturday morning session, she's the asian sister wearing a light pink/peach shirt in the bottom leftish. OR there's a nice close up of her at 1:30:56. She's the asian in the light pink/salmon shirt. She's from MONGOLIA. She speaks MONGOLIAN. And another language that I've never heard of before. I found out 30 seconds ago that she's a part of an LDS singing group that sang on MONGOLIA'S GOT TALENT. So that's intense.

We're staying busy all the time, and meeting some wonderful people! One of the BYUI students that we started teaching has grown up in SE Idaho all of his life but never was interested in learning about what "the mormons" believe.... until this last week. We taught him the Restoration - introduced prophets, the priesthood, Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon etc, and he was responding really well to everything, asking awesome questions, and responding well to everything! At the end we invited him to be baptized. And he said YES. After trying our hardest to not to happy dance, or hug him, or cry, or do anything else that may be socially inappropriate, one of his friends who came along asked him how he felt when we invited him to be baptized. His response: "It felt good, like I already knew it was right. This is what I've been yearning for, thirsting for, for all of my life it seems. I want this."

AMAZING. I have pondered his response for awhile after that. And it reminds me of Alma 32:28 talking about a seed planted in our hearts that we need to make room for. I always thought for quite awhile that the seed is faith. I, no surprise, was wrong. The SEED is Christ and his doctrine. If we make room for it in our life, and in our heart, "it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me."

That's how Alma describes it anyways. Don't you love those moments when you learn/realize something that enlarges your soul? I personally love that phrase.

The student we taught - the doctrine and gospel of christ was something he THIRSTED after.

Alma - the doctrine and gospel of christ was something that was DELICIOUS to him.

Usually when we talk about the gospel, we talk about FEELING or HEARING the spirit. SEEING miracles. How interesting that the gospel can change and influence all of our senses, desires, and actions, if we give place for it to do so.

May we all strive to do that!

Thanks for everything,

Sister McIntosh