Assyrian Babylonians!

Hello family! Well, it’s the halfway point of the transfer. Things are still excellent here! I love California. Seriously. It’s funny how a place becomes your home. I definitely will miss it here. I just love the people and the palm trees and the sunny days and everything else. It still is weird, but this is definitely the place where I needed to be! Who would’ve thought?Let’s see, an update on people.

The Luceros are doing great. For the last week and a half we had planned to read in the introduction to the Book of Mormon with them, and then get Brother Lucero (non member) to pray right then, with us, and then we were going to ask him to be baptized. This is what President Watrous wants us to do with everyone when we first teach them. And even though B. Lucero has been taught for a long time, we wanted to do it with him anyway. And it went really well. The spirit was definitely there, and we asked him to be baptized. He said he wasn’t ready. We pretty much expected that. But we had to ask. That’s what missionaries do! But for the next little bit that we were there talking to the girls about their baptisms, and when we left, he definitely looked like he was thinking really hard. Good! Who knows?The Lopez family is also doing great. Everything’s set to finish up the last couple of lessons and get their program together. And after saying it over and over again, we finally feel like people are starting to fellowship them in the ward. Good!

Raven’s good. 'We are still teaching him. Also still teaching Cesar and getting him ready for baptism. We found out he smokes but just because he’s bored. He said that the addictive properties don’t affect him, and he can completely stop whenever he wants. Alrighty, we’ll see. Cesar understands and remembers everything we teach, but he definitely still has some kind of disability. We don’t know what though. When we started talking about prophets and asked him why it would be good to listen to a prophet he said “because it’s a straight shot to the celestial kingdom.” True, true. We were glad he remembered the lesson about the Plan of Salvation a couple of days earlier! He also asked us if after the resurrection, if the pre-earth life would be destroyed-because there “would be no need for it.” Interesting, I’ve never thought about that one before. This is why it’s great talking to all the odd people we teach, because their perspectives are so different, and their questions are so much fun. I love it!

On Saturday we went to teach Nicole. Oh man. That morning she called and asked me if it was okay that she was already wearing her Halloween costume-because that night was our ward activity and she was going to it. I said that was fine. She said she should’ve called the night before to check with us and she was sorry. But I said its okay, you can be wearing it. She said she just wants to respect us and she’s sorry and blah blah. Really, Nicole is one of the most interesting characters ever. I will try my best to do an impression of her someday. We brought one of our ward missionaries with us to the appointment and when we opened the door, there she was, Snow White! The thing is, Nicole is very small, thin, super pale, black short hair, and always wears red or pink lipstick. So her doing Snow White makes sense. Yet she still wore a wig and oh wow, she looked pretty funny. It was so hard not to be distracted and look at each other and laugh. There she is sitting on the couch as snow white as we talked to her about prophets. Then there’s a knock on the door. Nicole freaks out and doesn’t want to answer it. That’s normal. She asks us if she should answer it. We say yes. She doesn’t want to because she thinks it’s her mom. Then you hear someone say something through the door, and Nicole’s 2 year old son George goes “Grandma!” So Nicole lets them in. It’s her mom and her grandma. We have never met them, and we’ve always been curious about Nicole’s mom. Nicole swears her mom doesn’t love her. Her mom is in these little black stretch pants and leopard print shirt and sweeps into the home and is like “oh Nicole, oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company, oh George! Oh Nicole, have you eaten..blah blah blah.” She was very dramatic and funny and came in with pizza and gave us all pizza as she talked the entire time and kept moving around, doing Nicole’s dishes, and cleaning her house and, well it was pretty hilarious to us, even though Nicole was distressed. I asked her mom where she was from and she said “Oh, we’re Assyrian Babylonian. We’re east Catholic, Nicole was baptized as a child…” and Nicole is going “Mother, please, Mother. you weren’t supposed to come until later. Mother…” Very funny. So apparently her family is from Iran. Who knew? Assyrian Babylonian. That’s a first from me. I guess I’m wrong, but I sure thought the Assyrian and Babylonian empire were destroyed a long time ago. Pretty much her mom is not what we expected. She is just a flashy/dramatic/nagging mom. And as she was doing her dishes, our member said she wishes her mom would come over and do her dishes at her house and Nicole pipes up and offers to come over and do her dishes for her. It was one of the best teaching appointments I’ve had: Snow white and her mom.That’s probably the best story of the week.

There are always lots of good stories. This week we should be pretty busy too. We have to go on splits a couple of times, and that should be crazy. Good to be busy! We’re just trying to find those new investigators, so that after these people are baptized, there will still be people to teach.

Just in case you were wondering what we’re doing here on Halloween…well, we’re doing normal missionary work! Last year we were supposed to be in the apartment at 6:00pm, studying, if we didn’t already have set appointments to go to. But this year we are to be out working as usual! So we’ll be doing that. Trick or treat, we brought you the Book of Mormon! And today we will be carving pumpkins as a district to celebrate!I can’t believe how time is flying. Everyday I love being a missionary more and more! It’s crazy! It’s odd and feels a little, uh, scary, to think I won’t be doing this much longer. So I try not to think about it! We’re still sprinting! I love you all so much!

Love,Emily

Beginning of the End

Sister Sanders where? Oh yes, a soccer store.

My family! Alright, I’m “sprinting to the end” as President Watrous advises us missionaries with poquito tiempo. I’ve joked with S. Cooprider that we are going to skip lunch and dinner and work straight from 11-9. It’s sort of our joke, but some days it has felt like its true. And it’s a blessing to have so much to do! Everything is going really really well. I don’t want to jinx it! It’s so wonderful to look back over the last 8 weeks in this area, and see that our numbers have continually gone up!

Last week we had zone conference (my last, AH!) and it was pretty good. It was even raining that day-a miracle I say! We talked a lot about how to better introduce the Book of Mormon to people to “place it in their hearts” and help them begin to receive a testimony of it. I love it! Speaking of the Book of Mormon, for an update on my goal to read it all this last transfer…uh, its slow going. I’ve slowed down in Mosiah as I’ve decided to once and for all figure out the chronology and all the connections of the Book of Mormon. But hey, I’m still pushing to meet the goal! It was weird at zone conference to see all of these “new” missionaries, training new missionaries. Elders I’ve never seen in my life. Odd to think I will never serve with any of them. It was funny as some elders came up to me afterwards and were shocked that I was already going home. Especially ones that I came out with. It just reminds them of how much time they have left, or don’t have left! It’s all too crazy!

Here are some updates on our teaching pool:

The Luceros, Jenny and Ashley, are still getting baptized on Nov. 14, and their two previous elders are coming to baptize them. Sister Lucero is turning it into a Hispanic fiesta. Decorating tables and putting out balloons and party favors for her little comida after the baptism. We try to tell her that we need to focus on the baptism, and she understands, but she’s also been waiting a long time for this day and she’s going to festijar! Porque no? Yesterday when we taught the family, we were going to invite Dad to be baptized on the same day, but they ended up having visitors over and we had like 10 minutes to actually teach. So this week we will invite him. It should be interesting. In the beginning of September when we started teaching the Luceros again, Hermana said “don’t push my husband to be baptized.” Thing is, we’re missionaries, and it’s our responsibility to invite! If he says no, at least we know, and we don’t need to focus on him being an investigator. This way we know we’re done our part. But, he’s been coming to church, asking questions, and doing his reading. These are encouraging signs. Yeah baptisms!

The Lopez family are still good. We weren’t able to teach them last week. But as far as we know, we’re still on for Nov. 7. So that’s Kiara, Cathy and Michael who will be baptized. Funny, we realized that Michael’s b-day is Nov. 11, and if we waited a couple extra days, he would be a convert baptism too. But we don’t want to wait! So we continue to pray that all works out for dad to get his work off and everyone to be healthy (someone’s always getting sick there). In fact, Michael just had his interview for baptism with the bishop yesterday, so things are on schedule!

Nicole: after lots of thinking about her, last week Sister Cooprider and I talked about it and decided that she just needs to be baptized. That she wants to, and we’re teaching her, and she’s keeping commitments. She doesn’t understand everything, and she is kind of like a little kid who you have to have A LOT of patience with, but it’s not for us to hold her back from being baptized. So we’ve changed her date to Nov. 4, and we’re working towards that. She’s nervous about it all, because it’s new, but again, this way we know we’re doing all we can on our part, and if we’ve prepared her well, and she passes the interview, then she can have the Holy Ghost finally, which is what she needs to help her. And, we’re working on getting the ward really on board with it, because she needs a lot of support. If I hadn’t learned some degree of patience on my mission up to this point, then I’ve learned it with Nicole! Even when she drives us crazy, it’s always comes back so fast to me, that she’s a daughter of God. And somehow I can’t help but what to help her and love her. Yeah baptism!

Anaheim California Sister Missionaries

Raven. is still doing well. We continue to teach him once a week and he’s doing all of his reading. Yesterday he had some community service he had to do, so he missed church. But that’s the first time since I’ve been here that he hasn’t come. The branch has been absolutely amazing at fellowshipping him. They keep coming to appointments and helping him understand. It will be an easy transition for him to eventually have different missionaries, because really he can rely on the branch.

And there is Jose Barajas. We met him the week before last and set a baptismal date with him. We’ve taught him 3 times, but he hasn’t come to church yet. The lessons go really well. He has some doubts/questions concerning our not praying to saints or to the Virgin Mary. Since that’s his culture, it’s hard to give up. I don’t know though. He’s not progressing a lot. We’ll see what happens this week and see if he has the desire to find out if the gospel and church are true.

Caesar Castillo. He requested a Book of Mormon and Bible online, and since he’s in the other sister’s area, they brought him the Book of Mormon. But since he’s YSA age, they passed him to us. We taught him the Restoration, talked about the Book of Mormon, and invited him to be baptized Nov. 8. He accepted. He lives in some type of boarding house. We’re not sure. He’s a little bit slower. But he understood all the things we talked about and remembered all of his reading-which is more than Nicole! And Tracy-one of the YSA girls that we teach, came with us to the appointment, and volunteered to pick him up for church. So he was there yesterday, and it was wonderful!

And we visited a lot of other people this last week! We hadn’t seen Lisa Ruiz (inactive YSA) for awhile, but made contact yesterday. That was good. And one day coming into our apartment, we met this Asian girl who said she’s a member, but inactive. Alva Lee. She lives across the hall from us. Funny. So we visited her. She hasn’t been to church for years and years. She joined the church in Taiwan with her family, lived in Seattle for years, and just moved her, and was thinking about coming back to church. She said "its “lucky” that she met us." Now she should be coming to church! And we are teaching this other crazy YSA names Jennifer Cogburn. She’s divorced and has a little boy, and now lives with her parents. She splits her time between the YSA branch and the family ward her parents are in, and she’s trying to get to the temple. Her bishop asked her to take the missionary lessons from the elders in her ward. They’ve been teaching her for a while, but she’s a strong personality, and one of the elders is pretty honest too, and they clashed. So after apparently kicking them out of her house, she asked if we’d teach her. Oh hooray! She talks soooo much and has some doubts about prophets and different things. It looks like it will take some time to really help her. We’re also teaching this 16 year old girl in the ward whose family is inactive. Shannon. She recently came back to the church. We taught her the Restoration last night and she has a hard time believing any of it. Odd. She comes to church by herself and goes to early morning seminary-I guess because she feels like these things keep her on the right path, and keep her away from drugs and alcohol that used to be a problem for her. But otherwise she feels like we create religion and these stories to help us. Ah! Sometimes it’s hard for me to get people like that. Because sometimes I have questions too, and I wonder about stuff. But in the end, I realize that it doesn’t matter, and I know that the gospel is true, so the questions can leave my mind. Why do some people have to feel like they’re so intellectual and philosophical, using fancy words and questioning everything. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make them feel better. Oh well. Hopefully we can go slow and help her. She apparently doesn’t like commitment, so she wouldn’t even agree to pray this week. She said she’s “try.” If we can get her to create some good habits, then I’ll feel good about it.

Hermana Fatkin and Hermana Sanders

So that’s the week! Lots of stuff. The rest of the transfer looks crazy busy. Which is good, except that makes time tend to move faster! No me gusta eso!

Thank you all for the e-mails and the prayers and all of your love! I love you all!

Love,
Emily

Baptism!

Sisters Patten, Fatkin and Sanders
Mission President's house
July 2009

Buenos dias familia!

We had a great start to a new transfer this last week! We have some new people to teach and we’re pretty excited! The family ward has finally made contact with some of the people that ward council has been talking about having us teach them.. Sometimes it takes a while to get the process going. We didn’t teach any of the people yet, but it’s great that the work is moving forward, and we have some appointments set for this week. Mom, that’s crazy that Minnesota was one of the last states to learn about this process and get it going. I suppose we didn’t start it until around the new year, but I remember learning what it was all about, this time last year. It really is an inspired idea, and really helps missionaries have more people to teach. I hope that your missionaries find more opportunities to teach. If you’re not teaching as a missionary, it’s easy to feel like you’re not really making a difference or doing what you were called to do. But they’ll be okay, as long as they’re obedient and working.

MTC District

We knocked quite a bit last week: early in the day, in the afternoon, at dinnertime, and later on at night. Nobody let us in to teach. But we met a couple of people that said we could come back. So we’re going back! The first week of last transfer we knocked into this woman who was very nice, and had just had a baby like 2 days before, so it wasn’t a good time. And we kept thinking we needed to check on her again. So last week we did, and ended up meeting her brother-in-law (all the family live together). She told us we could come back the next day at the same time, but when we came back she wasn’t there, and he was. We didn’t think he was going to be available at that time, so we hadn’t planned ahead to have another girl with us. But the next day we came back with someone and taught him the Restoration. It went really well. He was a little hesitant to accept all of these things that seemed new and different, but he accepted a baptismal date. His name is Jose, and he’d be in the singles branch. Unfortunately he didn’t make it to church-because it’s football season. We’ll keep working with him.

Hermanas Chriswell, Sanders and Brown

We also have another potential young single adult investigator. The other sisters in our district are teaching this girl who was introduced to the church by a coworker. And because this girl is the young single adult age, the sisters are going to pass her to us, and she has a baptismal date too. Wow!

The best news though is about the Lopez family;. I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned them. They moved into this ward in the spring and were sort of inactive then. The Mom is member, the Dad is a recent convert, and together they have 5 kids, 4 age eight and up. And only one has been baptized. So they are a family that is part of this process where they were invited by the ward to be taught by the missionaries. It’s been really frustrating to even have appointments with them. They want the kids baptized, and they’re really really good kids and they’re excited to be baptized. But the mom just hasn’t seemed to be putting it as a priority. But finally on Friday we had an appointment with the whole family together and we set a date! So on November 7 (as long as the dad’s work schedule will let him have the day off) the three kids-Michael (8), Kiara (9), and Cathey (10) will all be baptized! We’re really excited for them! And hey, if I can’t be there to see Ashleigh baptized, I can see some other kids get baptized! Hopefully that won’t be all.

There are still some other part member families that we’re trying to work with and we’re still looking for new investigators. So who knows what else will happen!

It’s getting a little cooler here in California, and it’s very nice, especially to be walking outside! Yesterday we ate with our ward mission leader and I thought of you Erin.because his wife put out lots of fancy cheeses that she had gotten from work. Stinky cheeses not so good, but also brie and gouda. You’d like that, right? Thought so.

Good to hear that everyone is doing well! That the Sanders are reunited in Philadelphia, and everyone is enjoying their fall (winter?) weather! Life here in Anaheim, California is wonderful! S. Cooprider and I continue to get along really well and are improving our teaching together. Life is happy! As always, thank you for your love and prayers and support! I love you all!

Love,
Emily

Home in Anaheim

Hello family! Well, the verdict is in. I am staying in Anaheim. I kind of though that would be the case. S. Cooprider and I are both staying. I'm glad. I've really come to love this area. Though I have to be honest and say that there was definitely part of me that was really hoping that a Spanish area would be opened for sisters, and I'd end my mission there. Oh well! There are people to find and to baptize in this area!

Sister Cooprider,Tracey and Sister Sanders
Anaheim

We had a pretty wonderful week I must say. Nothing especially spectacular. We did a Family Home Evening with the Lucero family and the stake president's family. We taught the Plan of Salvation and then basically played charades/catch phrase/pictionary with different Plan of Salvation words and phrases. Like what we did with Raven and the Restoration. It's good to see how much people know-it shows in how they explain it. Plus, we just want the Luceros fellowshipped more. I don't remember if I clearly explained the Luceros before. Sister Lucero is a member. She's Spanish. I knew her sister in the Santa Ana ward. Robert, the husband, is not Spanish, and not a member. For years S. Lucero took her two daughters with her to a Spanish ward, but last year decided it would be better for them to be in an English ward. Plus, if her husband ever joins, English is better for him too. The girls want to be baptized, always have, but Dad said not until the oldest was 15. So that's now. Jenny (15) and Ashley (13) will be baptized Nov. 14. The Dad is doing well too. He's had lots of missionary lessons. He's never seemed to show too much desire to commit to anything. But he's showing signs of change. Hopefully his daughter's excitement and baptism will help soften his heart!

Raven continues to do really well. We had a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation. He's a deep thinker and had a bunch of questions the other week, so we decided we'd reteach this lesson and help answer/direct his questions. He has interesting questions about the resurrection. He's accepting of the things we explain, he just wants to get it even more. So he was asking if we all have a personal resurrection, at different times, and if Christ would have to be born again and die again and resurrect again so we could then be resurrected. I've never had someone ask that. He also asked if when people are resurrected, if people who aren't resurrected can "perceive them in their physical form." Meaning if we are here as mortals and someone else comes as a resurrected being, if we would see them as we see anybody else. We just used a lot of scripture references and stories to explain principles to him. We had a member there too who brought up all these crazy theories and together they got all philosophical about stuff. That's great. But bottom line is the other stuff doesn't matter. The scriptures tell us plainly what we need to know.

No new investigators this week. Close though! We both really want it though, and are absolutely committed to knocking as much as we need to and working with the members as much as possible to find new people to teach! There are some members that are really trying hard to work with their friends. Others are a little slower about it. Hopefully they got re-inspired from conference this weekend. I though Elder Perry's talk was great. Where he said that as members, we have to study and gain a testimony of the three basic lessons that missionaries teach, so that the member can be ready to testify of them as well. Also just the huge theme of loving one another and serving people that definitely is the heart of missionary work.

I must say my favorite talks were probably Elder Bednar's, because he's always very clear about what he wants to say. They were all wonderful. I really appreciated the ones that talked about learning to recognize the spirit in the first session. That's something I've been trying to improve from day one in the MTC! But I have to agree with you Dad, that Elder Holland's talk was just amazing. He's always sooo passionate and so direct in the way he talks. It's almost a little overwhelming sometimes. But I really appreciated his testimony of the Book of Mormon. It’s inspired me to read the Book of Mormon one more time before I'm finished here. I'm only in Jacob, so I'm really going to have to pick up my pace! It's just so wonderful to hear from the prophet and the apostles! They truly are men called of God!

We got a flat tire yesterday in between conference sessions. I was going to figure out how to change it, because I know it's pretty simple. But this nice man came out and changed it for us. He earned himself a pass-along card! Then yesterday we had dinner with a funny couple. It was S. Cooprider's b-day and she really likes this family. They're 60ish and she's super energetic and never stops talking. She joined the church when they first got married. He used to pitch for the Angels. Apparently he was one of their best. His name is Clyde Wright. (Their son also played baseball, but for the Yankees and for the Cleveland Indians-his name is Jared Wright-in case any crazy baseball fans want to look them up...David!) Anyway. Brother Wright joined the church like 6 years ago. He's crazy. He only goes to priesthood, and not every week. His wife isn't sure why he really joined the church. She said the only time she's heard him pray was when their son was pitching in the World Series. He's really nice though, and funny. He talks like he's an old man, and he calls us Jehovah's Witnesses. Dinner was interesting. This is probably the first time in a long time that they sat down together for dinner.

Love,
Emily

Sister Sanders on the county line of LaHabra and Los Angeles