Para siempre Dios este con vos

This is Emily, the "pre missionary" in Italy, Summer of 2008

Transfer week! Okay, well this transfer has been a little anticlimactic so far. I was pretty sure I wasn't being transferred, thought at the same time I was prepared for whatever. President likes to throw in some surprises and mix things up it seems. But S. Fatkin and I predicted, and were right about transfers for our entire district. We are both staying, and Sister Dutson, who has only two transfers left, is coming down here with us. I don't know lots about her, but I hear she's easy going and she has a geology degree. My kind of girl! Apparently I don't know how to be a missionary any way other than being in a threesome. We have a new sister coming in, a Korean, and she is being trained by the sister who was just brand new this last transfer. Yeah! And our little S. Ochoa is going home. It is really weird, she is my trainer! We are going to really miss her. She really is amazing; we're just trying to convince her to move from Vancouver to Utah so she's there when we're off the mission. I guess not all RMs can go to Utah. None of us in this new trio are fluent in Spanish. I think I am the one who speaks the best, and that's not saying much. So I think learning curve will really increase this transfer! I'm excited about that.


This last week was really good. I don't have my planner in front of me, so I don't remember a lot about what happened. We did have a good lesson with Yesenia/Abel/Eva. They're really fun. We seem to go from laughing really hard with them to all of a sudden being serious and having a really powerful spirit there. We talked to them about faith and repentance and tried to set a baptismal date with them. They're ready. But they don't believe it. So we're having them pray about it. But I think they're afraid to pray about the date, because they know they’ll get an answer that they need to do it.

We also had a great lesson with Araceli and Cibelly and they came to church again this week. Hopefully they keep it up. Though I do think we need to let them go for a little while. They know some church members and maybe they need a little shove along the path in order for Araceli to make a decision about how she's going to be baptized. We had a temple tour this Saturday and they came and I could tell Araceli was really thinking and listening hard the whole time. I think she gets it. It's like baptism is only a matter of time, except that she hasn't been willing to do what it takes in order to force her "husband" to make a decision about marrying her.

We continue to knock a lot of doors in our area. There are plenty of places to do it. Of course it's nobody's favorite thing to do, but sometimes I feel like it's real missionary work. I'm starting to actually think it's pretty fun. It needs to be done in order to really find those people who are ready. We're trying to work with members and get referrals from them, but until that starts really happening, we're going to keep on knocking as much as possible.

I don't know what else to say. I can't believe it's just about February. Where did November go? Being a missionary is crazy. I love it! I love all the e-mails I've been getting and love hearing all of the family news! I know you're all praying for me and thank you for that. I know it helps! This is going to be the transfer for baptisms here, so keep praying! Thank you all for everything everyone! Love you all!

Exchanges and Bug Traps

 

Hi my familia! How is everyone today? Is everyone nice and warm? It is warm here. Let's see, I don't want to be repetitive in my e-mails and news, so I will try to think of some new exciting things that happened this last week.
We did exchanges again. S. Chriswell came here. Fun times! She is very enthusiastic about using any of the Spanish she knows, so that's good. We took her to knock some doors and we had a good time. We went and taught Jung again and she is just amazing. She's still not ready to commit to baptism, but we're still working towards it. We teach her twice a week now, and some days are really good and she asks great questions and we can really tell she's learning a lot, and other days she has more technical and grammar questions about English. But it's always good. She always prays for us and has this little notebook that she practices writing prayers. She's so sincere and humble in her prayers, we just love hearing them. It's interesting how they've changed too. She always says things about how this is God's church and how we are angels teaching her and how she wants to do what to do. She told us last week that she's drawn to the Book of Mormon, and we told her that might be an answer for her. Hopefully she will begin to recognize her answers. She's also afraid of how it will be after she's baptized, what to expect when she goes back to Korea. We told her the members there will be just as nice as those here. She doesn't believe us. She says we just think Koreans are nice because all Koreans are nice to Americans. And she said she doesn't want to have to wear long skirts like us. No worries there, we don't want to wear them either.
We got to go to the temple this week, which was also just as wonderful as always! We're so lucky to have a temple in our mission. Maybe we can't go to Disneyland our have nice touristy things to look at like Cathedrals or be in a different country or whatever, but not everyone has a temple!
Again, we met with a lot of recent converts and less actives this week. The goal is to have 20 lessons a week. First with investigators, but if we can't get them all that way, then we go to recent converts and less actives, and then to active members. And with this new area we're in, we've really been able to find a lot of less actives to work with. People that the ward didn't even know existed. And they all seem to have friends or family they live with her aren't members, so maybe someone they can all be taught too.
Yesenia and Abel did not come to church this week and we weren't able to meet with them either. They kept canceling on us. But we saw them yesterday and committed them to letting us come teach them once a week. It's the only way we cab see if they're really progressing.
Our new bishop is really great. He is all about missionary work and this next Sunday is a fast in the ward for missionary work. And he called together a bunch of men in the ward yesterday to go out either by themselves, or with us missionaries to visit all of the less actives and recent converts and maybe some investigators too. So our ward mission leader came with us to visit Yesenia and Abel (and Yesenia's aunt Eva who we are teaching now too) and some other less actives. They're trying really hard to get this year started right, because things are a little slow right now. It's hard because all of our areas changed a little and we're trying to find some solid investigators again. But with this 50 baptism goal, things really need to start moving, and I think great things will happen because we have a bishopric and ward mission leader that really are working hard and are behind us in making this happen. This Saturday we have a tour around the temple again, and we're trying to get all of our people that we teach to go, and then they're all invited to go to our Hmo Montiel's (our ward mission leader) house for a little FHE and some carne asada. Hooray!
Oh, funny thing from yesterday. At the end of our lesson with Yesenia and Abel, S. Fatkin went up to use the bathroom and when she came back and sat down, we realized she had a bug trap stuck to her shoe. Just put yourself in the situation. It was hilarious. This super sticky glue stuff with a plastic trap on the bottom just stuck to her shoe. Hmo Montiel had to be like her dad and take her shoe and try to get it all off. But it was a good time. I wish I took pictures of it. Also, S. Moore and her old companion came down her this weekend and since they both served in this ward for like 7 months, they came to church yesterday. It was really fun to see them. Weird how someone you were just companions with like 5 weeks before is now back at school, not wearing nylons.
Well the week ahead will blaze by. As of now we have a lot of appointments scheduled with some pretty reliable people. And it's S. Ochoa's last week in the mission! Crazy. So we're trying to fit in as much of everything as possible before she goes. It will be really weird to have her gone. And that also means that we will find out on Saturday what's happening with transfers. On baby Justin's birthday! We have no clue what will happen. I've pretty much prepared myself for anything. There are only two other places I can go, so we'll see. Maybe S. Fatkin and I will both get to stay here and learn to speak like Mexicans. Which reminds me, in Stephanie's e-mail she said there's a sister who speaks German like a Mexican and rolls her r's like Spanish. I am getting over the opposite problem. I roll my r's like a German. We do have a new sister coming next week-she's Korean, so we'll see where she goes. There will still be a threesome of sisters in the mission.
Okay, well that's it for this week. Happy birthday to Justin and I love you all my family!
Love,
Emily

Dia de los Reyes

Another week that went by fast. We've (well at least I) have really been enjoying visiting some less active members lately. We were walking around one day handing out cards and this woman stopped me and told me she was a member and had just moved here from Tijuana. We've visited her couple of times and met her husband the other night. It was so perfect that we ran into her, or that she ran into us, because she didn't know where the church was. And they apparently were a little inactive before they came here. So now we're hoping to help them work towards going to the temple. She thought she would have to go to Utah, so when we told her there's one 15 minutes away, she was very excited. And her daughter isn't a member and she wants to start working on her. Yeah! And another man we met walking around actually it was the same day I think. He told me “I was baptized in your church.” You can never be so sure about that type of comment. So I repeated the church name and he said yes. And now we're visiting him. He's the only member of his family and his son has even been to our church a couple of times with some buddies when he was in the marines. Inactive part member families are great to work with!

We had lost track of Yesenia and Abel for a bit. Well, for only like 7 days-but that seems like forever on our schedule. Then we showed up at their house late one night and found them and even met and are going to begin teaching her aunt. Apparently somewhere they have a member in their family-and he went on a mission, so they have been exposed to the church a little. Abel seems to still be kind of ready to move forward, but Yesenia seems to really understand the commitment that comes with baptism, and wants to make sure she has her answer. But she gets it, so we'll just keep teaching and committing them to different things, and hopefully her faith will increase. We got Yesenia and Abel to come eat dinner at a member's home down the street on Saturday night. It ended up being a long appointment because of the members and their slowness, so we watched “The Restoration” and then talked and then finally ate. Guarachas. Basically tortillas with beans and cheese. Interesting how many different names they have for the same exact thing. Funny thing was that the member, he basically began teaching Yesenia and Abel the entire Plan of Salvation (luckily we had already taught the basics) complete with the council in heaven, the veil, temples, baptisms for the dead, and the millenium. Well. Less really is more. I think he had been reading ahead in the lesson manual for gospel principles for the next day. Good thing they are patient investigators and won't be scared off. They even came to church the next day! Hooray! Yesenia bought a skirt and even though they drove around in circles for awhile, they were there!

Our other great investigator is still Jung. Our Korean. On Wednesday we went over the first half of 3 Nephi 11. Since the original idea was to practice English with her, but we began to teach the gospel, we have her read aloud the scriptures and ask questions. It's a really good method. We can help her with her pronunciation and she always understands really well and asks good questions. She's said a couple of time that she always asks God when she prays “why am I here? Why did you bring me here to learn English?” Because Jung is here for 2 years just to learn English really well and then go back to Korea. Well, we know why she's here. We met with her on Saturday too and read the second half of the chapter. Our plan was to commit her to baptism with a date this week, and we'd just really start talking about baptism with the chapter, in preparation. But then she had all of these amazing questions and when we talked about how other churches baptize but it doesn't count, she said that she thinks this the true church. Afterward we all talked and said how we really just wanted to commit her right there, but none of us did it. Lame! And we really regretted it. So, we called her back after we left her. And we asked her over the phone. Well, it probably would've been better in person. But it was funny. She said that she wants to be baptized, but it seemed so soon. We'll see her this week and I know that she will accept the invitation. We just didn't want to let the opportunity go. We didn't want to regret not asking. Lesson learned. Listen to the spirit when it tells you to do something. When we told our DL, he said “I heard a story about some missionaries once, who were heading one direction and the spirit, told them to turn around, and they did, and a minute later they heard machine guns firing behind them the way they would've gone. It's important to listen to the spirit.” Thanks Elder.

We had exchanges this Saturday. S. Ochoa and S. Brown traded places. It was a blast to be with S. Brown again for a day. And I think she was a little overwhelmed by the Spanish. President basically told her that she will probably be in the Samoan program for a long time and probably never speak Spanish here. Being with her reminded me of how much fun we had in the MTC, and how much we probably were all talking all of the time. Funny. Since they only teach Samoan, they don't really go tracting, they rely on referrals from family members and church members. And when Samoans make appointments, they actually are there for them. My mission experience and her mission experience are very different! I would like to volunteer to learn Samoan and go work with S. Brown. Or maybe Korean. We do have a Korean sister coming out next transfer, who knows!
The work is still moving along and we're still working on increasing our number of progressing investigators. We still are working with Araceli and Cibelly, but they're just not progressing like they should. Since the marriage thing is still not happening, they at least need to be coming to church, but always have some excuse. It's so discouraging because just 3 months ago they got it. They wanted to be baptized and seemed like they were willing to do what they needed to do. And we still see Stephanie and Danny. We're just trying to get them to read the scriptures. It's funny how hard such a little thing can be to just do it. But probably because that little thing can make such a difference. Our recent converts are doing really well. Lupe and Lulu and Big boy are still coming to church, and Ernesto, the husband has even been coming. We're hoping we can soon begin to teach him.
Last week was dia de los Reyes (did you celebrate that in Spain Ryan?) and everyone buys this big wreath shaped pastries with little plastic baby Jesus dolls inside. You find it and you have to make tamales in February. Pagan Catholic holidays. So fun! Okay, I don't want to bore you all with anymore details. California is heating up again and I hear that the Eagles are doing well. And the world keeps moving forward, huh? I'm happy and speaking Spanish and doing fantastically! Love you all, thanks for the e-mails!

Monday Monday

Happy New Years! The end of week three of the transfer is always interesting and week four. Basically the middle of the transfer things usually don't go the way you want them to. I've learned that much while I've been here.
As a district we met with our ward mission leader and we went through the ward list and we were told about every family on there, who is inactive that we need to visit; who is good to come with us to appointments, etc. I started to wonder if they do that everywhere with missionaries. Do you wonder what they tell the missionaries about all of you? It was a good meeting though, because now that we have this new area, we actually have some ward members in our area. Before, in Orange, there were probably 3 members and all were active. Now we have a couple more families we can work with. So we spent a little time here and there trying to find people (finding a lot had moved) to break up all of our knocking doors. It's funny because as we find these people and after talking to them we walk away being confused about whether they're truly inactive. They always seem to be active when we talk to them. But then come Sunday, none of them were at church. We were talking and decided that people are good at faking being active members. Because they still remember, and mostly have gotten out of the habit of just going to church and doing what they know they should do. I'm excited about having families to visit, because a lot of them have unbaptized children and the parents just need to start the basics again like reading and praying. Before, it seemed like the days dragged by here because all we were doing was tracting, all day long, and some teaching. We always had lots of appointments set, but most of the people weren't there when we went back. People still tell us we can come back and aren't there, but in this area there are a ton of apartments we can go knock in, so we have more to do.
We taught Yesenia and Abel on Tuesday about the Plan and committed them to being baptized Jan. 18. She was a little hesitant. We were ready for that. We had planned what we'd say if she mentioned she'd already been baptized, but she didn't say that; mostly she was worried about not knowing enough, and about what if they couldn't come to church sometimes. She at least understands that being baptized is a commitment. But we helped her understand a little better what we were asking, and she said she'd be baptized. Abel was totally willing. We were thrilled. They just seem unusual: a couple that is married and gets it and they even sit around in their free time doing puzzles. I don't know very many Hispanics that do that. We decided we'd have to somehow find a puzzle of a temple to give them when they get baptized. But then they cancelled an appointment we had set for later in the week, and they didn't come to church. We'll have to be patient with them and maybe they're a little overwhelmed; so we are going to try to talk to them and see what we can do to help them. Unfortunately they won't answer their phones, and now, because they need to come to church at last 2 times, we'll definitely have to move the baptismal date. Oh well. We'll see.
We found some good new investigadors last week. One woman, Maritza, is a single mom with four kids. She is currently separated and her kids have various medical problems, and she seems very willing to listen. The problem is that we know it will be really hard for her to get out with all her kids, and she doesn't have tons of time. But she will do it if she's interested enough. But she also didn't show up for another appointment. In another complex we talked to a young guy, Giovanni, and talked about coming back to teach, and he mentioned that his brother, Auturo, might be interested, that he works with the youth in another church. Then we met his brother in the hallway and he invited us in to talk. We taught him the first lesson and he had lots of questions. But I'm pretty sure they were sincere questions. He referenced the Bible a lot and had a hard time understanding the need for a prophet. A lot of people ask why we need a prophet if we have the Bible and we have the Holy Ghost to guide us. Sometimes it is hard to explain. For me I guess I lot of the questions people have, I can answer in my head that it just comes down to faith and knowing it's right. I've never really felt a need to have concrete answers or get caught up in the whys. That's hard to explain to people though. He also didn't believe that all people are children of God. He believes He created all of us, but we are only true children of God if we accept Jesus into our hearts and do good things. Partially that's a matter of semantics and partially it's that he believes in the trinity, and if he understood that they're all separate beings, then being a child of Heavenly Father is different than becoming a child of Christ. We're going to bring a member to our next appointment and hopefully he will have some more questions answered.
Yes, we had interviews with President this week. Usually the interviews are really short and I don't think of anything to say. They're seriously probably a couple of minutes, and then afterwards I remember that there were things I wanted to ask/talk to him about. He talked about morning study a little, and not worrying about trying to get through the standard works, but just studying what I need to for our investigators. And he asked if I was happy which apparently he asked everybody this time. He told me he really felt bad about the way things turned out in Irvine. Basically that his intention wasn't just to send me down there for one transfer, but that's the way it turned out. He mentioned again the increased missionary complement we get for this year, and that in the future I could get back down there. We'll see! Even though sometimes it seems like all the president does is make new rules, I know he is just trying his hardest to just be obedient and only have the mission work by what the white handbook and PMG say. He's just a very humble, and sort of goofy man, and I really like him.
What else? Recent converts are still doing great and we're trying hard to find some more people that are ready to be baptized. The mission goal is one baptism per transfer per companionship. That's the standard. The faith goal is two baptisms. And our ward just made a goal of 50 baptisms for this year. Yikes! But we figured that means that the faith goal would have to always be reached. So we have some work to do.
That was basically the week. We're hoping that great things are to come in the next couple of weeks, as the mid-transfer slump passes.