No Sun in Yorba Linda

 

Araceli, Alfred, Hermana Sanders and Cibelly

Hello all. Well for an update on the last week, it was LONG. This area has, well, not much going on right now. I think maybe the elders dropped most of their investigators before the transfers were over, and the ones they still had, aren't very solid. So we were lucky if we had one set appointment a day. And usually, that was dinner.
Sister Kioa and I spent a lot of time really reading everything 39 times in the “area book”(where all the teaching records of everyone should be) and trying to visit every single person who were either former investigators, other investigators, and/or recent converts/less actives. There aren't any progressing investigators right now, so we also spent a lot of time finding good areas, and knocking doors for a couple of hours. It's different in these higher class white areas; people just aren't home. When they are home, they think they know everything about the church already so usually they don't even give us half a minute to say anything. Once they find out the church it's "Oh no, I'm not interested," and then the door is shut. I don't mind really, I don't really think people are being rude, they just assume they already know what the message is and they know better. Every area is different and you have to learn again how to be a missionary.
There also aren't many people out on the streets, so we don't have contacting opportunities. This is where member missionary work is even more essential, because that's how people are found. There are lots of part member families and inactives that we also tried to call and/or stop by, but they weren't home either. It just takes lots of hard work to get an area going, but it will happen. There's lot of potential here, and there are definitely people ready to learn and be baptized everywhere, it's just finding them.
The wards here do seem to be interested in missionary work though, so that's good. I think they're a little afraid of the fact that we invite people to be baptized the first time we teach them, but they'll get used to it. They probably think we're scaring their friends away. But if so, then they're just not ready right then.
Yesterday we were knocking in this little condo area, and we met someone who is of the Ba'hai faith from Iran (she gave us Iranian candy), a teenager who just moved from Russia, an 18 year old girl with an attitude who doesn't believe in religion and speaks Arabic and warned us from knocking any further because "they speak Spanish" or "aren't home," an entire household of women from Jerusalem who are Christian, a Hispanic “born-again” Christian, and a lady from Mexico whose boyfriend is an Arab Christian, and she says her only friends here are LDS. Well, we taught the last one. She was very nice. So that was some mixed knocking time, and I loved it! I just love those middle easterners and Hispanic people! And Russians I guess! Foreigners are fun. People make everything so interesting, even the ornery people. I miss knocking and having people actually talk to us. Plus, I was able to speak Spanish! Yeah!
And all week long the sun didn't come out once, except for yesterday. And we had a baptism yesterday in Yorba Linda whose name is Daniel Chavez and he has been taught by the missionaries for about a year. I had heard about him from the other sisters I lived with who used to serve in this area. We taught him once last week. He really studies the scriptures, and he has lots of questions. Apparently in the past those questions were stopping him from seeing the big picture, and really learning if the church was true. But he came to the missionaries when they were about to drop him and asked what he needed to do to be baptized. He is about 50 and Hispanic, but very Americanized. He is very nice. Everyone yesterday at the baptism described him as being very sweet and gentle, and it's true. When the bishop got up and welcomed him into the ward, he just cried and cried. The spirit was so strong at the baptism. It's taken him a long time to get here, but he's a true convert now. So it was a really wonderful thing to be apart of, even for just a week.
Love you all!

Love,
Emily