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