Sister Brittany Fors: February 27, 2012

hey family,
Another good week in the mission fiellllddd! thanks for all of your emails! it sounds like you're all doing really well. I hope everything goes well with the move to AUSTRALIA! craziness. Well yes, sounds like you're all doing great, thank you for all of your support, and you're all in my thoughts and prayers!
so yes, another good week. Sister vause was on exchanges for 2 days this past week, which meant that we didn't get as much work done in our area, but it's all good. Below has a little bit of description of what's going on. Diana is a new investigator of ours that seems way prepared. she's 17, and she has a hard time in school because she's shy and barely speaks any english. But when we first taught her and her mom about the Book of Mormon, she seriously just looked like HUNGRY for it. her soul is hungering! and we taught her this past Saturday, and I felt like I should just flat out ask her "how do you feel when you read the BOM?" and she was like "i feel really different, i can't put my finger on it, but I feel something different." It's so cool to see the power of the Book of Mormon with her, that's something that I've been hoping to see more of...how the Book of mormon can really convert people all on its own. Anyways, so she's awesome. she was all ready to come to church on Sunday with her mom, and we called her mom and she said they were good to go, and then they didn't show! such a bummer. Then another new family we're teaching didn't show up either. But Ramiro did finally come! and was doing really well.
The awesome miracle of the week was at church. A TON of random less-actives showed up, and the elders had a bunch of investigators come to church. we're definitely feeling the blessings of the 40 day fast in our work. We had THIRTY people in our gospel principles class! 30! That includes us, ward missionaries, less actives, and investigators. It was so cool, everyone stood up to introduce themselves, and they were all like "i'm inactive, but I'm trying to get back into the church.." and everyone would be like "Bienvenidos!!!" I felt like I was at an alcoholics anonymous meeting. It was so cool, and our ward mission leader is stellar, and the ward missionary who taught was also stellar. We're having an FHE this coming Friday at our ward mission leaders house, where we'll invite all of our investigators to come. The ward is so great, and I just hope and pray that we'll be able to work hard so that all of their efforts can pay off.
What else...Saturday was a good day. The weather is soo perfect right now, summer's around the corner but it's all good. So saturday morning we did service for our WML and pulled weeds out of their yard. And then they took us out to lunch, and ended up taking us to a sketchy backyard restaurant. I don't know if there's a lot of those in LA, but there are several here in Mesa. just families who run shady restaurants in their backyards with really good tacos haha. Good ol' Mesa-co. Then that night we went to a baptism of the elders. I played the piano for the musical number (I think I'm up to about 10 hymns i can play...woohoo!) It was a really good spirit there, and then we had a good lesson after that.
I really liked the exchanges i went on this week. So the first day, sister Javed came to my area for part of the day. Sister Javed is the sister from Pakistan, who doesn't speak any Spanish, but we just went to one lesson in our area. She is INCREDIBLE. She is full of testimony, and I love hearing just her point of view of the gospel. she teaches really simply and powerfully. In our companion study, she just like started crying as she was bearing her testimony of the prophet. She told me about how she used to have a nose ring before she was a member, because that's obviously way common there, and then she decided to take it out when she read that the Prophet was against it. And when she arrived to Mesa from the MTC, her mom told her that she had made the decision to be baptized because of a letter she had written home to them. anyways, she just has the coolest story, and I learned a lot from her. So many of us take the Gospel for granted 100%, so it was cool to see someone that never does that. My next day of exchanges was with SIster arias and Avila, and we were on bikes the whole day! I love bikes! hahaha. But that was also a really good day.
VC is going well. there was one bummer...that 14 year old girl that I had started teaching, I emailed her this last week, and she emailed me back and was just like "i'm not interested in the mormon belief, I'd like to cancel our chats." i was HEARTBROKEN! she was so solid, and it was hard because over email, I couldn't like ask her questions to try to resolve her doubts. I had to just respond to her email the best I could, and hope that it touched a chord. So anyways, i'm learning some of the challenges of this form of teaching. But it's all good.
anyways, I'm trying to think of some good stories to share...I'm blanking. Transfers are already coming up in a week, and I feel like this transfer has flown by. Today we hiked camelback as a zone early in the morning, and then we made pizzas for lunch, it was way fun. after the hike, sister vause and i just like took a nap laying on our cement porch and it was the nicest thing in the world.
ok anyways, this email is really scattered. But all is well. I'll send some pics. ok, I love you all! I'm so grateful for all that you do. thanks for your great examples! Love, sister fors