Baptism!

This week was seriously the longest week ever!  I can't believe Christmas was just five days ago....so much has happened in such a short period of time.

 

First of all, we had a baptism yesterday!  This week, we found a young boy who had been coming to church with his family (all are members) who had not been baptized yet.  So we invited him to be baptized on Tuesday, taught him all the lessons from Wednesday to Saturday, and then he was baptized yesterday.  He is absolutely adorable!

"Go, My Son!"

We went the Olson Family's house to pick oranges and grapefruit. It was our first time in their house since they live outside of our area.  When we went inside their house, they began telling us about the decorations and statues they had.  Brother Olson had been given this really cool statue of Lehi's family looking at the Liahona by President Kimball for his work with the Lamanites.

In the next room, they had Navajo decorations and a book called, "Go My Son."  Well...turns out,  Brother Olson produced "Go My Son" when it was first written.  He owned the rights to the song until he finally sold it to BYU so that Lamanite Generation/Living Legends could use it. When they found out I was Navajo, they were really excited.  They told us all these stories about their time on the reservation (Their family had lived on there for a time because Brother Olson went down there for a work trip, fell in love with the people, and moved his family out in the middle of nowhere to live).  It was really fun!

Are These Your Presents?

We got to help some of our church members provide Christmas for a family.  We went over to their house and wrapped up gifts that they bought, then later that night, we took them over to the family.  We already had an appointment with them, so we set the gifts down and knocked on the door.  When they opened, we were like, "Are these your presents? Who brought them for you?"  They had no idea it was us!  It was so fun to see their faces.  They were so excited!  It was a really fun way to get into the Christmas spirit on the mission :)

Well, life is great down here in South Texas!  I'm having a blast!  Merry Christmas!

Tex Mex, Anyone?

Esta week ha sido bien long!!!!!!!  El Tuesday, tuvimos nuestra conferencia de la Christmas.  Solo mi zona y la zona al lado de la nuestra fueron. Aprendimos de la Navidad, hicimos skits, cantamos Christmas Carols, y recibimos presents.  Fue bien fun!

Haha like my Tex Mex?  This is how almost EVERYONE speaks down here! We run into the most unique situations here in Texas!  We always have English-Spanish mix-ups.  Half the time, we don't know which ward to tell our investigators to attend!  Almost everyone speaks Tex-Mex.  A few speak only English, a few speak only Spanish.  We had the Spanish Ward Christmas party on Friday.  It was super fun :)  One of the families we are teaching came to the party!  The mom is besties with a member so she wants to attend her ward (the Spanish one) with her, but her kids only speak English.  It's kind a crazy situation!  LOL.  We had a lesson with them at the member's house (BTW the member only speaks Spanish) so we had this weird English Spanish thing going on...that's not the first time we've done that :P

Charismatic Sons!

We were teaching a family.  They have two sons who have more charisma than anyone I've ever met.  The youngest son says the cutest prayers.  He prayed that we'd all behave so Santa would come we wouldn't have to go "down there to live with the devil."  Last week, he prayed that he'd behave so he could go to Computer Lab on Wednesday at school.  We were telling him the story of Samuel the Lamanite recently.  We said that it happened over 2000 years ago.  The older son - completely serious, I mean not sarcastically at all - said, "2000 years ago?  Like when you were little mom?"  Haha I laughed so hard! :)

I'll Come to Church!

We met this guy in the neighborhood.  He told us that he has stories about his life that we are just "too young to hear." After talking for awhile, he said he wanted to come to church, but then he didn't come.  He called us up apologizing over and over for not coming.  He said that the day before we met him, he had been talking to his friend saying that he wanted to get closer to God.  Cue nosotras!  We have a return appointment with him.

Elder Tad R. Callister

This week, Elder Tad R. Callister came to our mission.  We had to drive to mission headquarters.  It was super fun.  I got to see some of my former companions along with a bunch of other people I haven't seen in forever.  Elder Callister talked about the Atonement and the importance of members.  It was a fantastic talk.

Spanish Relief Society Choir

The Spanish Ward Relief Society has been practicing to sing "Cantan Santos Angeles" and "Noche de Paz" ("Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Silent Night") for the Ward Christmas Party.  They are getting so into it.  It's really fun! Very few individuals in the ward - except for maybe us missionaries and the choir director - have any musical background.  The choir director wants things to be perfect, with perfect parts and everything.  The last two times in Relief Society, the meeting has gone over 20 minutes because the director has been trying to get everyone to sing the same note.  It is probably the most adorable thing I have seen in my life.

I Love Christmas!

I love Christmas sooooooo much!  They have the area all decked out in Christmas lights.  It is charming.  We've helped put up a couple Christmas trees and wrapped presents for the members.  It's been a super fun last couple of weeks. Every contact, we get to say Merry Christmas...it doesn't get much better than that.

Happiness!

I have learned the importance of being a happy missionary.  Happiness is a choice and even if things don't go our way, we can still choose to have a good day.  When others see how happy we are, they want what we have.  A happy missionary baptizes and an unhappy missionary doesn't.  We can't share how wonderful our lives are because of the gospel, if we don't show that we are happy!

So be happy every day! It's a lot more fun that way, too! That beings said, I still believe there is such thing as being too happy....so keep it in control! LOL

Amazing Members = Referrals

This week has been eventful...where to begin??? First of all, we have amazing members who are sooooooo willing to do missionary work!  I love it!  It's seriously mission heaven down here!  Some of our investigators come from referrals given to us.  Because of  our investigators' busy schedules, we don't get to meet with them often, but the member sees them all the time and when we teach our investigators, we find out they already know about everything.  It makes our job loads easier and it also increases their chance of making it to baptism! :D

Morgan, Utah?!?! and "Hermana Pocahontas"

I ran into some people from Morgan, Utah, where my mom grew up, and my grandparents live!  They knew my uncle and his family - apparently the "Brother" was my cousin's baseball coach.  He served his mission down here - so he was coming to visit!  His wife (turns out she is my third cousin) is best friends with my first cousin's wife.  They have a little girl.  They were visiting with a member in our area when we stopped by.  This member is the most adorable person ever.  She's shorter than my mom and she always calls me "mi hermana Pocahontas."  :D Of course, I just love that! :) :) :)

It's Cold Outside!

It has been freezing down here in Southern Texas!  It got as low as 37 degrees!  Que feo!  Neither me no my companion like the cold one bit, but what can we do?  There is a silver lining though, people have been letting us in because they feel bad for us!  So luckily, we're not outside in this weather that much! 

Thanksgiving and Cold Weather!

Among other events this week:

We exceeded our goal for finding new investigators!  That always makes me happy especially because it was so hard to find investigators at the beginning of my mission :)

We had 4 Thanksgiving dinners!  The first one was at the top of this really nice hotel on the island.  Our table had a large view of the Gulf of Mexico.  I saw the ocean for the first time since my first area!   The menu included cornbread stuffing and seafood!

This was the view from the hotel while eating dinner!

In district meeting, we had a very creative lesson that revolved around a snowman.  I wish I would have taken a picture...it was kind of adorable.  I really don't miss the snow!

It was cold the first part of the week !  Now its back to the comfortable 70's.  This Christmas is going to be paradise!! :)

I am absolutely in love with this area!  It is so much fun! The people are fantastic and always have interesting stories to tell.  I'm sure enjoying Texas! :D

Meeting a Zone Goal!

So, in a kind of a spur of the moment, surprising, and miraculous way we had a - wait for it - BAPTISM!!!!! on Saturday :D :D :D

So, it's pretty cool the timing of all of this.  The mission, for the month of November, had a goal of baptising 110 people - more than we have baptized in a month in a very long time!  Our zone had a goal of 20 people this month. 

That's where this story comes in:  Our baptism was a young boy.  He didn't have a date set, but he had been learning as we were teaching another individual in his family.  Last weekend, we were leaving the house after a lesson.  We weren't even talking about baptism when he all of a sudden said, "Hey! I want to get baptized!  When can I get baptized?"  We then set a date for Sunday (the 1st of December). It was pretty cool because he had the desire himself.

We were super excited and so then we informed our district leader.  At this time, our zone had 19 baptisms for this month.  So, he said we should try to move it to Saturday (the 30th of November) so we could hit our goal. We were a little apprehensive about it because his family was supposed to go to out of town on Saturday so they could be back by Sunday.  However, we stopped by on Monday evening, and the first thing they said was they had bad news: instead travelling on Saturday, they would be going on Sunday.  We just smiled and said, No problem!  We'll do the baptism on Saturday! 

So, long story short, he was baptized in November, our zone hit its goal of 20, and our mission baptized 113 people! :D :D :D  It is amazing!  The timing was absolutely perfect and miraculous!

Please, Serenade Us in This Cold Weather!

This week, we got serenaded by a man and his harmonica.  We contacted him near where a member lives.  He played Moon River, Waltzing Matilda, and Come Fly With Me.  It was so cool!  He was really good at it.  He could play the harmony and the melody at the same time.  It was pretty neat!

It's been really cold!  :P  But on the bright side, we just received word that we can now wear boots in the cold weather!!!!!  A sister in the ward gave us scarves, hats, and gloves, since neither of us had any.  How nice right???  I love it down here!