Sister Grace Tams

Friends and family, brothers and sisters, children of God,  We are on fire again, literally and figuratively! Last night we got a call that the Hermanas would be coming to stay the night because they were evacuated!! It has been a fun little slumber party and honestly none of us know how long it will last. The ash is worse than it ever has been before, the floor is coated with it. It is the end of the world, but that's okay because the work moves forward!! My zone has been continuing to kill it and we OFFICIALLY hit our high water mark, with 3 baptisms to go!! These Elders and Sisters are incredible and they have been working SO hard! I am SO glad I got to be apart of it all.  Bob is doing really really good and is making his way back to California! Which is THE BEST because his baptism will be on Sunday!!! We are ALL so excited!! SO PLS PRAY THAT THE FIRES DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING.  I have been teaching Sis Soultz the story of the Book of Mormon, because as a recent convert...

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD!!! I HAVE THE BEST NEWS FOR YOU!!!  Remember Bob?? The one who is supposed to be in Indiana until November... WELL He decided to come home early!!!!! SOOOO we were able to put him on date to be baptized on the 4th of October!!!! IM SOOOOO HAPPY HE IS THE BEST What a good week it was!! We taught a couple of lessons to our good friend Bob which he readily accepted! He is going strong with everything that we have taught him so far and is SO excited for his baptism. We got to see his face for the first time this week over zoom which was VERY exciting!! He attended online church with us, me and my companions got to speak and he said that he really liked each of our talks. I love him, he rocks. God is good.  We got to go on exchanges with some of our cute Hermana friends! Hermana Lamoreaux came to Sebastopol and spent the day with me and Sis Soultz. We got to try this cute diner and we had the BEST fries...it was a won...

FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD,  Time is such a weird thing...I swear it keeps on speeding up. It is all going by WAY too fast and I am not a fan, good things I still have 18 months left...  Bob is still doing amazing!! We taught him about the Word of Wisdom and he said that his first thought after we told him he would have to give up coffee was that he was going to have to deal with a lot of with drawl headaches!!! HIS FIRST THOUGHT wasn't about whether he was going to follow it or not, it was about the effects of him quitting. It wasn't even a question whether he would or not. I LOVE HIM. He has been traveling all over the place as he is headed to Indiana, he even stopped by good ol' temple square and sent us pictures. He is eating up everything we are teaching him and I am so so so happy about it.  We got to go on exchanges on Thursday. Sister Conor came here with me and Sis Soultz and it was a grand ol' time. It feels like yesterday that S...

FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD,  This week went by SUPER fast!!! Here are some highlights: 1. Our friend Bob left on his vacation, however, we have been calling him and have had lots of lessons over the phone! He told us that he keeps on getting goose bumps and that it is SO good to know that these things are true. He gave a prayer at the end of one of our lessons and thanked God for us by name, it was one of the sweetest things I have ever gotten to hear. #blessed.  2. We got to teach twice this week!! It was stressful getting it all ready but we had a really good combined district council as well as an amazing zone conference!! We talked a lot about baptism and its importance, I loved it.  3. My zone is on FIRE and we have 12 people on date for the month of September!!!!!! In my mission we do something called the "High Water Mark" which is basically the highest amount of baptisms your zone has had in the last couple of years plus one. SOOOO wh...

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD,  Our friends are all amazing and I am SO grateful we get to teach them. We have been reading in the bible with our friend Laura and she has been LOVING it. She lives in the mountains because she feels like only there she is able to be embraced in a protective hug. She is one of the biggest hippies I have met and I love it sooooo much, I might just go live there with her.  Bob has been doing AMAZING!! We met with him twice this week and both times he had read the chapter we left him with multiple times! He even pointed out a verse all about baptism and told us that he wanted to be baptized as an adult!!! We invited him to pray about it and will be finding out tonight about how that went!! So I am stoked for that. Only downside is that he is leaving on a trip on Thursday until the beginning of November...rip, pray that he gets delayed;)))) We got to go and teach a bunch of the incoming missionaries which is always...

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD,  Well, my world is burning hahah, how is yours?  If you haven't already heard there are 500+ fires burning all over the state of California. My mission has been very fortunate and only 20 missionaries have had to evacuate their areas. However, there are 2 HUGE fires close by us, so PRAY for Cali...it needs it.  One of the smaller fires is in my area, so a lot of our ward members and some of the friends we were teaching got evacuated. It was a whirlwind of fire watch but luckily it hasn't gotten too close to us yet. We did have some cute Hermanas stay with us for a couple days because they were evacuated from their area, which was very fun. They are all hilarious.  Despite the craziness of the week we were VERY blessed to still teach a lot of lessons and even see some miracles. One of those is our new friend Laura. We posted on Facebook and offered any service during this time and she reached out to us ...

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD,  I love my mission, it is the best thing in the world. We did a lot of fun stuff this week!! From having a tonnn of lessons to Week of Happiness planning to the power being shut off, you name it we probably had it. It was fun. I looooveeee being busy. We started teaching a new guy named Jairo, he is SUPER cool. He is going through A LOT right now and has loved reading in the scriptures with us!! We even dropped him off his own copy of the Book of Mormon and he is SO stoked to begin reading!! We had a couple lessons this week with a guy we are teaching named Joshua! He moved here in the worst timing ever SO besides work he has no way to make friends. He loves that we come over and share some positivity with him. He is super cool and described himself as a sponge, he is just soaking it all in. He has even made us some bomb meals including shishkubobs (don't know how to spell that lol) and biscuits and gravyyyy....what ...

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD,  I held a snake this week. Pretty exciting stuff.  We went on exchanges on Wednesday. Hermana Stirling came to be with me and Sister Soultz in good ol' Sebastopol. It was a good time, we went to visit this member who showed us around his antique shop. He also played the guitar for us which was all very exciting. He loves his guitar.  Kristianna is doing AMAZING!! I LOVE HER. She is only a JUNIOR in High School BUT she LOVES everything that we teach her and is growing SO much. This week we taught her the Plan of Salvation, we gave her a pamphlet at the end and later in the week we asked what she liked about it and she just told us that she was so grateful that she had it all in writing now.  She also downloaded the Book of Mormon App and I am SO excited for her to begin reading!  Plus she gave a BOMB prayer at the end where she asked for help in sharing the gospel. I AM OBSESSED WITH HER.  In ...

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, CHILDREN OF GOD, I promise I am not exaggerating when I say that it has been ANOTHER wild week.  We got to go on exchanges with the Peterson Lane Sisters, I got to go to their area and be with Sister Rust and Sister Conor. I was Sister Conors STL in her first area about a year ago and it is AMAZING to see how far she has come. She is a rock star and I enjoyed our exchange SO much. Especially because we got to go to a member named Pattys house, who collects Breyers horses, she does not give one to many people BUT she gave me one and I felt very special.  We also got to go to MLC this week! With all that is going down we thought it was going to be over zoom, but luckily GOD IS GOOD and we still have a few open counties in the mission left so we all got to go to a cute little place called Lakeport in the Ukiah Zone. It was another roadtrip with a LOT of beautiful scenery. Good stuff. We also learned A TON about member work, which a...