Dad, words do not express my joy and pride of being your daughter.
I'm sorry to hear that you won't be RS teacher and Sunday School Pres anymore, but you two must be some dynamite marriage and family teachers. I sure look up to you! But then again, I'm fairly sure you DID brainwash me at some point, so I'm totally biased.
I actually hadn't heard anything about the arson fires in NoHo, but once I mentioned it to Hna Marquez, she said "you know, there have been a TON of fire trucks out running around lately." Turns out that the arsonist got to a building right near our district leader's apartment. Poor kid's already got a lot to worry about.....
I've got some sad news....do you remember me telling you about Linda? She's this amazing black woman we met in Wal-Mart but kept running into in different places. We went with her to church and she was SUPER receptive to the spirit....I got a call from Sister Jensen this week and she told me that Linda died. We're not sure yet exactly what happened, but it kind of looks like a suicide. The owner of the senior apartment complex said that Linda struggled a bit with depression, so it wasn't entirely a surprise. I'm so grateful I had the opporutnity to meet her! I'm sure she's just loving learning more about the gospel on the other side... but please pray for her family!
Thank you for your bike prayers! I think our automotive angels are doing double duty for me these days....you know how we always say that any car accident that we have happens in the best possible situation? Well.....I wiped out on my bike this week, but a former investigator (Juanito--a really nice guy who actually got baptized but never confirmed...he still always helps out the sisters with whatever bike maladies that occur) happened to be driving by so he ran over to help (he told us that he watched me biff it and he said "Ay no! My beauty!"), Hna Marquez happened to have just the right size band-aids, the tire shop we were in front of happened to be owned by friends of Juanito so I could use their bathroom to wash up, and the bike (which is this super nice road bike I'm borrowing from a member) HAPPENED to be perfectly fine. Juanito even filled the tires and tuned up the brakes for me. I scraped my elbow and my hand pretty good, but everything else was totally fine. We thanked him for all of his help, to which he replied "Is OK, my beauty. you pray more, OK?" Baha. I love it here!
Right after that, we had this AMAZING lesson with an old investigator, Manuel....I don't know if you remember me writing about him...Hna Waite and I found him forever ago. He was super negative, always contradicting himself, insisted that he didn't want help, and was just the most bitter, angry person I've ever met. We kept in contact a little while I was in the desert, so we came to visit and see if he's interested in visiting with us again (so that we can teach him). He's almost an entirely different person. He's way happier, more positive, more humble, and it's incredible to see all of that bitterness leave him. We had an awesome lesson about how to get to know Heavenly Father and the Savior better by using the same principles that you use to establish and better a relationship with friends or family (get to know them: talk to them=prayer, learn about them= read the scriptures; listen to them=be receptive to the Holy Ghost; work with them= Heavenly Father's work and glory is to help us grow...when we work with him to accomplish this, we get to know Him on a very profound level. ) It was so good!
we were feeling a little down on Friday and a bit discouraged because a ton of investigators dropped us, but we had a feeling that things were going to turn around fairly soon. Lo and behold, another former investigator called us and asked us to come over right away because his friend wants to learn more about our church and is willing to be baptized, if he feels it's right. Whoa. So we went over and met this 20-something young man named Bray and his friend/roommate/I'mnotsurewhat Christina. Bray had actually met the sisters a few months ago and asked all about our lifestyle as missionaries. He said he was very impressed with how dedicated we are and how much we give up to live close to the Holy Spirit. So Heavenly Father just basically dropped this amazing investigator in our laps. And we are so grateful!
In other news, two awesome new investigators named Giovanni and Jose (cousins from Guatemala) came to church yesterday! They LOVED it, although we somehow forgot to tell them that church is 3 hours. whoops. but Thankfully there are a TON of Guatemaltecos in our ward and everyone was super welcoming. They were both very eager to read and answer questions during our gospel principles class as well as in the priesthood class. I think this will help our ward get a much-needed motivation-boost to do missionary work and help us out. By the end of church, they had a bunch of new friends and each had copies of "Teaching of the Prophet George Albert Smith."
Also, my first convert, Jose Reyes came to church and it was so good to see him! He lives in another city on the other side of the valley, but his brother still lives in our ward, so he came to visit yesterday. It was just the coolest thing to watch him pass the sacrament and to hear him give the opening prayer in sunday school. It's the most amazing feeling to know that I had just a little part in helping him come to know the Savior better so that He can help Jose become the most amazing, wonderful person the Lord knows he can be. I love it!!
Javier's baptism was WONDERFUL! He has SUCH a strong testimony, especially of the Book of Mormon and he loves the feeling of wholeness and divine love that has come into his life since he has started coming to church. A bunch of the sister missionaries sang a gorgeous arrangement of "I stand all amazed" and I got to give the talk on the Holy Ghost. I took the main theme from Elder Bednar's talk from Fall 2010 conference " Receive the Holy Ghost" It was awesome! I love being able to be guided by the spirit. Speaking of which, halfway through the talk on baptism, I felt like something wasn't quite right ( I found out later that Hna Marquez had the same feeling) so I started mentally going through all of the elements that needed to be there to have the baptism go smoothly and I remembered a story my friend told me about the font being empty when they went to baptize their investigator. I motioned for Hermana Busch to go check the font.....it turns out that it was only half full! Thankfully it was full by the time we were ready for the actual baptism. The Spirit was so strong and it was so wonderful to be able to see how special of a moment it was for Javier.
Anyway, my pday is still Monday, it's just been a weird couple weeks.
gotta run,
Love you more than all the bike-related miracles in the missionary world!
Hermana B
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