This is the story of what was supposed to be a “mommy and me” modest clothing boutique, and how the Lord guided us to make it what He wanted it to be instead… Our conversion story is also about 9 paragraphs down
As I started piecing together the idea of my store and learning how to run an online business, something didn’t quite feel right. I ignored this feeling, deciding I would open my store anyway and see how it transformed from there. As the opening approached, I received a prompting that was telling me to WAIT! We had noticed that my father-in-law’s memory was becoming worse, and we knew that he needed to move in with someone sooner rather than later. What came next was us getting our condo ready to sell in search of a home we all could fit into.
As we started house hunting, I got an overwhelming feeling that we needed a bigger home. (We were originally looking for a 3 bedroom) Both my husband and our real estate agent thought I was nuts, but the feeling just wouldn’t go away. My husband (being the pickiest guy ever to house-hunt with!) wanted the house to be 100% move-in ready, as he didn’t want to have to paint or do any kind of work anytime soon. We looked at several houses, but the one that ended up feeling like home to both of us was a 5 bedroom home built in 1930… (nothing at all like the 3 bedroom already fixed up home we originally thought we were looking for) It needed quite a bit of work! My real estate agent couldn’t believe my husband agreed to it, but it felt like home and we just knew the Lord led us to it!
So we packed up and moved our belongings into a storage unit while we stayed in a hotel for ten days until our house was ready to close. I had a vision of using one of the extra bedrooms as my office and launching my store as soon as we moved into our new home. But three days into our hotel stay, we unexpectedly gained custody of our first three grandchildren. My father-in-law had a stroke four months later and had to move in with us sooner than anticipated, and three months after his stroke, we gained custody of our fourth grandchild, a newborn baby girl. We grew from a quiet family of 3 to a rambunctious family of 8 with 2 dogs (my father in laws dogs) in 8 months that year!
Suddenly having full custody of all these kids was like being a brand new mom x4, and figuring out how to take care of an elderly man followed by a newborn baby within eight months was nothing short of a whirlwind! The wait wasn’t a short one- it turned into 18 long months. The hold I had put on my store was just what I needed to ponder and pray about what it was supposed to be, and the revelation I received when pondering and praying was not what I expected at all…
What kept coming to mind was the serious love my husband and I share for the missionaries! Without the love, support and persistence of those amazing missionaries, we would probably not be members nor would we be sealed for time and eternity today!
I believe this boutique is exactly what Heavenly Father envisioned for me. In addition to modest clothing that is perfect for missionaries or any spiritual woman really, I also had the idea to create a special bracelet that would remind missionaries that we ALL chose Heavenly Father’s plan, and we ALL have the potential to make it back home because of our brother’s (Jesus Christ) sacrifice!
I love gifting my Bee The Light bracelets and Hope bracelets to sisters serving to help remind them of what they set out to do! I also had ideas of sister missionary journals swirling around in my head, so I started interviewing missionaries who had returned from their missions to find out what would be helpful in a journal, and our journals were born nine months later! They are 6-month, hardbound, high-quality journals that could become heirlooms the family can enjoy for years to come.
I also offer a whole line of Tree of Life jewelry inspired by the story of Lehi’s dream to remind us to stay on the covenant path. Lehi’s dream is near and dear to my heart! I still remember when I was supposed to teach it to the children in primary - only I didn’t understand it. It was a rocky lesson and I had to really study it and ask questions to understand it!
Every purchase you make helps us to fund our efforts to bring missionaries Hope both through my testimony I share with them, and the bracelet gifts that follow! Our modest clothing and other gifts also bring smiles to the faces of young women who want to dress modestly and give or have for themselves our many Christ-centered items we offer in our store! While we focus mostly on missionaries, our journals are really good for any spiritual woman with big goals in mind!
Our Conversion Story:
When the missionaries found my then fiancé, he had been estranged from the church for about 20 years.
I had known him for 16 of those years and had no idea he was ever even a member! The missionaries soon started coming to visit me when I got home from work, but I was raised in the Baptist Church and had all kinds of weird ideas about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints. I thought the church was a cult, that the Book of Mormon replaced the Bible, that members worshipped Joseph Smith. Having only ever heard them referred to as “Mormons” I didn’t even know that Jesus Christ was part of what the church believed at all! So when the missionaries were trying to teach me, I already had my mind made up.
We went through several sets of missionaries when Heavenly Father saw fit to send me a special missionary He knew I would hear. I remember being tired after a long day of work and hearing the knock aat the door. I went from thinking “Oh no, the missionaries are here again”, to opening the door and somehow knowing as soon as I laid eyes on this new missionary that I could literally believe everything he told me. I don’t know how to explain it except that it was an intervention from God- this missionary felt like a long-lost friend, and he had a special light about him.
That day he showed me the shorter version of the restoration video, and I recalled an experience I had 15 years prior when I prayed that God would give me a sign He was real, and the very next day, He did! I finally believed.
We bumped up our wedding date by several months so that I could get baptized, and then we were sealed in the Seattle temple a year later! We are so grateful to those amazing missionaries who chose to go on the Lord’s errand. The church has blessed us so much, and this store is my way of spreading gospel messages and helping missionaries along the way!
**Be sure to subscribe to our emails to get special email only deals, spiritual messages and also be the first to know about our weekly FREE phone wallpapers!