It's true, I'm outta NoHo! (North Hollywood)..completely heartbreaking but amazingly exciting at the same time. I'm now serving in Palmdale, CA with Hermana Erickson who came out to the mission just a transfer after me....so I'm technically senior companion....oh my goodness... (A 'transfer' is a period of six weeks.)
I'd always heard amazing things about Palmdale, and they just didn't do it justice. I got here at 6 pm yesterday, we had 3 appointments with what I would have termed Golden Investigators in NoHo (A Golden Investigator is one who is very eager to learn about the Church and the Gospel of Christ.) They are so beyond awesome. Our mission average goal for lessons taught per week is 20 lessons, but Hna Erickson and Hna Thomas have been teaching about 30 lessons a week....Even when they were terribly sick one week, they taught 23 lessons. Watching them teach and seeing people here, there is no question that they were top-quality lessons, too. Even for just being here...what.... 18 hours....it seems like the people here are even more open and receptive to the message of the Gospel than all my favorite in NoHo. This is big!
It was pretty tough saying goodbye to the members and investigators, though. We taught Milagro on Saturday after we had gotten transfer calls and she was just so sweet. She said "You two would be pretty happy if I got baptized into your church, wouldn't you?" Oh my goodness gracious. I told her I would cry with joy. She's so great. Even though we started pretty slow with her, she's been reading little bit by little bit in the Book of Mormon and it's incredible just to see the change....She understands the concepts that we teach her really well and she has a marginal desire to change certain aspects of her life so she can do what she needs to to become closer to the Savior, but it seems like she's not quite sure how to accomplish those things or how to maintain the motivation to do them. I got to share with her some of the things I've learned about setting goals and how faith works in conjunction with those things. When we were leaving I told her to invite me when she gets baptized, and she said she will :).
Oh! And! maybe I mentioned this last week, but Daniel started meeting with the missionaries in an adjacent ward, hit it off super well and even set a baptismal date for July. There was some kind of scheduling conflict, so the missionaries asked if they could do it another day, adding in their confidence that he is ready to be baptized. He told them he'd pray about it, then called 10 minutes later asking if he could be baptized the next Sunday. Holy cow!
Okay. So Daniel got baptized on Sunday, and it was so so so wonderful. Because of all of the goodbyes I was pretty emotional as it was, but Daniel bore his testimony about Joseph Smith and how we have a living prophet to lead and guide us. That was the aspect that he had the hardest time with, so Hna Waite and I were bawling in the back row. Hna Strong came to visit for a different baptism, but got to be at Daniel's as well and she was also totally floored by the change they saw in him. I'm so so happy for Daniel and I'm so excited for him to learn even more and gain more confidence in his testimony and role as a child of God.
I'm glad to hear that things are going well at home, and I loved the veni, vidi, vacuum. Please tell everyone I love them buckets.
Love you more than all the lessons we'll teach this transfer :)
Hermana B
(Editor's note: Coincidentally, Cousin Monica and her husband Ammon lived in Palmdale one summer while Ammon did an internship at the superb weapons research facility called the Skunkworks. Not only that, Allison is living in the same
apartment complex in which Monica and Ammon lived! Small world! )
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