January 12, 2015
Dearest family,
Well this week went great, and so much has happened once
again and I don't know where to begin!
So this Tuesday we had leadership conference again and the
assistants called us the night before to give us a special assignment (funny
story, HW and I just spent a good minute trying to remember if asignation
was a word in English... it's not, right?) because president wanted us to share a
success story with all the leadership counsel. So that was pretty fun and we
learned a lot in the meeting, particularly about family history and now the
whole misión is totally using family history as like the coolest missionary
tool ever! We have these "my family" pamphlets and have been inviting
people to listen to us by introducing them to the whole family history program
and it's way successful!
So for the success story HW and I decided to take a
short video of Manuel and have him talk a little bit about his conversion to us
and it is a really sweet video! Manuel's family went from just saying hi
and hiding inside the house when we taught him to slowly listening and now
coming to church every week. It has been such an amazing change. Fatima and Luis
(Manuel's daughter and son in law) still need to get married before they can get
baptized but we are working on it. On Thursday we had family home evening with Manuel and his family. Oh and I don't remember if I have already said this or
not but they are our neighbors. Anyways we taught them the restoration and the
spirit was so strong. While we were explaining the first vision to them HW
and I had everyone close their eyes and we sang Joseph Smith's first prayer
while they imagined what was happening. Afterwards we asked them what they
imagined and Fatima described the vision perfectly and when we showed her a
picture she gasped. It was so cool!!!!
"This is a Little
monument thing close by our house"
Our investigator Rosi was supposed to get baptized this Saturday but she didn't come to church so I don't think that's happening...:(
but we're going to keep praying for her. She's going through some hard times
right now 'cause Satan's trying to do everything possible so that she doesn't get
baptized...
On Friday we had zone conference and it went well in our
zone, but HW had to go to our other zone that we have girls in and give the
spiel there. She said it was super awkward because the zone leaders there are
both new and neither one knows what he's doing... But our zone rocks:) Afterwards we did divisions with Motul (this cute little pueblito) and I got to be with Hermana Nuñez! (the Hma Nuñez who was my second companion Hma Nuñez, the tall one from DF.) and that was fun, but in the process
of getting on the bus, I somehow left my backpack on the sidewalk and had to do
divisions without any of my stuff!! And I lost my backpack that had my CAMERA
in it!!!!!!!!!!!! SO that's the sad news of the week, I lost my camera....:( And I also lost that happy shirt that mom sent for Christmas and I LOVED that
shirt:( and my tennis shoes so I'm going to have to buy some new tennis shoes. And like some clothes and notebooks and a Book of Mormon
that I guess I can live without but it's still sad.
Good thing I had Hma Nuñez sympathizing for me. Do you
know what she said in her prayer that night after I lost my backpack? She says, "please bless that the people who find Hma Smith's backpack can make
good use of all the things inside, and that they can be used for the
better." ..... hahaha so I guess I won't find my backpack ever again but
at least some thief somewhere is reading my Book of Mormon and getting
converted. That's the important thing.
IMPORTANT NEWS UPDATE!! IZAMAL IS BEING DIVIDED!! Hma Perryman is STILL there after like a million transfers and she just emailed me
and told me that the area is actually doing really well now and they're
planning on baptizing more people that we started teaching when we were there
together, and the ward is growing so much that they're dividing it and sending
more missionaries there! I am SO happy for them!!!
"All the girls in the
zone (except for Brisas ) with muffins the zone leaders got us!! We are all
gringas.."
So cool story, remember that little girl M we were
teaching? The sarcastic little punk one? So she has gone to church like a
thousand times and really likes it, but she's just very immature and doesn't
really take things as seriously as she should sometimes, so we kinda dropped her
for a while and stopped focusing on her, but every time she sees us she's like "Hermanas I want to go to church on Sunday!!!" And we're like
ok. go then.
But she's only 15 and can't go alone so she asked us if we
could pick her up to go together, so we were like ok fine. So we go to pick her
up Sunday morning and the bishop's wife is giving us a ride and she- making
small talk- says "so M, when are you getting baptized?" and we
had not really planned on baptizing her anytime soon, because we hadn't really
thought about her much in a while. But so then M says "well I don't
know, I want to get baptized but I don't know what I need to do and the Hermanas haven't told me anything!" and so we just sit there for a second
and then I'm like "well do you want to get baptized on Saturday?" and
she was all for that idea so we told the bishop to announce it in sacrament
meeting and invite everyone so he did and now it's kinda set in stone. It was
actually an answer to a prayer because we were really excited about baptizing Rosi on Saturday and had been planning on that, but then when she couldn't get
baptized (work problems and so she couldn't go to church) God sorta slapped us
in the face with M. Soooo we'll see how this goes. Pray for M please! and Rosi! and we're hoping the week after to baptize Charlie! and then
Andrea! SO please pray for them all!
Also, Rosi has a granddaughter that has been coming to
church to and she's so cute!! She's like 13 and reminds me a lot of Miranda, her
name is Monserrat Adamari. We're hoping to baptize her soon too.
Well that's all for today! Thanks for being so awesome
everyone!
HS
