Milagro

Ayyyyyy cuanto les quiero! I just love to read your emails. And Hannah's. She's such an amazing missionary and I love to think of her and try to emulate her.

Thank you so so much for your prayers. I love the phrase you used "storming the gates of Heaven" I can't even tell you how much those prayers have helped me. I feel like me again! It was a REALLY good week and we had some truly amazing miracles.

We knocked into this incredible woman who already seems like a relief society president...she just has that air about her. Her name is Nina and she is from Jalisco. She is in the middle of a big project to restore a small cathedral in her hometown in Mexico  so she's got her calling tree to raise money for it. She said she hadn't ever been to our church, but she's seen the San Diego temple and loved it so much that she used the idea of the lights around the spires in the restoration of the cathedral. She put lights all around it so that it would light up the town and be a "beacon of God" as she put it. She said she has ALWAYS wanted to go to the San Diego temple and wants to see inside....we didn't get the chance to tell her more about the temple before the conversation changed, but oh, we will!

THEN she told us that she has read the Book of Mormon before. Not only that, she FINISHED IT and LOVES IT! She has applied principles that she learned from it and has felt the healing effects of the Atonement in her life. She was able to forgive someone who hurt her very deeply and towards whom she held a lot of rancor (is that a word in English?) and she was able to better understand God's will for her mother who is dying. Is this woman not AMAZING??? Also, we started telling her about our church services and when she heard that we take the sacrament every week, she said "I'm going to go to your church. I don't know when, but I will. I've visited a lot of churches, but most of them don't take the eucharist. I need that spiritual nourishment of the bread and water." Ay, she's so great.

BUT she's going to Mexico soon to take care of her mom and she doesn't know when she's coming back. But we prayed with her and she gave us HUGE hugs and asked us to come back soon. 

BLESSINGS!!

Also, last night we called a referral that we had received from one of our recent converts to see if we could visit her. We started out talking about who we are, what our purpose is, etc but she shot us down fairly quickly when we asked if we could come to her house and meet her by saying "oh I already have my church, but thanks anyway". We kept talking for a bit and somehow the Spirit guided our conversation to genealogy and then to fasting. We had a really great conversation and we could tell that she really felt the Spirit, so we asked again if we could come by and meet her sometime. BAM! She gave us her address and we set up a time to meet her. MILAGRO!!

We're trying really hard to find new investigators and we're both making really good progress spiritually. Hna Quick is SUPER shy and is working hard to overcome her fears of talking to people and being more internally motivated. She's a really wonderful missionary and she is incredibly perceptive. I love her so much!

While I'm sad that my mission is ending soon and that I won't have this incredible calling or constantly be with my wonderful friends and companions, I am also excited to be with you and bask in your glow. I'm so grateful to Heavenly Father for the blessings and miracles I've seen during this time and for all of the ones yet to come. I'm so grateful for the Atonement and for the scriptures that teach me how to be happy.

I love you more than all the sticky notes used by missionaries!

Love ,

Reply to "Howdy from Texas"

Dear Fambly,

 

I'm so glad you've been having so much fun in Austin. It's true that traveling is one of the best passtimes ever but is it exhausting. I guess we are creatures of habit. Please say hello to the Dragon Blaster and tell it that I will see it again someday...

 

So emotions are still pretty up and down, but I talked to President the other day and he told me to MAKE SURE that I'm keeping myself physically and emotionally healthy. He said that if I think of something that would help me stay sane but is outside of white handbook guidelines, to let him know. And then, by golly, it won't BE outside white handbook guidelines because mission presidents can adjust those as he sees fit! Saturday morning was especially rough..... it felt like Satan was throwing everything in his stupid arsenal to bring me down and just want to stay inside all day. But I figured that if he was working that hard, there must be something super important we needed to do...someone we needed to see. I had a "potty prayer" as Hna Prince terms it, begged for grace and hope, then we went out to work. We met a man named Francisco who was working on a house not too far from our apartment. We asked a couple of questions to get their view of religion, God, etc. Their answers were the usual vague, all-encompassing, zero-demand for personal development ones... "As long as you're being good, God's happy" "God's everywhere. Wherever people talk about Him, He's there." "Just be good to people" "I'm kinda busy for church, but God knows me, I'm not hurting anyone, so I'm ok"

We asked Francisco if he thought that it mattered to God where you go to church, and he said no. Usually, I try to gently nudge people in the right direction by bringing up different doctrines and how you can't please one without offending the other, so which one's right? But I was fairly short on patience, so I just said "It DOES matter. We are His representatives and we're here to tell you that He has a plan for you. He wants you to be happy. He established HIS church to bless you and your family." I actually didn't notice it at the time, but Hna Quick told me later that he started to cry at that point. We left him with a card and the address of the church closest to his house. Later on, we had a blitz in the elders' area. We picked a street but got sidetracked and decided to knock an apartment complex on an adjacent street. The normally-locked gate just swung right open as we walked up to it and we found some really great potential investigators. They all seemed a little hesitant at first but once we prayed with them, they seemed much more comfortable and open. They told us later that someone had been impersonating a Mormon missionary and using that as an "in" to do all kinds of bad things to people in their homes.

I'm a little concerned for what that might mean for us as the legit missionaries....but I'm praying hard that people will use their spidey sense/gut feeling/light of Christ to be able to discern true from false.

 

Tommy is doing REALLY well. He got a job this week and he's determined to get Sundays off so that he can be here. The ward is thrilled to have him and Jeovany preparing to receive the Priesthood. We have a lot of callings to extend, and they'll do GREAT! As for our other investigators, they're being kind of flaky. We're going to search out some more escogidos ("chosen ones") and help them come closer to God. :)

 

I'm doing good and taking this time to learn how to rely more on the Savior. President is helping me a lot and Hna Quick is such an angel. I'm so grateful to be a missionary! I love the scriptures and the guidance they offer. Thank you for your prayers and love!

I love you more than all the lessons our zone taught this week!

Hermana Manzana

It's Always Nice to Talk to the Ladies!"

Thank you so much for being my parents! I hope it's okay that I brag about you.... a lot. You're just awesome :)

 

President called us last night to congratulate us on the baptism...which was WONDERFUL, by the way. Tommy bore super powerful testimony about searching the scriptures and coming to know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God. He's so excited to be put to work in the ward and help others come unto Christ. Anyway, President told us that due to so many sisters going home all at once, he has to close a Spanish sisters' area. He said that he discussed it with the zone leaders but they insisted that they needed all of us in their zone. They said "They only make up 15% of our zone, but they've had 25% of our baptisms!" So I seriously doubt that our area will get the ax, but we'll be praying and working hard to make absolutely certain that they don't touch the NoHo 5to Hermana Bici area. (Note: no idea what this means.)

 

I LOVED Hannah's letter. It's actually something that we've been working on a lot lately...presenting a plan to Heavenly Father in prayers and then working to make our faith in that prayer plan come to pass. We divided our goals up into monthly and weekly goals and then make promises to God according to how we'll put forth our effort so that He can do His part....we adjust our weekly goals based on our area's need and our efforts according to how to become better missionaries.

 

It's been helping me grow my faith in the Lord's desires and abilities to make miracles happen and realize that we can have a much greater impact on our circumstances than we comprehend at the moment.

 

We're also trying to focus more on repentance. Our job is to help people develop a relationship with Heavenly Father by teaching them how to make their lives in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ. In other words: change. We have to help people make changes in their lives. Sometimes they aren't willing to do what's required to have that relationship, but when they are and when they do, they are pleasantly surprised by how much Heavenly Father DOES have and DOES want to bless them. It's so cool!

Anyway, gotta run, not the runs, but I love you more than all the palm trees on Sherman Way!

Hermana Manzana

(Note:  Allison was called "Appleton"...and then "Apple" when she was little, and apple in Spanish is "manzana".  It rhymes! - Mom)

Dear Fambly:

 

I read the second email about Mariah's experiences in India before I read about how and why she's there and it totally blew me away....I was a little confused. That's so awesome though! Man, she's so awesome. She'll be there for her 16th birthday? JEALOUS! I'm excited to hear more about how she's doing.....and to go with her :)

 

Ya know what else I'm excited for? TALKING TO YOU IN 6 DAYS!!!! We have church from 9-12, so what if I call around 3 our time, 4 your time? I'll coordinate with Hermana Quick and give you a call probably Saturday night to set it all up. It's so soon!! I can't even believe it!

 

Life is truckin' along...we found a SUPER cool family totally by inspiration this week....we tried to stop to see Melissa, our recent convert, after a lesson on Tuesday but she wasn't home. We started heading back down the stairs, but the roof of a distant building caught our attention (for no apparent reason) so we decided to go knock that house.

 

Lo and behold, the woman who answered had been praying for guidance to know what to do concerning church and was in need of comfort. We visited with her for about 2 hours, in which she told us all about what she feels should be defining points of the true church of God. Unfortunately, we had to leave shortly, but we set up an appointment for the next day when we met her daughter and her husband. They were very kind and VERY receptive. They had been attending an evangelical church for a number of years but became disappointed by a few of the members. That got them thinking about what should REALLY happen in God's true church and what should be taught...They miss their church very much and feel that it's time to come back to full activity in a congregation, but they feel uneasy about going back to their old church.

 

We had set up another appointment with them for this weekend, but when we got there, only the daughter was there. We had a number of close calls on the way there (I almost got hit by a car peeling out of the strip club parking lot...go figure) so we figured that Satan really didn't want us to be at that appointment. We stuck around and talked to the daughter for a long time, and even challenged her to pray about Joseph Smith as a prophet and about the Restoration of the Church. Please pray for them to recognize answers to their prayers and to follow the Spirit to do what is right!

 

Also, Tommy is getting baptized this weekend! Oh shoot, that might interfere with phone calls.....We'll get it worked out.

I love you more than beans and rice!

Con mucho carino,

Hermana Manzana