Thank you for all your
letters and emails and everything. Mom, I got the package...thanks so much! Funny,
Sis Holladay and I are actually heading to H&M in Scottsdale today...what
kind of missionaries are we? But we need to get some new clothes, and she needs
some nice shoes, for Christmas lights. So I will just tell you about Christmas
lights...it's gonna be intense! Had our first training this past Friday. So
we're gonna be in the VC almost every night, which means our areas will be
basically in hibernation during this time. They go from Thanksgiving to New
Years, with concerts outside from Dec 1 to 25th. And Dave Blasucci is playing
indoors a few days after Thanksgiving. Us sisters all need to be looking real
put together...our hair has to be down and styled, we have to wear blazers or
sweaters, have to look really professional, have to wear makeup, the whole
pizazz. So every night we will be rotating through posts for 1 hour at each
post. We'll rotate through the nativity display (hundred+ nativities from all
over the world), the Luke II movie, the Christus, Savior of the World, God's
Plan, and the outside steps to welcome people in. We'll be working indoors the
whole time, with a few missionaries working outside collecting referrals. We
get 40% of our annual visitors at Christmas time, crazy no? I'm really excited.
So basically at each post we have to give super short presentations, like 30
seconds each. I'll be paired w/ a diff English sister each night, and I'll talk
in Spanish, while she talks in English. So it'll be really good! That's about
the extent of the Christmas festivities we have, there are lots and lots of
lights!
Okayo soooo this week
was a good one! It's always unbelievable to me to see just how much happens in
one week, so much to tell you about. Anywhozle, so 2 days this past week were
Leadership Training Meetings that I went to in Scottsdale. All teh trainers,
zone leaders, district leaders, assistants get together for 2 days and just
learn lots and do lots of roleplaying. And I LOVED it. It was such a spiritually
charged event. It was crazy how much revelation I could get from it, and just
how much the spirit could play such a big role in the role playing. We would
all take turns being our own investigators and see how other missionaries would
handle their situations, and so we got lots of good ideas. That also meant SIs
Holladay was with other sisters or in the VC for two days, so we didn't get
much done in our area then. Anyways, so I loved LTM...I felt such a stronger
desire to just go out and do the work afterwards, it was great.
What else...on Wednesday
morning I think it was, Sis Holladay and I were jogging and she tripped on the
sidewalk and totally fell and scraped up her face and knees! I felt so bad. She
just had one bad scrape under her eye. Anyways, moral of the story...I feel
like it TOTALLY turned into a blessing in disguise! Because we had a
Thanksgiving dinner w/ the branch on Friday, and them being the latinos they
are, they were all like "what happened to your face? did sister fors hit
you again?" and then it became this total ice breaker. Haha it was funny,
but it was really cool because Sis Holladay was able to just joke around with
them right off the bat, and she was just able to feel a lot more comfortable
and just friendly with them because of it. So, yes...blessing in disguise haha.
Que mas...things with
Ana are going well! She has been like our one shining hope. She is so prepared,
SIster Holladay and I joke about how we feel like we're cheating or something
with her lessons, just because she's so ready. It's like Sis Holladay and I
teach a principle for 5 minutes, and Ana then bears her testimony of it
for 30. Haha. It really has been a blessing, just because it gives Sis Holladay
hope that investigators can and indeed do progress, and it gives me hope that
this area hasn't completely fallen to shambles under our control. So we're all
set for December 3rd. ALSO...if you remember Jorge, the awesome investigator
who we had to hand over to the English elders...he is set for a baptism
December 3rd also! SO EXCITED! I was so happy, I hope I can make it to both
baptisms. It feel really good to finally see some baptisms close in sight.
Speaking of baptisms, we
set a date with Jose again! If you remember, he had told us to come to his
apartment one day before church, and if he wasn't there, he told us we could
stop coming. So we came, he wasn't there, so we dropped him. Sis Holladay and I
stopped by last night, and he was like "I was at the car wash across the
street! I could see you knocking on my door when you came! I was just
kidding!" hahaha...then he told us he's missed us, his daughter has been
asking about us. All of that. So, we went ahead and set a date with him
again..>Dec 24th! This time around, we're gonna work really hard to make
sure he is 100% focused on this change. SO that was good news too!
Rodrigo and Edgar are
also doing well...they're the 13 yr old and 11 yr old brothers that have come
to church for forever. They have all their hoodlum friends that come to church
with them and wreak havoc. We see them almost every day because we're always in
their neighborhood, and they always like to do things like pretend to drive our
car, or throw smoke bombs at us. Hahaha...we very much have a love-hate
relationship with that entire neighborhood I feel like haha. But I love those
boys SO much...and I really want them to get baptized. We have the parents
permission now and we're trying to figure out the best timing.
Sad news...David and
Guadalupe have to wait til January to get married now :( NOt entirely sure how
we can help them in the meantime.
Also...I wrote this in
the pres letter, but I had this crazy dream last week that came true...it was a
total miracle. Had a dream about Jonathan Baez, whos fam we used to teach, and
that we gave him a ride and told us all that had been holding his family back.
Was w/ sis holladay in the car, saw him walk by and I was like "get out of
the car!" we talked with him and because of that convo, we found his
family again! It was a miracle that I hope leads to something really big.
Yesterday we had a
really weird experience. Drove up for a lesson, and as we were parking we saw
this guy riding away on this bike, with this lady trying to pull him off. He
started hitting her and all this stuff, and he drove off and she was furious.
Everyone in the neighborhood was just sitting there staring as he like
assaulted her. We got out and were like "hey!" (hahaha I'm such a
tough little sister missionary) and he was gone. The lady was screaming and
cussing and going crazy and called the cops, and her little 4 yr old daughter
was just sitting there crying. We gave her daughter a sticker and they lady
yelled at us to go away, and it just broke my heart...the little girl just had
tears down her cheeks. I was really shooken up, and moral of the
story...sometimes I forget just how much this world needs our message. People
put their trials under wraps around us, but there is so much hurt and hate that
only the gospel can fix! gottago, love sister fors
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