Imagine If...

E and V  (not putting their names out on the internet) were baptized this week. How to even begin with that story? Picture this. You have left your family, your career, your country... Everything that is familiar to you. You spend a month traveling on foot through the desert, for a week you don't even take off your shoes, and you barely survive off the food you receive. You even go days without food and water, and then you come into a country where you can't speak the language were you stay in a gym, with sheets hung up to make makeshift private living spaces for over a hundred people. And you endured all of this because you were searching for something. Something that you were not able to find in your home country, because of dictatorship and terrorism. Now imagine that you were invited to a church service where the things taught were totally different from what you were familiar with. There you learned about a son of man, who was also the son of God. You felt the light of Christ touch your heart for the first time. You then met the sister missionaries and they began to teach you about this man, Jesus Christ and about his restored gospel. And as you read the Book of Mormon you began to feel the truth in its words. You meet other people of your same nationality who help translate the message of the restoration.

Then you decide to accept the invitation to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority. This is a huge step for you, your life will forever be different. In fact by doing this you lose one of the things that means the most to you. Your whole culture, your history, your family. You gather your courage and tell your father that you have decided to choose to follow Jesus Christ, and he then tells you that if you ever return home you are not welcome and that you would be killed. You then gather up all he faith that you can muster and trust God and decide to be baptized anyways. And it becomes one of the most beautiful and amazing moments of your life. And then you realize that this was the right path for you all along, and that God has a great plan in store for you.

I believe that God has touched the hearts of these men. There is a divine dance on the earth as we speak. And beautiful choreography of people and cultures and races... And as we dance among one another we have the chance to share this good news of the gospel with those who never would have had the chance to hear it before... The world is changing and the dance steps are picking up speed.

Liebe Grüße

Sister Shurts