Mama and Papa,
Have I told you lately how grateful I am that you write me every week? I really love it and appreciate it :) Please take lots of pictures from their reception! I can't believe that it's Thanksgiving already. I'm super close to my year mark, I can't even believe it. We've been invited to a couple members' houses for dinner on Thanksgiving and one of our investigators will be at at least one of them, so we'll be eating lots, I'm sure. It's been really rather nice to not be eating so so much. The members in our last branch started wanting to feed us lunch AND dinner, so we were eating probably 4x more than what we should. BUT my jeans still fit, so I'm not too torn up :)
So my new ward is great! It's super weird to be in English and an actual ward again. I got used to our little tiny branch where each person had about a million callings and branch activities only happened every 4 months. I was so so scared at first to talk to people in english, especially to go knocking, (and I'm still a little nervous about it) but knocking has gone so great and I'm loving American culture again.(Although I miss pupusas so much). One of my first days in the new area, we went to the library and there was this one man that I kept awkwardly making eye contact with, so I decided we should contact him. Bad choice. The second I finished saying "Hi my name is Sister Beauchamp" he went off on this 15 minute rant about government conspiracy theories, coincidental numbers, being in hiding,secret bank accounts, and homosexuals. He also told us he was the devil and that his knees go backward. I wish I could say that I learned my lesson and starting making better contacts after that, but I seem to have a knack for talking to the most awkward people....and in my "re-learning English" stage, I'm probably about as awkward as they are.
But I'm loving my new area.:) My companion is Sister Jensen, a missionary who came out with Hermana Prince just 2 transfers ago, so I'm a step mommy! She's super great and very patient with me. I always accidentally start speaking Spanish to her, so she'll just counter with ASL. I definitely have the better end of that deal because I understand the majority of what she signs. We're working with the ward a TON and it's been really neat to help them. I've never really taught members before, but it's helping me a lot to work with investigators. Heavenly Father has a plan for every thing!
One of our primary investigators is a man from India named Raj. I've only gotten to meet him once, but I've heard so many great things about him. His wife is a latina member who is just amazing and I'm super excited to get to know them both better. Our deaf members are super cool and so sweet. Our relief society president started learning ASL not too long ago. She was in the temple and just felt like she really needed to learn it, so she enrolled in the community college. 2 weeks later she was called to be an interpreter for the deaf, even though all she knew was "mom" "dad" and the letters A-G She's really an amazing lady and I think you'd get along super well with her, mom. She's feisty :)
Happy Thanksgiving! I'm grateful for you!
Oh ALSO we knocked into this really cool guy and his family. He was pretty standoffish at first but he started warming up to us little by little. He said "Oh I know you believe in God and Christ, we just believe in them a little differently." After talking for a little while, he said, "Well, you know, one of the issues that I have is that mormons don't believe in the Deity of Christ". I thought a little and said "Actually, our beliefs might not be so different" I showed him on the title page of the book of mormon where it says that the book is a witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God. He stared at it for a moment and said,"I think I have some rereading to do." He had met with the missionaries a long time ago and still has about 3 copies of the Book of Mormon. He showed us inside and gave us a glimpse of his family's 55,000 books. Yep. 55,000. It was beautiful. the vast majority of those are on theology. He's a chaplain, LOVES genealogy, is super close with his family, believes in eternal progression, and is pretty cool. He's also going through some big life changes, so we're praying that he'll be more open to discussing the gospel.
Love you more than the supposed attempts on Mr. Crazy Library's life,
Hermana Manzana
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