Hi Guys!
OVERVIEW
This week was super intense, but super good. The two main things we focused on this week were 1. Gloria (Ortiz) getting baptized (which happened yesterday :D) and 2. the Christmas initiative based on the new Mormon video: "He is the Gift" (or in Spanish, "El es la Dadiva"). Now, for everyone of my musician friends' amusement-- I am going to compare the nervousness I had for yesterday's baptism, to the performance of a student. Anyone who has taught lessons, or had siblings or children play in a concert knows that it is WAY more nerve-wracking than playing on your own. Why? Because, ultimately, at the end of the day, YOU HAVE NO CONTROL. You can push them to practice well and to work hard and to stay focused, and then help them find ways of not being nervous the day of the performance but who goes up there on that stage? NOT YOU. That's how this baptism felt, and about the 48-72 hours before. I've started using knitting as a way to deal with stress, which is awesome actually because I'm like halfway done with a scarf by now, but let's just say...I started that scarf on Thursday. Haha... I literally have never been so nervous about any one specific event in my life. Except, maybe, college auditions. Except in that case...I had more control. Haha. ANYWAYS, it was REALLY AWESOME when all the opposition was got through (CAUSE BELIEVE ME IN THE 72 HOURS BEFORE THE BAPTISM I SWEAR I HAVE NEVER SEEN THE DEVIL WORK SO HARD) to see her get in that water and get baptized. It's honestly like the best feeling I have ever had in my life. Just to illustrate how ridiculous it is to judge missionary work by numbers, putting a "1" by the word "baptism" for this week could absolutely in NO WAY describe the happiness and the beauty and the wonder that was felt by everyone in that room. Yup, I've decided I'm just about done focusing on numbers. This work is not about numbers, it's about love. And if Gloria is the only person I ever bring to the waters of baptism I AM COOL WITH THAT because you know what, I WOULD HAVE CHANGED HER LIFE FOREVER AND GIVEN HER THE OPPORTUNITY TO REACH ETERNAL SALVATION AND EXALTATION, so yeah, in my mind that is way cooler than the number "1". Sorry for my rant, but now you know. I'm focused on what actually MATTERS. Other than that, we have continued working with Maria, and recently picked up her son, Alex, as an investigator. They're doing really well, and I'm excited to see them progress together; but it's a little difficult because the husband/father is really non-supportive. Hopefully we can get him on board soon! :) Of course, we are still working with Juan and Elizabeth too, but they've been really sick this week, so it's been hard getting ahold of them! This upcoming week will definitely be focused on finding, which is actually exciting now that we have this really cool video about Christmas to share with everyone. Oh and I forgot to tell you about thanksgiving. It was RIDICULOUS. We had 3 THANKSGIVING DINNERS at 3 different members homes. And then they all send us home with more food. It was absolutely bonkers. But it was actually super special also, cause one of our dinners was with a less active family whom we brought back to church and answered a huge question/doubt they had about Joseph Smith's first vision, so that was super touching and awesome cause they just love us so much. (They sent us home with literally like a PAN of food...and we ate it for lunch like, all week, and there is STILL MORE) And then we got to have dinner with a less active recent convert and according to Hermana Gates I totally shut him down and made him listen which apparently never happens, so that was cool. I explained to him that going to church is about other people, not just him-- which he had never thought about; so I was pretty happy to be able to (hopefully) have affected him for good! Then lastly, we went to the Tenorios whom I have probably mentioned and they always feed us SO MUCH FOOD so I was terrified, but somehow through the grace of God I was able to finish by reminding myself that "Faith is a principle of power"(see the Bible dictionary...). We ran like we were training for a marathon all this week, so hopefully that made up for the amount of food we ate! haha :P
SPIRITUAL LIGHTBULB
Ok so here's where I'm gonna talk about the Christmas initiative, cause I'm sure you're all wondering about that cause I just left it hanging at the top of the paragraph up there! Haha...Anyhow, I'm going to tell you about MY experience with the video, before I explain how we're trying to use it, or what we'd like members and nonmembers to get out of it all around the world. So there is this member of our ward that has a house that basically time warps you to December 25th because her house is literally COVERED in Christmas decorations. She has been collecting ornaments, nutcrackers, and an entire little village of christmas houses for YEARS. Along with that she has a nativity set that is the size of the top half of my body, and all the chairs in her kitchen are covered in little sock-like things that say "Merry Christmas" on them. For those of you who know me super well, Christmas used to be my favorite holiday, until 2012 when a bunch of hard things happened right around Christmas and then I episodically connected Christmas with despair. So needless to say, I had a really emotional response to this lady's house the first time we went there. And we went there like twice in the past two weeks, and the second time we went was like Thursday-- when I started being super stressed about the baptism... To make a long story short, let's just say internally I was resembling something close to Scrooge and my Christmas spirit the week of Thanksgiving points were like... 110 degrees below zero. Cue Friday morning, we go into Riverside for a presentation on the Christmas initiative. Watching this video, my eyes just got super filled up with tears because out of all the super weird feelings I had been having about Christmas; the one thing I HADN'T been focused on was THE SAVIOR, which is what Christmas is all about. Granted it still is gonna be hard for me to talk about Christmas in all our finding activities all day long, but it's not going to be as difficult because as I push through those feelings and focus on what Christmas REALLY is about; I know I will feel that deep burning desire to share the Savior's love with everyone. And yeah, rejection during the Christmas season (which inevitably comes in finding activities) is going to be hard. But Christmas is not about what you get-- it's about what you give. And in fact Christmas isn't about YOU at all! It's about THE SAVIOR. Anyways, the video is like 3 minutes long, but the church is using it in all finding activities the entire month, and they want us to be getting out 10 of the "El es la Dadiva" cards every day if possible so we'll be working really hard. I'm assuming that members will hear about this incentive from the missionaries in their wards, but basically they have 9 pass along cards in every copy of the Ensign and the challenge is for all members to try to get out AT LEAST ONE, if not all 9 of those pass along cards, by Christmas; to share this video and to get it to be seen ALL OVER THE WORLD. The video has a strong impact just from watching it, but the First Presidency is really hoping we can use this as a strong missionary tool to get people really interested in hearing about the church-- and I already have seen it working, and I get filled with this sense of wonder thinking about how much it could really do if we all do our part. So I hope we can all do our part!!! And then, to all you nonmembers out there, the challenge I want to give you is this-- If a missionary or a friend gives you one of these little cards with their phone number on it, watch the video and call them back. We have so much more to give you then just the warm and fuzzy feeling you will get at the end of that video!! AH SO WHY JUST TALK ABOUT IT HERE'S THE THING WATCH IT AND SEE WHAT YOU THINK!!!!
http://www.mormon.org/christmas (just click view the video right on the front page)
Okie dok so since I did a pretty good overview and I'm crunched for time and I've got to send in my weekly report, I'll skip out on the top ten today; but to make up for it I'm going to send you some really awesome pictures! REMEMBER HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU!!!
xoxoxo
Hermana Lindsey