Monday, January 28, 2013

Teach when you find, find when you teach

Hello Everyone!

We are working with Luz as she gets ready for her baptism this Saturday.  She had her interview yesterday, and is super excited for her baptism!  So are we!  Luz is super ready to be baptized, and it is a great privilege to be with her as she covenants with her Father in Heaven.

On Tuesday, we contacted a referral from our zone leaders.  They called us up, and told us about this super awesome person that they had just met.  His name is Miguel.  They told us that they had met him, and that he was super excited about learning more.  Of course, they didn't speak Spanish, and he didn't speak English, so there was a language barrier.  But they told us that they had given him a Book of Mormon in English and pointed to it, and said Jesucristo, Jesucristo es en el Libro.

We had some time that day, so we went up to that area, and contacted him a few hours after they did.  So we get there and Miguel answers the door, and he was an elderly man.  We begin to talk with him, and he says, "Usteds son muy bonitas -- Y'all are very pretty."  We tell him that the muchachos had come by and that they had told us to come by as well, and we give him a Libro de Mormon.  He says, "Si, los muchachos me dijeron que unas mujeres muy bonitas van a venir -- Yes, the young men told me that some very pretty women were going to come by."  Hermana Powell said that she was certain that the elders hadn't told him that we were pretty.
Anyways, we both knew that we were in a completely awkward situation, and that we need to leave as soon as possible.  But before we can do anything, he asks us how old we are. He then asked me if I was married, and I said no, I'm a missionary.  We then quickly read Alma 7:11-12 with him, and started to try to get a closing prayer.  He kept asking us which book in the Bible it was in, and we kept telling him that it was a different book.  We tried to explain the difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible, but frankly after the forth or fifth time, we just didn't care anymore.

Then he goes to hug us, and Hermana Powell, quickly jumps in and says, "Oracion, necesitamos tener una oracion.  -- Prayer, we need to have a prayer."  We have a quick prayer, and leave as quickly as we can.
Thank you elders for referring us to a senile old man who was trying to flirt with us!  :)  We decided that we aren't going back, and if Miguel does come to church and shows some interest, we are going to make the spanish elders teach him, even though he is a little bit out of their area.

We were able to teach a ton of lessons, we just didn't have many exchanges with us, so our numbers took a hit this week.  However, we felt like lesson teaching machines.  We were teaching and teaching and teaching some more.  Now, all we need to do is find quality investigators.  We know that the more lessons we teach, the more poeple we find, the more investigators we are going to have, and the more people who are eventually going to get baptized.  But right now we are still on the "teach when you find, find when you teach" step, and really we are just on the "teach when you find" part.  We are still working on the "find when you teach."  :)
Hopefully everything is going great for y'all back home!

Tenga un buen dia!

Hermana Julie Anna Sanchez


Some more time with Victor's longhorns! :)



Papusas

This is a recipe from Hermana Portillo, and is from Honduras.
Make a dough with maseca, water, and  shortening.
Form the dough into little plates. 
Put cheese or meat inside, and squish up the sides of the plates into a bag.
Remove the excess dough, and pat into a circle (like making a tortilla)
Fry each side, serve with cabbage and salsa.


Tuesday, January 22, 2013

20 member present lessons in a week!

Todos!
So it is transfers week, which means that I spent the first bit of the week with Hermana Facer and the rest of it with Hermana Powell.  We are flying, soaring high!  It is awesome!
We were able to have 20 member present lessons this last week.  Many of those lessons were 3 to 5 minute lessons, which is something that our president is pushing us to do.  If we can have two prayers and teach some principles from Preach My Gospel, then it is a much better first contact with people then just trying to set a return appointment.  The spirit is really good, and if we do our part, then he can come and touch people.  The spirit is much more likely to be present during a lesson, and praying really brings the spirit.  We are pretty sure that 20 member present lessons in a week is a new mission record! 
We are still struggling to find solid investigators.  But last week we went from only having 1 solid investigator family to having 4, so I guess that we are making progress.  We know that there are amazing people here in Denton, we just have to find them.  We are really trying to find those people through members.  Member referrals are amazing! 
Luz is preparing to be baptized and we are so excited for her.  February is an amazing month.  We are hoping to have 2 marriages in February and some more baptisms as well.  We think that all of the people who are not married, but kinda want to be should just get married on February 14th, and then baptized the next week.  That would be super cool!
Hermana Powell is amazing!  She is super happy and excited.  She loves people and is a super fun person.  We work together really well, and it is a pleasure to serve with her!  She is from California (somewhere around Disneyland.)  Her mom works at Disneyland, so she has always gotten into Disneyland for free, whenever she wanted and with 3 friends as well.
Hermana Powell was actually serving in Denton when the sisters got whitewashed out.  It is really good to have her as a companion, because she knows different people here then we were able to find, and so we are able to visit some of them as well, and see how everything is going.  She is really excited for Luz to get baptized, because she was here for a lot of the teaching process with Luz as well.  We were also able to go back to some of the people that Hermana Facer and I found, and with a new companion, a few weeks later, it is possible that something might happen. 
I really like Hermana Powell.  She is super happy and bubly.  She is super great at making friends and teaching 3 minute lessons.  She can turn almost any situation into a lesson, and when we have members out tracting with us, we get tons of member present lessons.  :D 
We just got referred to Javier, again.  He is from Honduras and he came to a baptism, but we had to drop him because he kept punching his appointments.  But some of the elders were tracting in his trailer park, and he said that he wanted to see us again, and he would have texted us, but he lost our number.  I am super excited to begin teaching him again!  :D
We were also able to go back and see the Dominguez Family, and they seem excited to learn more.  And when Hermana Powell got here the first person she had to see was Claudia.  And now we are going to be teaching her boyfriend, Jason, as well! 
Denton is starting to have some success!  All of our hard work is starting to turn into results.  Patience really is something I need to keep working on.  Sometimes the tree of faith (planted by hearing the seed of the word of God; see Alma 32) takes a really long time to grow, and it is hard to see it growing, because we are so close to it, but if we take a step back, and remove ourselves from the situation, then it is easier to see that many of the seeds that we had planted are starting to grow. :D
It is crazy how much missionary work we can get done in a month, in a week, in a day, or even in an hour.  Time really is our most valuable commodity, and it is hard because there is never enough of it.
The theme for my two transfers with Hermana Martinez in Waco was new investigators.
The theme with Hermana Facer in Denton was exchanges (having a member with us when we teach).
I feel like the theme for this coming transfer is going to be 3 to 5 minute lessons.
It is great to have different companions and different areas, because you learn so much from each one. 
Tenga un buen dia!
Hermana Julie Anna Sanchez
P.S.  Families are forever -- D&C 130:2
Denton Courthouse in the Square! 
 
Hermana Facer
  My last zone and district!

 Feeding Victor's longhorns.  Cows have really long wet tongues! :D

 Sister Powell and the longhorns.



Number 4 and top district!!!  :)