Hola everyone :)
It's still beautiful here in California! I love the weather, which is perfect every day, and I love the people more than anything.This week was great, and a lot of fun. We had the opportunity to have transfers and it was a great learning experience. I was with Hermana Taylor and I learned many things about myself and about how I can improve. She is a great trainer, and even though she knew the area and some of the people, she still made me take the lead on things, which was good for me. She also taught me some new things like how to strike up conversations with people and how to better declare to them. She was also very helpful when it came to me realizing that it is very possible to get a lot of declarations (tell people who we are and what we believe in just a few minutes) in one day, as well as new lessons.
Our area is doing excellent. We have found a lot of new people to teach this week, and a lot of new areas to work in. We have also realized that some of the Elders in the area before us didn't keep very good records in the Area Book, so count me a believer in the power of keeping track of investigators. It's almost embarrassing when you talk to someone at their house, and they tell you that they have received several lessons by those men in white shirts and ties and missionary tags...and there's no record. Talk about awkward.
We have had some success this week in setting investigators with baptismal dates, and I am excited to keep working with these progressing investigators (Maria and Patricia, but I'm learning that there's a whole lot more to getting someone baptized than I thought. Getting them to the point where they'll consider a date is not even half of the battle).
We also have an investigator named Alison who seems to have been fully and well prepared for us. We had our first lesson on Thursday, just two days after we made the appointment, and she came to church on Sunday. I am extremely excited to see her progress in the gospel. We also have another investigator named Maria, and she came to Sacrament Meeting. Afterwards she wanted a Priesthood blessing for her heart (she's had some problems with it lately, and she goes back to the doctors fairly soon). We were able to line that up and Alison was able to watch it be given. It was a really cool experience. The rest of our area is doing well, and we're making progress meeting and interacting with less active members, which is great. We have a few that might come to church this next week. The members in our area and ward are very supportive of our efforts and welcome our investigators without being reminded or asked. I love the people here, and hope that I can continue to work here.
Hermana Eastman is doing great. She's so cute and hilarious! It was weird not to be with her on Friday during exchanges, though. Other than that, she is still teaching me tons of stuff and I love working with her, and we get along fabulously. I'm glad to have her as my trainer, and she's exceedingly patient with me, which is good. She also has an excellent memory and can remember pretty much every address (I do NOT have that good of recall yet...I blame the fact that I have so many other things to memorize haha). We went to Sylvester's burgers this last week and it was FANTASTIC. They were really good burgers and the restaurant even had a hand washing station because you got so messy when eating it. It was a great dinner and fun experience. We also ran into our District leader, Elder Fagan, and our zone leader, Elder James there which was funny. They're both pretty amazing, and they do a good job keeping our zone functioning.
My testimony of the gospel has been strengthened so much this last week. We have taught a lot of people, and we have had a lot of times when the Spirit has been really strong. I know that when we listened to the Priesthood blessing given to Maria with our other investigator Alison, it was an amazing blessing for me. Alison later described the feeling she feels at church and with us the missionaries (THE SPIRIT :D), and it was so powerful to listen to her describe how she felt. She knows that she's found something right, and I was "filled with exceedingly great joy", and I knew that she knew that we're right, and that this is good. I am really glad to be working here and in this place, and I'm so blessed to have the knowledge of the gospel. I love the people here so much, and I am so thrilled to be able to bring them this great message of happiness!
Service has been a good way to get into people's hearts this week. We had the opportunity to serve a less active named Joy who needed help hanging her curtains-with the three of us and a screw driver, we could do it with almost no trouble. She also had a vacuum that she thought was broken. We were, well mostly I was, super excited to get to fiddle with something and possibly take it apart, so we offered to help her with that too while we were there. Turns out it was a fairly easy adjustment, and mostly she just needed to be shown how to use her super fancy high-end vacuum :) We were able to show her all of the little bells and whistles and we made a really good friend in the process. We shared our messages, and she invited us to dinner, and she promised us that she would come to church this coming week. We also did a big service project for Sister Millar and one of our less actives, Sister Taft drove by with her husband. When we went over later that day to have our weekly lesson with her, she expressed how cool she thought it was that we did that. Her husband also stated how good we were to do that for her (and he doesn't really like talking to us), but I think that just being the examples of service is slowly softening hearts.
It may surprise everyone, but I'd like to stay here for another transfer. (I know that the Lord will send me where I'm needed, and I'll go where ever he needs me to go, but I'd love to have the chance to stay for one more transfer :).
ola ev
No comments:
Post a Comment