Week Eight: Progressing Much Faster Than Normal

Us with the Sister Training Leaders

Area: Littlerock Spanish Branch

Companion: Hermana White

Hello everyone. I have been having a great time and learning so much during this week. I always feel like I am learning so much every day and that I progress so much faster than is normal. I know that I have been receiving help from the Lord.

Life is good here in California. Even though everyone says that the Bakersfield area is the armpit of California, there are still plenty of things to love about it. For example, the weather is pretty much perfect every day (for now, at least). When I tell people that it is a little hot outside, they always laugh and tell me that I am going to die in the summer. I believe it. This morning, I took off my watch and found out that I have a watch tan! Right now, I am enjoying the weather that we have and trying to avoid thinking about what the weather is going to be like next month.

This week, I went on my first exchange with the Hermana Training Leaders. There are not very many hermanas in the mission (only about 14). It was super interesting. Hermana Aguilar, who I went with, is a native Spanish speaker, so it was really strange to hear her talk to others and learn more about teaching. We taught one of their recent converts about the plan of salvation, but we didn't end up making it to the end of the lesson because he started talking about all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories. Because it was in Spanish, I wasn't able to follow much, but I think that he said that some planet is going to mess up the magnetic poles of the Earth and that we are all going to burn. It was good to know.

I think the thing that I have noticed the most during this week is that the people that we teach either haven't really read the Bible at all or they have read the Bible and can quote it forwards and backwards. For example, we met a man outside of his house late yesterday. We started teaching him the message of the Restoration and he started to share his experiences with religion and the Bible. Then he brought his Bible out of his car and started to share scriptures with us about the nature of God. He told us that he went out and knocked on doors like us and that he was super impressed with how we (mostly Hermana White) could speak Spanish. So he invited us in to talk with the leader of the church that he went to. We went and talked to them about the church for about an hour. By the end, they were super excited to read the Book of Mormon and wanted to learn more.

A really angry chihuahua that one of our investigators owns.
She followed us around for about 10 minutes after we left.

... but this is her cute puppy. :)
There are three more. I'm beginning to see why some people don't like dogs.
They are all over the place here, and most of them don't like missionaries.

I really love the people that we get to meet out here. I think that when I go home, I am going to have to go around on weekends and knock on the doors of random people just to hear their stories. The other night, we met this couple who work as chefs for celebrities and run a skate shop. When we met them, they were super drunk. The entire time that we were talking to them, the lady kept saying over and over again that she loved our message so much and that she wanted to be baptized. Then she told us that we were beautiful and that Hermana White looked like Kiera Knightly and that I looked like Kate Winslet. The entire time that she was talking, she was swaying back and forth and dropping the things that she was holding. We are going back to see them tomorrow. Hopefully, they will be just as accepting of our message when they are sober.

We met the coolest family ever this week. We had been teaching one of their family members and we went to see him one day. When we went there, his nephew came up to us and told us that he had been baptized and went to a YSA ward in a different part of California and that he wanted us to teach his sisters and so he invited us to dinner. When we came over, he asked us if we liked pizza. When we told him that we did, he said that we weren't going to have pizza -- we were going to have pizza pasta. He just took pizza ingredients and added pasta to it. When we started eating, he said, "to be honest I also added just a little bit of cinnamon." You could really taste the cinnamon, but it was so nice to eat with them. We were able to share a message about prayer and I think that they really were listening.

I love this work and I am so happy to be serving as a missionary right now. I love getting to talk to people and being able to see people learn and grow. I feel like as I do this, I am able to learn and grow as well. That is really the reason that we all are here. I know that this church is the restored church of Jesus Christ and that it can lead to true happiness. 

I love you all at home. Thank you for all of your prayers. They really help!

Hermana Blau