Interesting detail from this week: I ended up having to teach part of a lesson in French. Oh boy am I rusty. I´ve ordered French study materials from the office and hopefully I can get good enough again to teach.
Mom: I loved the photos you sent me! They are so cute! In my last zone meeting we talked a lot about talking about families. The Gospel of Jesus Christ was designed to bless us and our families. We were asked to reach out and talk about the importance of families more, and this just about made my day. I think I´ll use them in lessons sometimes! :)
We had a pretty cool week this week. I was a little nervous about transfers, but we got the pleasant news on Saturday that we were going to have yet one more transfer together! Honestly, I wouldn’t mind three transfers with Hermana Griffin. She´s a great missionary, companion and friend! We´re seeing a lot of success.
Unfortunately, Elders Vasquez and Ballard left our district, but we´re getting some great missionaries in their places. They´re also going to some great places, so it´s been pretty bittersweet seeing them go.
I´m not sure if I ever wrote to you about Or before, but he´s a bit of an eternal investigator from C. We had been getting a little frustrated with him because he wasn´t keeping his commitments, but we finally got him to a lesson and he seemed like he felt a little cornered and maybe a little judged. He explained that he doesn’t have minutes on his phone most of the month and can´t call us to cancel, nor can he get a lot of time off of work to meet with us. Nonetheless, he really want´s to meet with us to learn more. We were pretty humbled by this experience and we definitely needed to repent. We actually had a pretty good lesson with him, and he even agreed to get baptized. He´s feeling pretty good about it and I think he feels a little more loved.
We have one investigator, Fy, who, albeit has a lot of potential, also will also ask us some strange questions. He seems to appreciate what we´re trying to share with him, but also has a serious case of cold feet. After agreeing to set up another appointment this week he asked: "If I don´t want to meet with you guys in the future, do I have to give your book back?" ... Baby steps...
Ji had a spectacular week this week! We were able to get her to come to a baptism with us, and she appeared to love it. Everyone loved her, and possibly they loved baby Ms a little more. We actually met her husband this week and we´ve been encouraging her to invite him to hear the message. She´s a little nervous, but she´s been sharing what we´ve taught her to him. He appears to be opening up. She even came to church and appeared to make a lot of friends.
Also, it´s like magic sharing the Gospel with her. Every week we pray and plan on what we´re going to share, and when we go to her house, she opens up and asks questions about exactly what we were planning on talking about. She´s always pretty thrilled when that happens. :)
We´ve done a lot of work with the members in this last transfer and we´ve found that we have a ton of allies in this ward. Last week, one of our friends, Ma, was walking down the street and saw a woman that looked a little sad. Ma, with the big heart that she has, started talking to her and trying to comfort her. The woman asked "There´s something different about you... What is it? Is it the church you go to?" Apparently, Adela was looking for a church and to have a better relationship with God. Ma got her number and told her that she would send "two angels" to her house.
When we got the referral we started running to this woman´s house. All of our plans fell through for that day. It was an incredible miracle. It was also kind of a strange lesson.
We met with her and her roomate and they both seemed interested. They were also polar opposites. Coa (the roommate) wanted to know if we prayed to the Virgin Mary. Aa in objection insisted that we came in order to study the Bible with her (typically a term used by people who have investigated the Jehovah´s Witnesses). She also had a question about the name of our church. It went something like this:
"What are you again? The Church of Saints?"
"No, we belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sometimes people know us as Mormons because of the Book of Mormon."
"But you´re not Mormons... Right?"
We actually had a really good lesson with her and brought her to church the next day. She made a lot of friends and really liked the church. She also made a lot of friends who wanted to teach her about the temple and the Word of Wisdom... We´re still trying to smooth out the details about the Book of Mormon. The point is that she made friends and does want to come back.
This week we tried to visit one of our members in the hospital. Aa is a wonderful older woman from Bolivia. She´s super sweet and she loves the missionaries. She can´t leave her home, but she always has it open if we want to bring an investigator over. She loves us a lot and she´s one of my favorite people in the world. She´s been waiting for a kidney transfer for 15 years, and therefore is in the hospital a lot.
To top off the week, there was a baptism for another ward that meets in the same building. Two weeks ago I went on a companion exchange with the Sister Training Leader and it was a pretty inspired exchange. We were able to commit an eternal investigator to get baptized this weekend and she was baptized. It was a real victory. The other sisters were really happy to have us there and the woman who got baptized was really happy to see us too. It was pretty spectacular.
That´s all for this week! I love you guys!
Love,
Hermana Kathleen Sykes
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