Crazy Life

The past few weeks have been super tough and super crazy. Our investigator Annette has done a completely 360 in her life. It is wonderful to see her countenance actually change. She is starting to have faith in Heavenly Father and wants to change. She has stopped drinking and is working really hard on not smoking. It is so fantastic! I love her so much. She is just great.

Things are just wonderful I guess. We are spending a lot of time meeting members and teaching part-member families. Yesterday we had an awesome dinner with a wonderful family in our Mount Vernon Ward. They are like our big brother and sister and crazy nieces and nephews (they are in their late 30s). I have gone to truly love our Ward Mission Leader in the Mount Vernon Ward. He and his family are awesome (like my home-away-from-home parents). They are super funny but they are super great at their callings. Both of these families have really helped me out a lot thus far on my mission.

Sorry about the shortness of this letter. We had a crazy p-day.

MIA's, Life, and Transfers

This week has been ridiculous. We have had two investigators go MIA (Hawa and John) again. John had been MIA for over two weeks before but he came back and now he is gone again. Hawa goes MIA for days at a time and then comes back. She wants to get baptized but then things get in the way. This time it’s her boyfriend. But we finally found Hawa today! She will be getting baptized on Sunday (hopefully. I don’t know). Craziness! So now we are going to go super tracting this week to find new investigators. I hope it goes well.

Life is crazy. But I am happy. I got an unexpected phone call from President Riggs and my mother. She had been in the hospital… again. This time she went for kidney failure… again. But it was great to talk to her and hear from her. I had not been getting emails or letters from her so she just eased my mind on the subject and told me that she was doing better.

Transfers are on Thursday. I am so nervous. I do not want to leave my companion. I want to stay here with her. We have been making leeway with some of the people. The members in both wards love us so much and have been giving us referrals. I am so nervous. We have two new English speaking sisters coming but only one leaving. Someone will be in a threesome. I think that I rather take a threesome than leave my area. I guess both options have their own challenges but I love Mount Vernon so much!
I guess that’s all for now. Life is grand.

Craziness of a Week

Mary got baptized on Tuesday and was confirmed a member of the church on Sunday. Elder Anderson baptized her and her husband confirmed her a member (in Twi- Ghanaian language). It was fantastic. We all were crying. It was so fantastic.

On Friday me, Sister Anderson, and Sister Richardson took our investigator Hawa and her daughter to the temple visitor's center. It was great. She really enjoyed it and said that her mother would enjoy it as well. So fantastic.

While we were there I saw an old friend from SVU. His name is Jarom, he was wearing a suit and I almost did not recognize him. Then I saw my other friend Tiffany (Tiffy) who he had been dating when we were all at SVU. Well long story short, they had just gotten married for time and all eternity in the Temple! She had a on a lovely white wedding dress and just looked so beautiful. Such a wonderful tender mercy.

On Monday the Maygrens took us to DC! It was crazy. The summer the craziest time to go. There were so many tourists there but it was great. We went to the White house, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, World War II Memorial, Korean War Memorial, and the Vietnam Memorial. It was awesome. We had dinner at Matchbox (yummy pizza). Then we headed home to clean, shop, and prepare for our lesson with Annie.

Sorry for the short post. Life is grand.

Baptism and Hawa

This week has been super crazy! Life is super crazy. Anyway, Mary got baptized! She is so wonderful and such a good lady. I have learned a lot from her baptism:

1)      The Spirit is the one that does all of the work. Mary is from Ghana and she speaks Twi and very little English. Our lessons have to be less than thirty minutes and super, super simple (as if talking to a child). We have to explain any words that are religious or more than three syllables. There is no way that she was baptized because of what we say. She was definitely baptized because of what she feels when we talk to her and what the Spirit communicates to her.

2)      A referral is the best way to find investigators. All of our investigators who are on date were all referrals from members. Mary was a referral from her husband who has been a member for 30 years. He came to us one –and-a-half months ago and told us that she might listen to Sisters. She did and is now baptized! She had been investigating the church for over 10 years but stopped because she said that they Elders were too pushy. She met with us and we invited her on the first day but she said no and one-and-a-half weeks ago called the Bishop and said that she was ready.

3)      Do not give up! It took her almost 13 years but she is baptized. It took many, many, many missionaries but she finally took the plunge and got baptized. We asked her on the first day and she said no, we could have moved on and tried to find other people to teach but we felt that we needed to continue to meet with her. Even though, her English is limited and she rarely said anything when we talked we still felt that we needed to come over every other day and just one month later she called the Bishop and said, “Bishop, I am ready to be baptized. Please tell the missionaries.”

4)      I can do hard things. Brother Cukor (the ward mission leader) said that he would not be home on Saturday for the Baptism. Brother Cukor, she said, is her favorite person and she wanted him to be there. So we asked her if she wanted to wait two more weeks, do it any way, or move her date up to Thursday (the day before Brother Cukor left). She said that her husband is only home from work on Tuesdays so we could do it then. That gave us: Sunday- Teach Plan of Salvation and Monday- teach the commandments and do the mock interview and then the real interview. I did not believe that we could do it. That is so hard. How can we teach all of that in two days? I did not believe that we could do it. But we did and it worked out just fine.

I am so happy that she is baptized. We made an eternal family. It was wonderful. I am so happy. Hopefully in one year I will see them sealed for all eternity. That is going to be a wonderful day.

We just had a lesson with Hawa. We asked her why she wants to baptized and she said that she wants to be Christian. She wants to know more about God and Jesus Christ. She wants to be a part of this church because it helps her to know that He is real, that He loves her, that He forgives her (she has a child out of wedlock), and that she is cared for. She is just great. We are taking her to the Vistitor's Center on Friday (tentatively). Hopefully she will get baptized on August 18^th.