Monday, September 23, 2013

Fourteenth Week in the Field



Hola Everyone!

This week has been beyond CRAZY!! So much has happened.  I'll try to get everything in that I can.  There's been a lot of ups and downs, but everything has turned out for the better!

On Monday, we received a referral from the Moorpark 2nd Ward Sisters.  His name is Justin and he's super excited about learning more. He's been to church about 5 times already and read the Book of Mormon twice! We stopped by and introduced ourselves and set up an appointment to meet with him on Wednesday.  However, on Tuesday, we found out that he's single and 23, therefore the zone leaders had to teach him because he's a young single adult.  It stunk!  At least he's meeting with awesome missionaries and progressing in the gospel!  We found out on Thursday that he made dinner for the elders.  He was expecting us so he made steak and a ton of other delicious food.  Lucky for us, the elders decided to bestow grace on us and brought us some of the steak he made.  It was THE MOST delicious steak I have ever before tasted in my life! (even if it was leftovers)  :)  We were so excited to get a new investigator, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. 

After we emailed last week, we went to a member's home in Thousand Oaks to wash our cars all together as a district.  It was really fun and really relaxing!

On Tuesday, we got to go to a parenting class that was entirely in Spanish.  One of our investigators invited us to come to talk to some of the parents afterwards about what they can do to help their kids.  It was a really neat experience.  The parents are all really nice and Teresa, our investigator, thought it was impressive that at such young ages we're able to offer so much council and advice. 

On Wednesday, we had exchanges with Hermana Coleman and Hermana Bartschi.  Hermana Smith and I went with Hermana Coleman and Hermana Faletau went with Hermana Bartschi.  We saw so many miracles.  We were able to get in contact with one of our former investigators, Terry Anne.  She recently just went into remission from cancer so her life's been pretty hard lately.  She never had the opportunity to go to church when the other sisters taught her because she was too sick, but now that she's getting better, she really wants to go! She's read the Book of Mormon and loves meeting with us now.  We're really excited for her!  We also got to talk to Shan-Shan again.  She's doing great as always!  She's still on track to be baptized on October 19th!  Our other investigator, Pauline, who has a baptismal date of October 19th ended up cancelling on us this week, but hopefully she's still interested.  Please pray for her!  During exchanges, we also got to see Amie.  She's the wife of a less active member, Chad.  She's been having a hard time lately and really opened up to us about it.  She loves meeting with us.  On Sunday, we found out that she's actually a member!! It was weird.  She was baptized in 2003, but no body knew about it.  The whole ward council found out on Sunday.

So the week's been going great right?  This is where it got crazy...

Wednesday night, we looked at the phone and it said we had a missed call from President Castro.  We started freaking out a little, but once we calmed down, we called him back and asked him what he needed.  He told us that he needed to talk to all three of us together, but after we got home for the night.  This freaked us out a little bit more.  Once we got home, we called him back.  He told us that there was a sister missionary in Camarillo that had to go home because of health problems.  Her companion, Sister Kiyotani (used to be in Moorpark!) now needed a companion.  President Castro told us that he would like Hermana Smith to move to Camarillo mid-transfer and be Sister Kiyotani's companion for the rest of the transfer!  It was crazy!  All in all, we're back down to two.  It's just me and Hermana Faletau now.  At first it was really weird not being with Hermana Smith, but then it became more normal being at two.  She's going to do a great job in Camarillo and change lives!  She told me that she was grateful to be able to be trained by me and that I did a good job.  It was really sweet!

On Friday, we had a lesson with Denisse that went the complete opposite direction of where we wanted it to go. She ended up inviting her very passionate/antagonistic friend to the lesson and we invited a brother from the ward to come and talk about the Book of Mormon and how it's such a big miracle. Instead of having a powerful, spiritually uplifting and prepared lesson, it turned into a huge Bible bash between the brother and Jamie (Denisse's friend). The spirit was not there and Denisse looked like she was about to cry. She still wants us to come back though, which is good! We need to back track a little with her. When we looked back at the experience, we realized that we didn't do as much as we could have to prevent the situation. We should have at least stopped the brother from being contentious to preserve the spiritual view Denisse has of the church. Brother Seguine shared 2 Nephi 25:23 with us yesterday at correlation. It talks about how grace can save us even after all we can do. He told us that we prepared the lesson the best we did and even it didn't turn out well, Heavenly Father will make sure that every thing will turn out in the end, even if it means the Denisse doesn't get baptized any time soon. The definitely helped boost my confidence. 
After her lesson, we were kind of down in the dumps, but we were able to go teach Ezra, the almost 9 year old.  He told us that he wants to be baptized on November 1st and be confirmed on the 3rd.  We're so excited for him and his decision.  I really hope I'm still here next transfer to be able to see the baptism. 

On Sunday, for Sacrament Meeting, it was the Primary Program!  I'm convinced that it's the best week of the year!  I love watching the little kids bear their testimonies and setting such great examples for their friends.  It made me miss home a little bit, but I know that Zach and Ben are being great missionaries too!

This morning, before we came to email, Hermana Faletau and I got our eyebrows threaded!  We found this threading place right behind our apartment. It's about time I got my eyebrows done!

Thanks so much for all the love and support that you all give me!  Every bit helps!

Con amor,

Hermana Halliday


On P-Day at a member's home washing cars and playing on the sports court!


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