Hola Everyone!
Transfer news - I'm staying here in Oxnard with Hermana
Reyes!
This week has been so great! Like always, the last week of
the transfer always has so many miracles happen and so much progress being
made.
Tobias is doing great like usual! He still has a few doubts
about Joseph Smith and prophets in general, but he still wants to keep learning
until he has that belief that we still need one today. Unfortunately, this
weekend was the one weekend that he couldn't come to church all transfer. Of
course, it had to land on General Conference weekend when we'd get to hear our
prophet speak, but we're not going to let the adversary get to him. We're
planning on reviewing some of the talks that were given with him, especially
about the Restoration and having the strong foundation in Jesus Christ.
Hopefully, he'll be able to come to Ward Conference next week and feel the
spirit as people are talking about it around him. We're also working on
teaching him English, so he can find a job a little easier. We decided to meet
with him twice a week and one of those lessons would be purely devoted to
English and the other about the gospel.
The Ruiz family is just as great as ever! We've been able to
continue talking with Hermano and Hermana, but Martin is still avoiding us. We
haven't been able to talk to him in about two weeks, so we've decided to shift
our focus more to his parents and help his dad progress more in the gospel and
bring his mom back to church. It's really hard because they both work on
Sundays and they have a pretty hectic schedule during the week, but when we
stopped by this week, we had a great lesson. We showed them the cup and knife
visual to help them understand that the church of Christ can only have one foundation,
the foundation that Christ set up. Hermano really liked it, but Hermana had a
hard time focusing on the lesson because she was so tired. We're trying really
hard to get him with a baptismal date, so hopefully this next week it'll
happen.
Gladys and Cassy are two girls that we were able to find
through a referral (their mom) that Elder Trujillo gave us from when he was
working in the English ward. They're 14 and 8, respectively, and have a such a
desire to keep learning about the gospel. They had really good questions and
they accepted a baptismal date of May 10th. The only problem there is that we
still need to get permission from their mom to teach them. We set up a return
appointment for this week so we can meet her and talk to her about this too. We
talked to Elder Trujillo and he told us that although the mom is really nice,
he's not sure if she'll give us permission to teach her daughters. We haven't
met her yet, but I really hope that she let's us!
The Galvan family was able to come to General Conference!
Hermana wasn't able to because she had to work, but we were able to find the
kids a ride to come. They loved it and hopefully they'll talk about it with
their mom and less active older brother! We still haven't had the chance to
talk with Brian since we first met him, but his siblings are still trying to
get him to come to church and participate more when we come over for FHE. We
were able to talk to them about the plan of salvation on Monday and they
practically taught it to us! They all have such strong testimonies. We're just
trying to get the mom more involved and do more of the teaching. We understand
that it's hard for her to be home a lot, but they could really use more of a
solid foundation when they're home. We're planning on talking to the whole
family about the gospel of Jesus Christ tonight when we go by.
We were able to have a lesson with Vivian again this week.
She is such a sweet girl who gets really excited when we come over and are able
to teach her about the gospel. She wants this so bad, but her mom is totally
against it. She's 19 now, so she can make her own decisions, but it's hard
seeing her get into little arguments with her mom. We were able to find a ride
for her to come watch General Conference, but when we all got there to pick her
up, her mom wouldn't let her come and blamed it on the fact that she has
special needs and can't be away from her mom for that long. This caught us by
surprise because even though we knew she had a few special needs, she goes to
school and understands everything we teach her. It'll probably be harder than
we thought to get her to progress more, but we're not going to give up. She
wants this so bad and we're not going to let the adversary affect this.
We were able to stop by and finally visit Alberto yesterday.
We didn't have much time, but we re-shared Moroni 10:3-5 again and invited him
to read one verse every day even though his schedule is crazy busy. He said he
would and that he would work harder to try to remember to pray everyday too. I
feel really bad for him because of everything he's had to go through and all
the madness in trying to organize his life again after his wife's death. He
knows that the Plan of Salvation is true and that he'll see his wife again!
It's just hard trying to set up appointments with him.
This week, we met a man named Joe as we were street
contacting. He didn't want to talk to us at first and then he turned around and
started asking us a lot of questions about the church. He had confused us for
Jehovah's Witnesses at first and he told us that we taught him so many new
things that he thought were pretty cool. He even told us that he was going to
come to church this weekend (he didn't end up making it) and that he'd bring
his friends too. He got so excited that he told us he wanted to take our
picture, so we let him, thinking it wasn't that unusual, and then continued
teaching him. In the end he found out what our first names were (also not that
unusual because he promised that he would still call us "Hermana")
and where we were from, but then it got a little weird when he started texting
us afterwards. Apparently, he thought that the phone number we gave him was
just Hermana Reyes, so he started to get a little attached to her and started
flirting with her over text. We gave his number to the Elders and they said
that they'd take over with him. I think the whole situation is pretty
hilarious! It reminds me of Guillermo.
I'm so grateful that we get to stay here in the Oxnard 5th
ward! I absolutely love the people here and am so thrilled to keep working with
them and our investigators. I've learned so much from Hermana Reyes and I'm
excited to keep learning more.
General Conference was so amazing (as usual)! I love how
much they focused on having that strong foundation in Christ through whatever
trial we're going through. Christ is the only one that will never fail us and
will always help us to become the best that we can be. Two of my favorite
talks were probably Elder Holland's and Elder Zwick's. They were both
soooo good! Everyone needs to read them.
Thanks for all the love and support!
Con amor,
Hermana Halliday
Me and Vivian
Me and Tobias
Me and Hermana Reyes Eating... Again! :-)
MOOSE! Just for Mom! :-)
Me and the Macias Family!
OH! i forgot to
mention....since me and hermana reyes are staying together, we get to go to the
TEMPLE this transfer cuz it's her birthday on my mission birthday!
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