March 31, 2014

Family!! K this was seriously one of the best weeks of my mission EVER!! I looove my new area and my new comps and Heavenly Father has blessed us with so many miracles this week!! So Monday after emailing you guys we did our shopping and we went to this target somewhere and it was in this shopping area that had all this cool stuff to do like a life size chess game and random pianos everywhere for people to play. It was fun so we played around there for awhile! we came home and wrote some letters and I unpacked. that night we ate with some members and since we are teaching the members the doctrines of the lessons we taught them the plan of salvation. we were teaching about the 3 kingdoms of glory and we asked them "what do we need to do to get to the celestial kingdom?" they have 4 kids and the daughters were like "pray, read your scriptures go to church, etc." and then the little boy who is probably 4 or 5 said "die." hahahha! we were laughing so hard! so after that we visited an investigator named Spike who is this really cute old man! he wants to go to the temple visitors center but he didn't have much time to talk so we had a really quick lesson with him. Then we went and met a ward member that is in the military and doesn't get out to church much. he's a super nice guy and we had a great visit with him! on Tuesday we had district meeting and our mission is doing what they call an "AR competition". an AR is when you talk to someone (either tracting or street contacting) and you share a message that they can accept or reject based on what you tell them, not just based on you. I'm not sure if that definition makes sense but whoever gets the most wins something. its like march madness and so we start out going against our district and then we compete at the zone level and then it goes to the whole mission level. so we were pretty pumped about that! after our studies and lunch that day we went and I got to meet Valerie. She is a "spiritual healer" from Rwanda. She's lived in Brasil, Denmark, and Paris as well so she helps me and sister Egbert with our Portuguese. she is really intimidating sometimes but she's also really sweet. that night we did a little tracting and then we had an appointment with some former investigators.They had never met sisters before so they were excited to have us there. they told us they were having their neighbors over as well for dinner so we were excited! we were even more excited to discover that their neighbors are from BRASIL!!!!! it was just the mom Silvana and her daughter Anna that came but we had such a great time. We talked and Anna taught us some little Brazilian games and cheers that little kids do and her mom talked about how shes read almost the entire book of mormon. we got their FB info and were able to add them on facebook so we can set up another appt with them. so it was pretty cool that we were able to make such a personal connection with them! when we got home we looked at our area book and found out that the husband is a former investigator so we're excited to see what is going to happen there!! Wednesday was super fun! we got to visit a member of our ward who is in a nursing home. her name is Lucille and she's so adorable! she told us the same stories over and over and we loved every minute of it. after visiting with her we tracted around our dinner appointments home. we met a lady who let us in and gave us water and told us her cousins are mormon and served missions so she likes to do stuff to help us. she's a scientist and doesn't really believe in God but she believes in grace. we had a cool visit with her! We ate with this family in the ward who have 4 boys under the age of 11. It was a mad house but it was so much fun!! we taught them about the book of mormon and the littlest boy was like "i know whats in the book of mormon...good stuff!" then a few minutes later he's like "hey..i know what else is in the book of mormon...better stuff!" haha it was so cute! so after them we had ANOTHER dinner because the second dinner at another members house and they were inviting a friend. well the friend didn't get to come but we had a great time with those members! i literally almost burst that night though, i was so full! Thursday was another awesome day! after our studies we had another language study with a nice lady. she shared with us some of her beliefs. some of them are similar and some are not. she believes in reincarnation and shes afraid of snakes because one "killed her in her past life." she's such a sweetie though and we love to visit her! after that we went and tracted around our dinner appointments home. this guy answered the door and i guess our beauty made him a little tongue tied because he was like "wow! how can I do?!" he turned out to be atheist and not interested but it made us smile. we ate with some members and it was their sons birthday so that was super fun! while i was there i saw one of my friends from college's wedding announcement on the fridge...talk about a small mormon world! after dinner we went and had a lesson with Ellen. she has a 16 yr old named Maddie who i didn't meet and then a 12 year old named Morgan who i met. They are an amazing family! Morgan is such a cutie! she's afraid of EVERYTHING! like she said she wants to live in Utah because that has the least amount of natural disasters and she was talking about how she wants to travel the world but she said she's "going to bring a Brita filter and like 6 water bottles" because the water is bad everywhere else. she's a hoot! but it was cool because she has been reading the book of mormon and she asked us about prophets so we got to explain how conference is coming up and talk about what exactly a prophet is and all that. Both she and her mom wanted to come to the women's conference but Maddie had a color guard competition. I'm excited to teach them more. they have lots of mormon friends and so they are really prepared to hear the gospel! after that we went and taught the Martinez family. They have a son who has the chubbiest cheeks ever, he's so cute! but we also talked to them about prophets and conference and hope to get them to come to it this weekend! on Friday we had weekly planning and it was sooo awesome. we do companionship inventory and it's cool because I feel like everything my companions tell me is genuine. what we do is we tell each other what their strengths are and then ask each other how we can improve. It's awesome because even when we share things we need to work on! That night we spent most of our time tracting with not much success. The cool thing is that here even when people reject us they reject us so nicely! it's awesome and it makes tracting much more enjoyable!! we met a lady named Becca who has been taught before and we're going to go back and do service for her. after that we went and tried to see this lady who is in the ward. we live right by the metro and she lives across the road on the other side of the metro. we parked at our house and walked over to the other side. in the metro station there are a lot of street performers and just tons of people. (side note: we wrote a cool song this morning that we are going to go sing there to try and find new investigators) but we weren't able to get into their apartment since it's like fort. knox but we met a cool lady outside named Elaine. she has cerebral palsy and she talked to us for almost an hour. she wasn't interested at first but she really softened as we just sat and listened to her! Saturday was the day of miracles!!! i don't know if you guys saw the weather this weekend but it was MISERABLE!! it was dumping rain all day long! :( we went and were putting stuff in our car before we went on FB and there was a lady out there who we talked to and she was like "Man i picked the worst day to move in!" we offered to help and she was like "really? are you serious? its so wet! are you sure!?' we assured her we wanted to help and she just hugged us and said thank you! she hardly had any stuff so we got to job done fast. while we were helping she was like "are you guys mormon?" we said yes and she was like "I KNEW IT !I JUST KNEW IT!" it was awesome and she told us she's going to invite us to her "eat, pray, love" party lol. after that we did FB and then we tracted in the pouring rain. only sister martindale was smart enough to bring an umbrella but she tried to share. we were still all soaked. we tracted for about 2 hours and no one was home or they just weren't interested. we headed back to the car but we knocked on all the doors as we passed them by. the last door we knocked on this hispanic man opened the door and invited us in after we said who we are. his name is Luis . hes a medic in the army and when he was in Afghanistan his wife took the kids and left him. he has had a really rough past couple of years but God has helped him get through it. now he is in the reserves and works at a hospital as a nurse. he also spent some time in Utah for training so he said he saw all the temples and lds churches over there. he also is from El Salvador and saw the temple there so after he told us that he was like "okay so tell me about your church!" we taught the first lesson and we started talking about prophets. we told him we have a prophet on the earth today. he started freaking out and was like "what?! how come no one has told me? what's his name???" we told him it is Thomas S. Monson and we read Mosiah 8:16-18 with him and he goes "that's what i think a prophet is!! so what does your prophet say? what's he like?" we told him conference was this weekend and that he could watch it with us. he got so excited and was like "YES!! I have to know what this man says!! I have to see what he's like!!" then when we shared the first vision he said he had chills and that he wanted to read the book of mormon and wants us to come back!! it was the coolest experience EVER!!! i have never met anyone so excited to hear about a prophet! most of the time i just hope that they'll feel neutral about it! this guy is so golden and it's so much fun to meet him! after that we went to dinner with the woman Krista from Whidbey Island (side note: she may be moving back there soon..i'll keep ya posted) and her daughter Chelsea. we had an awesome visit with them and ate at the tastiest place ever! it's called the sweet water tavern...mmm! but after that we went to the women's conference! it was such a cool experience! it was amazing to think of all of us women gathered together and how powerful we are! me and my companions couldn't stop crying, i don't know why!! I'm grateful i got to go and hear all the amazing messages though! Sunday was another great day! we had an investigator show up to church unexpectedly which is always exciting! after church we had lunch with some members and then did our studies. we then went and did more tracting! Sundays weather was way worse than Saturday but this time we were prepared! we had coats on and boots. no one was interested, but as we were tracting in this cul de sac one of the ladies we tracted into earlier sent her son after us to give us cookies. it was super sweet! we then visited some members who haven't gotten out to church much lately. they are really sweet and we talked to them about conference so they're going to watch that! i am loving my area and companions so so much! it's awesome being with another Portuguese speaker and it's awesome serving with 2 sisters who have really similar personalities and senses of humor! we have such a blast and this area is being set on fire! i love you all so much and hope you have a great week! love, Sister Pehrson