Week Fifty-Eight: Exchanges

Area: Arvin Spanish Group
Companion: Hermana Luquette

This week was interesting. It was full of even more exchanges and Zone Conference. We have been really busy, but we are working hard and we have been seeing miracles every day!

Our first exchanges of the week were with Hermana Torres and Hermana Dye from up in Little Rock. Hermana Torres and I had a really good night and we were able to talk to a lot of people. We had a couple of appointments, but most of them fell through at the last moment and we ended up walking around in the rain for a while. I liked it because it made me feel like an authentic missionary! :) The good thing about Arvin is that there are always people outside on the streets, even when it is dark and rainy.

We had exchanges again at the end of the week with the Hermanas from Esperanza who are in a trio and I went with Hermana Badger and Hermana Galvez, a new missionary. It was really fun. It makes me a little sad that I have never really experienced the trio life for real. We had lessons with almost all of our investigators, so it was nice to be able to teach that much.

Because Julio lives in Lamont now, we are letting the elders that work there teach him his recent convert lessons, so we had a combined lesson to hand him off. I was still with Hermanas Badger and Galvez and the elders are currently in a trio as well, so there were a ton of missionaries at the lesson. We decided to teach Julio about prayer and to teach him how to say simple prayers. We have taught Julio a million times that we pray to God, but each time that Julio prays, he prays to Jesus Christ. We decided to teach by demonstration, so each one of the six missionaries that was there said a short, simple prayer. Then, we went over one more time how to say simple prayers and we asked Julio to say one. We all had our fingers crossed that he got the lesson, but he again addressed his prayer to Jesus Christ. There was an audible groan from all of us. He is a work in progress, but he is still happy to be baptized!

This week, during planning, we decided to shake things up a little bit. Normally, we look through our records for people who stopped learning from the missionaries a while ago and plan them in to see. Normally, they are either not home or not interested, so we decided that we were going to call the numbers that are listed on their records. The first person that we called that way was named Refugio. He was taught by the missionaries here right before I came to Arvin. When we called to set up the appointment, he was super excited and told us that we could come over that night. We went to see him and he told us that we could sit and talking to him on a tree stump that was in his yard. I felt like I was in a fairy tale or something. He told us that he didn't know why the other missionaries had stopped coming by and that he wanted to be baptized. We asked him if he still wanted that and he said that he did. He is super cute and has a lot of faith. He has trouble reading, so we have gone over every day since then and read from the Book of Mormon with him. On Saturday night, he told us that he wouldn't be able to go to church this week because his boss told him that he had to work. We told him that we understood, but we were praying with him for a miracle that would let him come to church. On Sunday morning, right before church, he texted us and told us that he got off of work earlier than he thought that he would and that he was able to come to church. He got there a little bit late, but he really liked it!

Things are going well here. I am so happy that I have been given the chance to serve a mission here in Bakersfield and to meet all of the people that I have. I love working here! Every day, I am able to see the blessings of God on the work and that he really cares about us all. I love the gospel and I love being a missionary. I hope that you all have a good week!

Hermana Blau