My Dear Family … I hope you’re all doing great!
Picture time!
This is Hermana Karla. We
love her to pieces. She went with us to visit some people last night and well
we had a hard time finding people at home, so we taught her how to talk with
people in the street. She got so excited and we were showing her the cards and
she asks if she can keep them to talk with people on the bus when she goes to
work! She always gives us references and has the strongest desire to share the
gospel. She also gave a talk yesterday and shared her testimony about her
experience with the missionaries and how she felt working with us and how true
this gospel is and wow, we have seen her progress so much. We love her!
This is Hermana Elsa and her brother Carlos, or Carlitos. We
just keep loving on them and love watching them grow! Lately Hermana Elsa
always asks me to say the prayer. The other day I told, “Hey what’s up? You pick me every time we come!” I was totally
playing with her and she gets kind of serious and says, “It’s because you know
us. You know exactly what we need. You just know us and I need to pray to our
Heavenly Father for all of our needs.” It was such a sweet moment of the week.
I felt the Spirit so strongly and realized just how much we represent Jesus
Christ for all of the people we teach. This week with Hermana Elsa and Hermano
Jose we decided to study certain chapters of the Book of Mormon to teach the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are both so busy and haven’t been reading as much.
As we studied Ether 12 and Alma 34 this week they felt they Spirit so much and
Hermano Jose says, “Wait a second, let me go for a pen because I want to mark
this.” We need the scriptures, we need
them every day to pick us up in the rougher moments. We can’t slack on our
reading, especially as a family!
This is Rocio! Our future missionary! She’s leaving in about a
month and is super excited!
We ate with the cute counselor in the Primary Presidency this
Valentine’s Day and she gave us these cute frogs! Isn’t she adorable? Happy
Valentine’s Day to the sister missionaries!
They went to the temple last week for the first time in about a year and
half. They have three young kids, and two
of them are 18-month old twins. We’ve
been inviting them to go for about 4 months. As we ate, they talked about all of the
blessings they’ve received and how excited they were and we invited them to
work on having their Family Home Evenings too. As we were leaving, she gives us
a big hug and says, “You two have truly helped our family. I know you don’t
believe it, but it’s true. You help us to remember to do the things we know
will help us, but we just forget after being members for so long. Thank you so
much for blessing our family.” What a
neat experience, right? We are trying so hard to keep supporting and uplifting
the members here!
There was a double baptism this weekend! The Elders baptized a
young man who had to pass a lot of interviews to be able to be baptized. He’s
been with the elders for six months and so constant and enduring and all that
good stuff and he finally got to be baptized this week! A young boy was also
baptized! Love when the ward comes together to support!
This is one of the piñatas that one of our investigators made!
We try to help her out when we can.
Today we ate in La Casa del Waffles! That’s when you know you’re in a tourist
zone! Ha! Ha! We did not care because they
were delicious!
A funny story for y’all … So on Tuesday the supplies we were
missing in our house arrived with our zone leaders. Oh goodness!
Turns out they sent us a HUGE folding table. The elders in our district
received fans, bookshelves, and the six of us were thinking uhhhhh, how on
earth are we going to get this home. We
decide on a bus. We load everything on
and everybody that gets on the bus gives us weird looks. We arrive in Tlaquepaque and there goes
Hermana Gonzalez and I … walking down the street … with our folding table and
electric stove!
This week Hermano Oscar and Hermana Karen went to the ward FHE.
They told me that their oldest daughter was baptized last week! How awesome is
that! They were using my scriptures in a scriptures hunt game and then
afterward Hermana Karen was reading scriptures I had written and notes I had
made in the margin. We served ice cream to everyone that came and she comes and
tells me, “I found an answer to lots and lots of prayers. I have been not
wanting to do something that my Heavenly Father wants me to do and I read your
note here about how sometimes we fight against his will and that’s what I’m
doing, but I need to be humble and do what He wants. Any chance you want to
give me your scriptures?” They recently called her to be the Relief Society
Secretary and I love seeing them progress. They are too special! Every time
before we leave they say “Nos vemos in December right?” I tell them,
RIGHT!
Now for our special family, the Moreno-Garcia family … Last week
we had trouble finding them and weren’t seeing a lot of progress. A family tried to pick them up for church
last week but they didn’t want to go. On
Monday we were thinking that maybe it wasn’t their time to progress. We show up on Monday and tell her that we love
her so much but that if she’s not going to keep her commitments that we can’t
keep visiting them. She talked about how
different she felt when we were in her home and as we were leaving she follows
us all the way out to the street and gives us the biggest hug. Later in the week we taught about the Atonement
to her whole family and her husband also wants to change. We saw them Saturday morning and they were all
excited to go to church and we planned at what time we would pass by for them
in the morning and everything. We taught
the Hermana about the Sabbath Day and the consequences. Her biggest desire is
to have peace in her home. Satan is
truly attacking so many homes and we started to feel kind of heavy this week. There is so much yelling, name-calling, lack
of respect, and just lots of ugly stuff.
We can’t let that into our homes! They are such a special and humble family and
we love them lots. It’s like teaching
little kids and they went to church and loved it and now her husband is on
board too! Ahh!! We love life!
This week I was thinking a lot about and also studying the
Atonement. I read David Bednar’s talk
that mom sent me a few weeks ago and some things really hit home. I fall into the category of people that focus
a lot on the redeeming power. I mess up
a lot and have to work really hard so that Jesus can forgive me. I have to be tough and overcome weaknesses and
mistakes and all that jazz, but so many times I rely on my own effort,
diligence, and work when I have obviously limited abilities. As I read about the enabling power of Christ’s
Atonement I was reminded once again of how powerful it is and that it too
exists. These past couple of weeks I’ve
been feeling like I’m not magnifying my calling one hundred percent, that I was
making the same mistakes over and over again and not getting any better. As I read this talk I was filled with the Spirit
as I reminded myself that it’s Christ that helps me to overcome these
weaknesses that gives me power to change through my faith and diligence. He gives me the strength that I could never
give myself. The whole week when I
started to feel negative, I thought about Him, how strong He is and how much He
could lift me. It was awesome! I love the Savior and I am so grateful for
this opportunity to get to know Him better than any other point in my life
until now.
Let
us all be better disciples of Jesus Christ and help other to also become His
true disciples. Love you all lots!
