Louisiana Baton Rouge Mission: A Miracle in Amite

One of our most exciting miracles occurred Yesterday when President got a call that President Burkhart had just received the letter from the first presidency granting permission to our request to make a Branch of he church in Amite Louisiana. Here's the story. About 7 months ago President Woods was having impressions that we ought to send missionaries back into Amite. It is about half way between Baton Rouge and the Miss border. There hadn't been missionaries there for 5 or 6 years. There was one or two member families that lived there and and a few inactive ones in the surrounding areas. When he mentioned it to President Burkhart he said wow, " I have been having the same impressions." They got busy and asked Brother Burgess if they could meet in his house. He graciously agreed. They asked a few members from a neighboring branch if they would be willing to attend there until they could get enough new and reactivated members to make a group. President put two missionaries there for starters. they soon became so busy that we put two more. The miracles started happening. They were prayerful and soon the Lord lead them to the right doors of inactive members that had been praying for help and to doors of people that the Lord had prepared that were seeking the truth. One of the great blessings was finding a family with ten children. The parents had been together for 11 years but had never been married. President went with the missionaries and shared with them the blessings of the temple and invited them to prepare to take their family to the temple. They said "we haven't even been baptized yet" President said,"exactly my point" We need to get you married and baptized so you can start claiming the blessing of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ for your family. They moved forward in faith and got married, were taught , and changed their lives so they could be baptized. They are a bright spot of this gathering of saints. In six months the little group of 15 has grown to 40 -50 consistently every week. We are now a branch and growing. When we move forward in faith and work hard the Lord matches our effort ten fold. Here are the faithful saints involved in the miracle. We had the blessing of meeting with them and sharing our testimony. It was pioneer weekend. I'd say we were with some great pioneers.