And She Went Forth to Teach...: We are almost all set!

July 22, 2013

Hola Familia y amigos,

A common phrase out here is "all set?" It means a few things: "I am alright," "No thank you" "are you finished?" "Are you ready to go?" But almost everyone here says it... at least the natives do. I guess that means you might say that the Spanish group here is all set! We had our first Sacrament meeting yesterday. To start out we are going to be having sacrament meeting in Spanish in the Relief Society room every first and third Sunday. We have Sunday school as a small group in Spanish as well. But we will continue to meet together with the English ward for the third hour. There were 23 in attendance, (4 of them missionaries, 1 non-member, and two less-actives) Which is a good start. Sister Miller played the piano and I led the music. Later in Relief Society I assumed my position as the translator for Sister Mendez who doesn't speak any English. I am getting a little rusty. We speak too much English. I try my best to talk to Sister Miller in Spanish while we are driving and we listen to some Spanish Hymns, but we need more interaction with natives. Which we will be getting as we continue to work with the members to get the less-actives and their friends to come to the Spanish group.

We have had a few really cool experiences. Do you remember O'Dell? She is from Liberia, we were teaching her when I first got here. She is really a golden investigator, but for some reason we lost contact with her. She wouldn't answer calls or texts and we couldn't catch her at home either. We had lost all contact with her and were leaving it up to her. Well she called us out of the blue Saturday night! We were both so excited. She told us that she missed our visits and that she wanted to see us Tuesday.

We also met Judy this week. She is the daughter-in-law of a less-active woman in the ward. We were just finishing up a spiritual thought with Nita when Judy came in. We said a prayer and then started to talk to Judy. She has gone through a lot and is still going through some hard times. She had lots of questions about who we thing God is and where we came from. We answered questions and then challenged her to write down any more she might have for the next time we were there. We saw her yesterday and she hadn't had any. So we started to teach her about he Plan of Salvation. We are spirit children of a Heavenly Father (God). We wanted to have a physical body like Him. Because He loves us, He created a plan so that we would be able to obtain bodies. Her mother died not too long ago so we were able to testify that she will see her again. I know that Heavenly Father loves us! I know that He would not send us to earth to families without providing a way that we would be able to see them after this life. I know that He loves us and He wants us to live with Him again.

Also, Sister Bringhurst and I met an Albanian woman when we were on splits the other day. We were able to find her this week and give her a copy of the Book of Mormon in Albanian. We sat and talked to her for a while. It is really quite sad because she doesn't have any family here. She is all alone. I wonder how many other people there are like her here. No family not many friends and hardly any support.

lady from Albania and Karee

They are just working to get by. I think about how there is barely any meaning in that let alone satisfaction. It is so different when you have the Gospel in your life. You know where you came from, why you are here on earth and where you want to go. You know that you can live with your family again after this life. You know what things you have to do to get there and you are able to see blessings that come from doing what Heavenly Father wants you to do. Hopefully we will be able to see her some more and try to bring her some happiness and peace by sharing what we know.

We had a Chicken BBQ Saturday to celebrate Pioneer day. Most of the Young Women were dressed in their trek dresses aprons and bonnets. There were tons of people! It was a combined activity with the first ward and people brought friends. Nilsa was there, but had to leave because she ate too much food. The missionaries got called up to be the judges of the pie contest. I loved the key lime pie! I think that is grandpa Brown's favorite... this time it was mine too.

Pioneer day celebration BBQ

Thursday was a hard day, change and goodbyes. I am going to miss having Sister Garcia around, but I am happy for her. She is "all set" and has so much ahead of her.