Promising Blessings

Before I forget, next week Pday is on Monday again (so if you want to write me, write to me on Sunday or Monday morning).  We have zone conference...again! That is hard to believe. Sister Fallentine and I will be spending every sentimental holiday and moment together that we will both have on the mish: Thanksgiving, Christmas, her birthday, New Years, Valentines, St. Patricks, my birthday (hopefully Mother's Day and when we go to the temple) haha.

If I serve my entire mission and only learn two things, I know it will be well-worth it. One, is the importance of visiting teaching and home teaching (JUST GO AND DO IT!) and patience. HOLY COW! We are teaching this woman named Martha. It is so hard to be patient with her sometimes. She ended up talking to us for almost THREE hours. I was literally on my knees trying to get her to realize I was ready to pray for an entire hour. I have never had a harder time getting out of an appointment. If they keep cutting me off, I will just start getting down on my knees like it is time to pray and she DIDN’T get it!   It’s ok though, we left her once again with an amazing promise, which she hasn’t acted on still which was to read the Book of Mormon. We just know that all of her random doubts and concerns come back to the Book of Mormon. Why can’t they understand that? I want everyone to understand that it isn’t, “el mismo Dios” and that God has given us permission to act in his name, but only in our church. We have a line back to Jesus Christ. Why don’t they get it? She hasn’t even tried the test we left with her.

We promised her (that was a cool experience) that if she read the Book of Mormon, the problems she was having with her sight would go away. Sister Fallentine and I both felt very impressed to offer her that promise the other night when we had a lesson on her doorstep. Man, if someone came to me and were telling me that their church was true and then they told me that God would cure some health problem that I had by reading a book, I would do it! I would maybe do it to prove them wrong, but I would do it! Then I would be able to know if they were really sent by God. That was something I felt very impressed to promise her and I know that God will follow through with the promises his authorized servants make when in the Spirit. I was thinking about it today…how cool it is that we can promise blessings. I am taking advantage of that. We decided the theme of this transfer was going to be “promising blessings.”

We helped with transfers this week. We have two new sisters in our zone, super cute sisters. Well actually, they split our zone into Mt. Franklin West and Mt. Franklin East, so now we cover two zones, but it basically is the same. Kind of a sad thing for zone sports though...not as many to play. We will see how it goes.

 

Generation Photo: Hermana Oxley trained me so I am her daughter. I trained Goobs (so she is my daughter, Hermana Oxley's granddaughter) and then she is training, so now I have a granddaughter...kind of silly I know. :)

 

 

Last week I had one of the BEST days of my mission. I really felt like we were needed. People actually WANTED us and NEEDED us. We drove seven miles in our car the entire day and taught seven lessons (six to investigators, all with a member present, BOO YA)! It was seriously such a great day.

Random experience: We contacted this lady on the street and she told us what we were doing was disgusting and sick. She didn’t even give us a chance to speak and said we were confusing people. She got in her car really quickly after. We decided that next time we will put a picture of Christ on their windshield so they have to come outside to get it. And then nicely, we will tell them, “We will pray for you J”.  Just kidding. That is the last thing people want to hear when they don’t like you. I am just so grateful for sweet Sister Fallentine and how we are able to lean on each other after hard rejections like that. Some people can’t take it very well, but when you really know what you are preaching, you can’t take it personally. They are rejecting the message of Jesus Christ, but they still have their agency.

So Cuca (Maria de Refugio, found out her real name) is doing AWESOME! I can’t remember if I updated you on her last week, but she was to the point where she was going to call us and tell us never to come back. This is the sweet lady who works at a members home Monday through Friday and then is in Mexico on the weekends. She is doing SOOO Great! She is reading a TON in the Book of Mormon. The sweet old lady she works for, Hermana Judd, is such an amazing lady. Apparently her son/grandson came to visit her from Utah who is a bishop. That was great for her…she is back with us again. It is hard because she always goes home on the weekend and her husband talks her out of everything. I am pretty sure we are at a point where she won’t turn back anymore. She wants to be baptized so badly. So what we are doing for her is a special fast with all the women in the Relief Society and Young Women. We are so excited…the white handbook says to not ask you to join in special fasts with us, so I just ask you to keep her in your prayers. She is a VERY special person to me. What we are hoping is that maybe her husband can come and be here for the weekend and they can go to church with us so that we can meet him. There is absolutely NO communication between the elders in Mexico and with us. It is really frustrating. We sent off the referral a few times and put our email on there, hoping they would email us and tell us what is going on there during the weekends, but they haven’t. Anyway, this fast should help a ton with her husband. Grandpa actually offered to take us to Mexico and then ask for forgiveness later. ;) It was a joke obviously. He is so stinking funny!!

The day before Esli’s baptism was another fantastic but a little crazy day! J It started off great. I was prepping for Esli’s talk. I have put together a cute poster board with a straight and narrow path. I think she will like it a lot. I am so excited for her. She is adorable and at such a critical age…holy cow! Alexis came with me to go see her and practice for her interview. She forgets things easily so we had to go over stuff a lot, but she finally got it all. I love Karina, her mom, a lot too! Before that we had district meeting. We practiced up our song for the baptism, “A Child’s Prayer.” It will be nice. After that we had district meeting. Elder Hicken actually was only 10 minutes late today, so we only went over 10 minutes. We ate at Taco Bell, the new elder, Elder Walch, is hilarious. He does great voice impersonations.

 

We put together our programs at Grandpa’s. He was being so funny. He has this hilarious, ugly picture of this woman and he is going to use it to trick the new elder at breakfast. We are super excited for that. We picked up Alexis and made our split. Of course the elders were late for the interview. We have GOT to get a key made for us! We really do!

We took Hermana Diaz to go see Martha. I wanted to die. She wouldn’t stop talking. She hasn’t even read any and we left her that amazing promise. I am kind of ticked off at her a little. Then we had dinner with Hermana Diaz. That woman is so special. I want to take you to meet her one day. She is battling cancer, and literally does EVERYTHING for everyone else. She just wants to help everyone. I love her.

The baptism for Esli went SOOOOO well. Basically everything that went wrong last week DIDN’T go wrong this week. The water was perfect, everything was ready and Esli and her family were there on time to take pictures.  The bishop even showed up, his son (Esli’s Sunday school teacher) gave a great talk, and I felt at ease giving my talk. I used some cute things as part of the talk. I gave more of a “perseverar hasta el fin” talk than just about the Holy Ghost. I talked about the temple being the goal for them and I gave her some earrings that have the infinity on them to remind her of that goal. We got her a little princess mirror to remind her who she is, and then a little flashlight to remind her of the companionship she now has, the Holy Ghost. The Celestial Kingdom on my board was a Reeses, which is her favorite. Alexis gave the welcome to the Young Women’s. It is so perfect that she just turned 12. We texted people like an hour out, because you CAN’T text them too early or they will forget. More people came than we thought and we were so pleased. We had people write their testimonies to Esli on a cute piece of paper while she was changing. We are so happy with her. The only thing that did go wrong was that her uncle was SOOOO nervous to baptize her that he ended up doing it at least seven times. The first time he only got the back of her head wet, the second, he said her name wrong, the third, elbow popping up, the fourth, same problem…until finally it happened. We were DYING! Those are definitely the highlights of the week.

One last thing is that Susannah and her three kids are doing great! We had the sweetest FHE with them last night. They are the family we want to baptize this transfer. Let's just pray that their husband will stop making them go to Mexico on the weekends.

I love you all SOOO MUCH! I can't even believe once again all that is going on with our family right now. I know I am supposed to be here, but I can't lie and say I don't miss you! :) Love you!