Hola a todos! (Hello everyone!)
Last week my cute companion got hit HARD with a cold, which isn’t easy for her because of other health issues, so we spent a lot of it in the house or doing work online. It makes me laugh looking back to last week because I definitely went a little crazy from being inside so much. But I do think it was good for us, we got a lot of organizing done for our work.
But lucky me got the cold right after her, and I’ve been running with it for 4 ish days now and it’s killing me. Our ward choir director even told me she thinks I have a lovely Alto voice yesterday… lol. I’m usually a Soprano. I’m hoping to have my voice back soon though, I sound kinda like a smoker.
I have found that on the mission things usually come in groups, either a whole bunch of good things happen, or a bunch of bad things happen all at once. The bad things hit you like a sack of bricks and let’s just say it feels like someone’s been beating us with a bag of bad bricks lately.
One after another, our investigator families have been dropping us for one reason or another and we actually found ourselves with 0 investigators by Saturday night. It really ruined our moods, but as someone once told me: don’t let your moods maul your faith.
So we have been praying more than ever and working harder than ever, trying to find those who really are looking for the blessings of the gospel in their lives right now. Here’s a cute lol story of how we found our new investigator last night:
We just finished with dinner at our Relief Society President’s house around 5 pm or so and we had our one and only lesson cancel. So we decided to go knock on doors and follow any promptings received basically until 9 pm when we were to be home that night. Stopping by a few houses of people we knew were taught before by other missionaries we found no luck.
We stopped by an old investigator we had stopped teaching about a month ago and even she wasn’t there to let us in for a small visit. Feeling out of luck, we knocked what seemed like a million doors and couldn’t seem to catch a break. Oh, and it’s way dark now. Honestly, how can it get dark before 6 pm? California is weird, man.
Hermana Oliver pulls out her iPad (she’s still 190% more tech savvy than I am) and she pulls up the address to a really old referral from the YSA Elders in our zone. It’s a sweet lady who has two sons who were baptized about 10 years ago and one even served a mission. Her sons brought missionaries over before to their mom but she never seemed to accept the teachings.
The miraculous thing being that she saw us pull up to her house, got out of her chair on the porch and waved for us to come in. We were honestly praying that she was the lady we were looking for and not crazy. You never know what’s going to happen in downtown San Bernardino. Especially after dark.
But we felt that this was right, so we follow her in and honestly the first things out of her mouth were warm and inviting as if she already knew us. We discussed her son who served a mission, tamales, and the upcoming holidays and the spirit was there!!! I think the Holy Ghost must like the topic of Mexican food or something.
Her desire to change is really strong. She told us how much she missed having the peace her son brought to the home and ever since he left she has been looking for a way to have it again but hasn’t had any luck. She knows it’s because he went to church and told us that she wants to start anew and learn everything from the beginning and go to church and even asked us what else we suggest we do to help her start changing her life.
We started her on The Book of Mormon and we have regularly scheduled lessons for the next two months – including a Thanksgiving visit. TAMALES WOO -HOO! (Everyone eats tamales for the holidays in Mexican culture).
So, the Lord hit us with a sack of bricks to bring us back to the drawing board to find this incredibly prepared woman who I have no doubt will be a huge blessing to my life. Vale la Pena (Worth it).
Hasta luego (Bye),
Hermana Thelin
