Email 1/26/2011

Best Week EVER!

GUESS WHAT?! So last Thursday we get a call at 6 am from the Hermanas in Showlow and it wakes us up and they tell us they have good news... "P"IS GETTING BAPTIZED! MY "P"!!!! He told them they had to call and tell me :) I was dancing around our kitchen for like 5 minutes! THEN the next day they call us again and the exchange student we were teaching went home to Mexico to visit his family and his family has been taking the lessons too and they saw the change is him and now he is getting baptized here and they are getting baptized in Mexico!! SO both "P" and "A" were baptized Saturday!!!! SO EXCITING! I can't wait to see pictures and I hope that I get to go back for when Pancho and his family get sealed!!

I have so many stories from this week, I’m going to start with the spiritual ones and hopefully I have time for the funny ones!!

So we had two baptisms on Friday for two of the kids we've taught and it was sooo cute. They sang "Love is spoken here" together in their little white suits and made like everyone cry. Their parents are getting married in 2 months and then the dad will be baptized! Oh so their Mom "A" is a member in one of our wards and she is living with "D" who is not a member. They have 6 kids under 9 and both parents are under 25 years old. So they are busy! So "A" took in all the kids and decided she wanted to come back to church and be active because it was the only way the family would work, so she started teaching the kids primary songs and teaching them how to pray and having family home evening and going to church and it completely changed their little family. So their oldest kids really wanted to get baptized and were so, so cute! "A" and "D" are planning on getting married soon and then "D" can get baptized too. We are really close with "A", she is cool. We had a AWESOME lesson with her and she told us how she had been praying about baptism and she knew she wanted to but she was really nervous what her parents and family would say so she brought it up to them and they told her they WANT her to get baptized and they have seen her change and they see how happy her and the kids are!!! She told us this and was bearing her testimony I thought my heart was going to JUMP out of my chest! So Feb 5th!

We had a lesson with "M" earlier this week. We went over the interview questions and we discovered he still was struggling and he said he wasn't sure about Joseph Smith and that he doesn't like the idea of churches having labels and thinks that all that matters is that we are all people of Jesus' church. He also said something about leavened bread and how the Sabbath day is on Saturday not Sunday. So we were like FANTASTIC - let's teach the Restoration...again. He can be hard to teach because he isn't the world’s best listener and always goes off on random stories. Last night we taught the Restoration in extensive detail using a scripture from the Bible and Book of Mormon for every concept making it CRYSTAL CLEAR. I explained a Prophet like 8 times and how we believe there is only one Prophet. We probably said 1 like 80 times, and then he would be like "Yea I agree, I think every church should have a prophet, like I'm a prophet over myself..." We were getting sooo frustrated! We started to think we were going to have to push back his baptismal date. We were getting pretty discouraged, and then he went off on some random story again and started talking about how he knows the history of the Mayans and tribes of Israel and how he has a theory that someone -a missionary or something MUST have brought the teachings oversea and how he believes this is where the lost tribe of Ephraim is...and he proceeds to tell us all about the tribe of Ephraim! (Meanwhile we are freaking out trying to butt in) Finally there is a break in both of us yell "M" YOU HAVE TO READ THE BOOK OF MORMON...LEHI is that guy!!! We start showing him all the scriptures and then he starts to freak out and tear up and the spirit was SOO strong!! He was like "Oh my gosh, this book is true, this is true this is true!!" FINALLY everything started clicking into place and he understood the Restoration and he can't wait to be baptized! He just kept thanking us for bringing this into his life and how special we are to him! SOO COOOL! He text us later that night telling us he had never felt the spirit so strong in his life and it felt like a whoosh go through his body telling him this is true! Aahh so cool!

Sometimes being a missionary sucks, I’m not going to lie, but then there are these amazing cool moments that make everything so worth it. I am falling in love with being a missionary. I want to always feel like this. I love watching people change and gain a testimony. It is so much cooler than anything else in this world!!! I realize this sounds really corny and not like me...but I don't care, it is awesome. We have had so many great lessons in the last week. All of the people we are teaching are amazingly prepared right now. I love this area, we are so happy we are staying another transfer! But with all the good lessons comes the opposition of course and we had a lot of bad crap this week too. I made the mistake of saying "You know I haven't really been in an anti experience that was that bad yet." (*Explanation: Most missionaries describe "anti" experiences as negative discussions with people who dislike LDS church teachings.) The next day we got yelled at 4 times in a row. Like hard core anti-LDS. All in the matter of like 2 hours. So the first few people we were pretty patient with and were nice and just told them we aren't going to fight have a nice day. Then the last guy comes along and he really got under our skin. He started going off about how Mormons are racist and murderers? And how Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon to replace the Bible and how we don't believe in Christ? So, we were pretty calm the first five minutes just trying to explain that he was misinformed, but he wasn't listening and just kept getting fired up and kept putting his hand on Hma Ouellettes shoulder and telling us we will be judged. So umm we lost it...unfortunately. We turned into little feisty women and Hma O's hip popped out and then we just started chewing him out in Spanish. I don't even remember what I said but I know that I snapped, yes snapped, in his face and said "Mira..." (look!) which is just really embarrassing, but we were livid. Finally when we walked away we were still fuming and I was like “Oh my gosh, I snapped in his face, how embarrassing!” And Hma O was like "twice, you snapped twice." Whoops! We eventually calmed down when we had a lesson with this other guy. We showed up and my favorite Jason Aldean song was on, and well I it felt like God saying “breathe.” Lol! I'm convinced country music is of God and there will be lots of it in Heaven.

Speaking of Hma O, no one can pronounce her name so they take one look at her name tag and one look at mine and ask me to say the prayer EVERY TIME. So we were in a lesson the other night and we were kneeling and I was saying the prayer when their pugs step on my lap and practically tongued me, with my mouth open! I thought I was going to die. Hma O saw the whole thing and was snorting next to me. Really cool, my fist kiss in 5 months is by a dog.

So yesterday we had an interesting referral. We went over to these people's house and I was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY trying really hard not to judge, but they then told us they hadn't showered in weeks because they don't want to pay the water bill because it is unfair? Apparently their car and cell phone were stolen? So they asked us to use our phone...so they could call the company that gives them oxygen tanks because they were out. As she is on the phone with the oxygen company, she is rolling a cigarette, and she is complaining about how her oxygen tank is not working right and how it is unsafe and how she can't imagine what IT is doing to her lungs. Then she tells the guys about how her last oxygen tank blew up all by itself. (I'm pretty sure she was smoking and that is how is started on fire) While she is on the phone a little black SPIDER crawls down out of her arm sleeve and is crawling around her hand! And then I notice another little spider on the couch next to her! So I’m trying to stay calm, but I’m practically doing the hokey pokey in my chair because I'm SURE there has got to be a spider crawling on me, and I’m just itching like crazy to get out of there.. BUT it gets worse! She then hawks a loogie into an old popcorn bag, and I wasn't prepared for that, and I dry heaved out loud. She was like "Oh sorry honey buns" and as she is hanging up the phone she is like "I have to go I have these cute lil Jehovah Witnesses in my house..." We got in the car after and just sat there for a minute processing everything that had just happened. There are some frickin weird people in this world. Being a missionary is so interesting; we have so many experiences in one day. I really need to start keeping a journal. But the other half of me says “Why should I - how could I ever forget that?”


Last transfer went by so fast and time is starting to fly. I think largely because we are having fun. Well that might be the wrong word; we are laughing a lot and being weird together. We made a sweet fort the other night and we watched The Restoration. That is about the most excitement in my social life. Life is exciting. Well my plan is to write letters today because I'm behind and have a hefty little stack to catch up on.

They say it will start heating up pretty soon. It hit 80 degrees a few times this week but it feels hotter than that because the sun is so intense. It’s really nice right now considering it's January and we have the windows down but we will be singing another song in a month or two when it's 115-120 degrees. Lame! Arizona is awesome. I need to send you a picture of what it looks like. You will be so jealous! There are palm trees EVERYWHERE and we pick oranges and tangerines off peoples trees - it's perfect.

Love you & miss you!

Kaitlyn!

P.S. I rode my bike for the first time, for 5 minutes a few houses down the street. Then we went back to the car. We have too many appts a day to bike biking takes 10 times longer to get places and we have an appt almost every hour. But it officially has been ridden.