Email 1/19/2011

HI!


Yes am aware I’m ¼ done with my mission. Are you aware that will be home in about a year? So 18 months always falls between 2 transfers so they let you choose if you would like to go the early or the late transfer, so for me that would be Feb 8th for the early transfer I believe, I wrote it down somewhere.

So let's see, I can't remember this week and forgot my planner, so hopefully some stories will come to me...

So remember the guy who's getting baptized on the 5th? Although he has had a crazy road to get where he is now, he is so prepared and humble. Heavenly Father put him in the perfect place to be ready to hear the gospel and it's already changing him.

We have 2 baptisms this Friday, English ones. Kids of a part member family. The girl is 12 and the boy is 8. I don't remember if told you about a woman we're teaching...So she and her two boys 8 and 14 live next door to a family in one of our wards and they have boys the same age. So when she moved in, the boys became best friends. The boy in the ward that's 8 walked over and told them they should come to church sometime and then looked at the neighbor boy his age and said "I just got baptized and I REALLY want you to get baptized!" If only all kids would do this LOL! So her and the boys started taking the lessons about 2 months ago and they go to church every week and are practically members. We teach them a few times a week. We are part of their family now – lol - we spent Christmas Eve baking cookies with them and she always asks if we can come for dinner. She is really struggling money wise since she is going to school and doesn't have a stable job and is a single mom. The ward had done SO many nice things - it's been unbelievable. One person noticed she didn't have a dishwasher so they brought her over "an extra they had lying around." She was really uncomfortable coming to church because she didn't have church clothes, so next thing we know she is calling to thank us for dropping off boxes of skirts and blouses! Someone framed us because it wasn't us. Her 14-year-old son was at school the other day and his friends were swearing and he asked them to stop because he was Mormon! Cute huh? We were so proud. Their neighbor is the scout leader so he has been so good for the boys because they don't have a father figure, so he takes them out all the time and has been like a dad to them next door. So we had a really, really amazing lesson with them last week. The neighbors came over. They both went on missions themselves. They actually met on their mission. He was her zone leader, but anyway so they are awesome in lessons. So we had the BEST lesson with her and got to the bottom of all of her concerns and the neighbors would bear their testimony of each thing. Then she started to tell her conversion story and started to bear her own testimony it was soo cool. She started to cry and talk about how it has changed her life. She has been kind of hard to teach because she didn't have any kind of church background. She didn't know who Jesus Christ was. So we have to break down the lessons a lot, but she's doing so good! So we are going to talk about a baptismal date for her and the boys this week! :)

OH so had to talk in church on Sunday…AGAIN! But only in one ward because the other ward called us on Sat night and told us we weren’t talking after all, but unfortunately it was the Spanish branch that we did have to talk in and we had the entire sacrament meeting! They asked a recent convert of ours to talk for 5 minutes and she did! She is amazing! What convert gives a talk after being a member for a few weeks?! So she could tell was nervous to give a talk in Spanish and she kept writing me cute little notes of encouragement and thanking us for all we have done for her the whole time Hma O was speaking. She is so cute. It's fun to be so loved and appreciated by her. She writes us poems all the time too, but they are in Spanish so I don't always get 100% of it, but it's cute. I talked Hma O out of making us sing…PHEW!!! She's always volunteering us to sing! I DON"T SING! So I won that fight luckily. But right before got up to talk I was pretty nervous because I wrote the talk that morning. We didn't have time all week, so I wasn't sure it even made sense and was just stressed out of my mind. But I said a little prayer before got up and as soon as took the stand felt the whoosh of comfort and my tongue was loosened and about half way through the talk heard myself speaking Spanish with an accent and thought "Huh...I'm speaking Spanish. This is pretty cool considering knew zero Spanish 4 months ago and know what I'm saying!" How can people honestly say this church isn't true?! I'm speaking Spanish and I've known it for 4 months. Not to mention since the MTC only study it for 30 minutes a day and most the day I’m not speaking it now anyway. It’s insane. I mean I'm not fluent by any means. In fact kind of sucks half the time but when God wants to use me, He uses me! It's pretty cool. It's easy to get discouraged and frustrated with Spanish, but when remember that a few months ago wouldn't have understood a word or been able to speak a word it makes me feel better.


Anyways - got to go LOVE YOU!

Kaitlyn