Busy week in Albuquerque

This week the biggest and happiest thing that is happening is our adorable investigator Ana Hernandez is getting baptized! YES! I am beyond excited for her! :) She is WONDERFUL! Her sister has been a member for a year, but now it is Ana's time. She is getting baptized on Saturday.

Last night was kind of crazy. We stopped by to see Ana and she wasn't home. Her little brother Jorge was. He let us in (we had a member with us). We decided to teach him. We have only taught him one other time. So we are super excited, because maybe their entire family can enjoy the blessings of the gospel together. As we were teaching him, we heard a weird noise.  He decided to go look out the back door window and when he came back with the most horrified look on his face, and he was shaking. He said, in Spanish, that he had seen a ghost. It was kind of a scary thing, but the very cool thing is that we prayed in the name of Jesus Christ and everything felt better.

Another investigator had an experience with this last week. I can't remember if I told you all this yet, but we have two Maria’s. This Maria is a newer Maria who hasn't been to church yet, but she made HUGE progress this last week. We visited her with Edna, a cute girl who is a returned missionary. Maria hasn't shown a TON of interest in everything, but has let us keep coming back. Her mom's name is Refugio (she LOVES the Book of Mormon) and her daughter is Neisis (she has two young children). We teach the three of them when we go. Maria had been telling us that some bad spirit had been bugging her and didn't know what to do. Our member (this was a previous lesson) told her to pray IN the name of Jesus Christ for help. This week she told us about her experience with it.

One day she had been feeling again this weird presence.  She decided to pray.  It wasn't until she said "in the name of Jesus Christ" that anything happened and she felt better. How cool is that? She started gaining a testimony this last week. It is so incredible to see people change and it is amazing how we find people. We aren't even teaching the person that lead us to them, haha. Anyway, she came to our activity on Saturday! That was so exciting for me, because she also kept saying, "I just love it when you come over." To other members she kept saying, "I really like her." She is just a sweetie. And she used to look so sad and grumpy and now she has a happy countenance! It is so wonderful.

 

Our other Maria was the opposite this week. This is the Maria that was supposed to be baptized about three other times. We didn't begin teaching her because the elders before us found her. I love Maria Garcia but she is just difficult sometimes. She goes through phases I swear. Her biggest issue is her Catholic roots and the idea that only God can know what the "true church" is. For that reason, she gets extremely offended when people say, "I know this is the true church." Anyway, the last lesson we had with her was a mess. She was so mean to us, and we had a member with us and her four year old daughter. I felt so embarrassed and I felt so sad for her that it made me cry. We decided during weekly planning that we would give her some time, so we did-we didn't call her for a while. On Saturday we decided we better call her and at least invite her to the activity that night. When she answered she was SOOOO happy we called her. She had been feeling SO BAD about what happened and she said that it wasn't really her. Needless to say, she showed up at the activity!

  

These are pictures of the Garcia Family.  They have made huge progress this week and made it to our activity at the church! Angeleec is the little girl and Ruby is the 13 year old. She is awesome and loves to play football. Sometimes we go see her and throw around the football for a few minutes. She has had a hard life. She has a different dad and was really sad last week, because she didn't get to go see him.

 

There is an adorable family in the ward, The Cruz Family. They aren't baptized yet, for a legal reason, but they are INCREDIBLE! The dad played a song he wrote at the activity and I could just see him being a bishop one day. He is so great! Anyway, he has a ten year old son named Jonathon. Well I found out he has a crush on me so I decided to give him some candy at church.. He is always hiding behind his mom at church and will hardly look me in the eyes. I found out from the elders who teach them that they call me, "Hermana Nueve." Do you know why? They can't say "Nye" but it sounds like nine and nueve is nine in Spanish. :)

Have you ever had helotes? They are DELISH! I love them! They are basically cooked corn with butter, mayo (I obviously do NOT put that on mine), chile, parmesan cheese etc. They have little roadside stands all over. We finally went and bought some at our investigator's stand! Just so y'all know, I will be cooking VERY differently when I come home. I have been introduced to too many good things here: pupusas, gorditas, chili Colorado....the list goes on and on. And I love corn and flour tortillas too.

We taught Rosa (who we found outside smoking one day when we were kind of lost). She let us come back and we taught her the Restoration. She has three cute boys, Juan (15), Alexis (12), and Bryan (8). They all sat and listened, it was really impressive. Rosa loved what we taught and when I asked her how she felt listening to Joseph Smith's story she said that it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever heard and she knew it was true. How amazing! She is sooo pretty too! Her 15 year old boy also said things like, "I had never thought of that before." It strengthens my testimony over and over again when things like that happen.

Elsa is doing great! We had a sweet lesson with her this week. Her oldest son, Raul has agreed to take her to activities and church when she wants to. We think her husband will be ok with that. He is still pretty stuck in his ways, but little by little I think he will be ok with it. Elsa is like my second mom (nothing like my mom), but she is just so motherly. It saddens me that she is treated so poorly. I just think the world of her.

We went to Manuel's daughter's funeral this week. It was such a sad thing, but he was so great! He is a recent convert, not of very long, but so sweet. His daughter only was 28 and died from a drug overdose. The viewing and funeral were so sad, but the other missionaries were able to teach a TON of his family that came for the funeral. Some, including his ex-wife, are Jehovah's Witness so they were NOT interested, but it is awesome to see the Lord opening up unexpected pathways for His missionaries to spread the gospel.

 

 

At the end of the day during daily planning. My planner is so thick and everyone always makes fun of me. A really nice elder who is leaving soon made me and another sister these planner covers for getting him stuff for his bday. I jam it full of Mormon.org cards, bus passes, and mini ward directory.

Our menos activo Yesena who just had a baby also has a nine year old boy named Alfredo. He will probably be baptized in a few weeks! We went and taught them and the mom was really open to letting us get him to church. She still doesn't want to go, because she just had her baby but we are arranging a baby blessing for her.

 

One day this week we were riding our bikes and all the sudden a man called out, "sister missionaries"! It was an old member on his bike!  :) He lives not far from us but is not from our ward.  We ended up talking to him for a while. He is a convert and he told us that science converted him. You don't hear that too often, but what he told us was so neat.

 

 

Some cool art around town

We taught Neftaly in the park this week. He is kind of progressing, haha. He came to the activity this Saturday, but I am not sure he wants to stop drinking. The activity we had was so neat. We had SO MANY investigators come. It was an activity primarily for investigators. We watched some Mormon Messages, had some cool conversion testimonies, and ate. I came up with the idea for our next activity. We are going to project the movie The Testaments in the park and eat popcorn :) So excited for this one!

This is a pic before the activity with our sweet Jasmine.

She is only 12 and wants to go on a mission as soon as she can!

We had dinner at a family’s home this week. The dad is from Kenya and the mom is Hispanic. They have the cutest girl. The dad actually was in the Olympics and told us he trained in Sun Valley at one point. Shout out to IDAHO! :)

Miss you all! LOVES