December So Soon?

December is here! Can you believe it? I can’t. Nuts. Last week was busy. They all are though, right? It didn’t feel like we got a lot of “official” lessons in, but we were visiting lots of people and it was all worthwhile.
On Thursday, Thanksgiving, we were a little worried that we would have to be eating 4 dinners. But no! We went and visited two part-member inactive families and just spent some time with them and their families before they officially ate, and went and visited Stephanie Suzukie and she came with us over to a member’s house (who always is there when we teach Stephanie). We just sang some hymns with that family. Stephanie loves the hymns; she always says she’ll do something if we sing her a song. Our real dinner that we ate was with Shellie. We helped her prepare a bit then ate with her husband and daughter. They are an unusual family. Her husband is very quiet, Jewish, and sings in a barbershop group. He’s not interested in religion, but has been giving Shellie an allowance so that she can pay tithing (even though we’ve explained that since she doesn’t work, she doesn’t need to, and especially because she wasn’t a member yet.) Shellie is 54. I guess when she was about 40 she started to think, what will I do for the next 20 years…and then she got pregnant. Now they have Linda! She’s a good girl, also very quiet. Shellie is not quiet though. It was really fun to be with them. We then went and visited a couple of other inactives and to everyone we delivered pumpkin chocolate chip bread! So that was the day. It was full and good!
Saturday was Shellie’s baptism. She had quite a few friends there, and members, so that was nice. And when the elder baptized her, they realized a minute later-after Shellie had left to go get changed, that he had said one word wrong and she had to come back out and do it again. She just thought it was hilarious and appropriate for her craziness. But it was all a really good program, simple and short! It was really nice.
Let’s see, what else. We did a lot of “regular” things this week. Every Tuesday we go and sing for this older woman at a nursing home; she’s a member in the ward, but can’t always get to church. Then we play trivia for an hour down in a lobby with other people who live there. We have these books that we ask questions from. These people are hilarious. One woman is like 88 and from Chicago and is just mean and makes us laugh. Another one tells us she doesn’t want to do trivia but then sits down anyway. And she tells us not to kiss her. Good deal. We love doing this every week. We also go and read with this little boy in the ward every week. His dad is an older man, and single, and sort of struggles. And Chandler just needs some role models and we read from The Friend with him. He’s a really good kid, and I think the sisters are just sort of big sisters for him.
We committed Stephanie to being baptized this week. Basically she said she can’t do it right now. We do know that she wants to be baptized, and if she were a single woman, she would do it. But she’s worried about her family and really doesn’t want to cause a problem there. She says she wants to be more solid, and really know more, so that she can bring her family in with her. She did acknowledge though that there might come a time where she just has to do it on her own. She compared it to like an Abraham and Isaac situation, where she’s wondering if she’s supposed to “sacrifice” her family, to show the Lord her faith, but then in the end doesn’t really have to lose them. That’s the hard part though, having enough faith to just do it.
Her pastor from her church also met with her this weekend, and basically got Stephanie confused. We were hoping her pastor would say bad things about us, and then Stephanie would come more in our direction, because she’s strong enough. Instead her pastor was nice and just sort of pointed out the differences in our churches and said it was good to learn about other churches, but just to be aware of those differences. And she brought up what a lot of people believe that we are saying-that we think that Satan and Christ are brothers, and that we believe we can become like God on His level. We’ve talked to her about this before, so I don’t think that one really is a problem for her to understand. But what she struggles with is the Holy Ghost. She feels like she already has it. And we’ve talked about it a lot, and pointed out where in the NT, the people had to receive the Holy Ghost, they didn’t just have it. She found that really fascinating, because she likes things to be logical, and she couldn’t explain how this idea worked in her church. But now her pastor gave her some explanation about how the people back then weren’t Christian to begin with, so they had to be given the Holy Ghost. But now, people are Christian already, so they already have the Holy Ghost. I don’t know. It will still come down to her faith and if she really has a testimony of the restored gospel. That’s what we will be working on. We do know that she’ll get baptized; it’s just when. We’re praying for her!
The next two weeks I’m pretty sure will fly by because there are a lot of people we want to see and things we need to do. Two weeks left in the transfer and then S. Moore goes home and I get some new companion. I did ask president the last time we interviewed, if he had any idea of closing this area to sisters, but he said he doesn’t plan on doing that. So I figure that means I can probably stay here a little bit longer at least!
It’s getting colder and foggier around here and I appreciate it. We don’t walk a lot here, like we did in Orange. We mostly drive from apartment complex to apartment complex. People aren’t out walking around here, at all, so there’s no point in us walking around. Everything’s going well though. We’re trying hard to find new investigadors to teach, but it’s definitely not easy. But hey, we’re optimistic. Thanks for the letters and love familia! Talk to you all next week!
Love,
Emily