17 March 2014

 Hola,

I can't believe I have made it all of the way until Monday. It has just been one of those weeks. There have been so many great things happening, but also some big problems to be solved.  Oh how I love to be a missionary.

So on Monday comes the first big piece of news. I don't remember if mentioned her last week, but we picked up a new investigator this week. Her name is Yasmine. She is newly married to a member of the Ward. She has met with the missionaries twice before but now is the time. She is very ready and excited to be baptized. She would technically be taught by the English Elders, but she preferred Sisters so we are teaching her. The funny thing is that she is Hispanic so she is kind of ours too. She just speaks perfect English! The nice thing is we teach when her husband is there, so, how I like to call it is that it is like having a member present 24/7. The weird thing is that they are both 19 and married, so it is an interesting experience. We had another member present with a 17 year old name Karissa from the Ward. We are teaching someone from her high school and his parents. She is taking Spanish in high school and we asked her to share her testimony about the Book of Mormon and thought the Spanish was very simple.  She totally brought the spirit and really helped us to end our lesson on a great note! The best part was also that Karissa loved it. She said that she totally wanted to come out again! It was a wonderful night. I felt so good after that night and I hadn't felt that good teaching in a long time.

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On Tuesday I went on exchanges with the 2 sisters I am over. I met with the Sister I was not going on exchanges with just to see how she was doing. She has been struggling with many parts of missionary life, so I just wanted to know more about her instead of waiting a whole other week for our exchange. It wasn't very easy to open her up, but I think it was a good start to our relationship.  I taught in district meeting about the principle of the love that the Savior has and how we need to have that love for everyone we come in contact with as missionaries. It is crazy to think of how much love we have to have in order to truly touch people's hearts.  I went on exchanges with Hermana Fernandez. Though she was struggling with her companionship, our exchange was amazing. I just felt like we were on fire teaching and talking to everyone we saw! We were a great companionship. She is from Spain so her Spanish sounds a little different.  It was great. Her last companion was Hermana LeMmon, so I think that is why we get along so well. We tried to talk about how to help her companion and it was just hard to think of how to train a missionary who has techinically already been trained.

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Wednesday We switched back.  We had a good evening teaching a less-active. He was a little creepy, but we taught him at the church with the Bishop there just to be safe. He works on Sunday so he can't come to church, but little by little he will get there. Then we taught Yasmine again. We asked her to pray for a baptismal date on Monday. So on Wednesday she told us that she is in between the 30th of March and the 13th of April. In my head I was thinking how soon that was and how exciting it was. We talked about the Book of Mormon and the plan of salvation. She remembered the most important part about the kingdoms and the goal being the celestial kingdom so that was perfect and so we just reviewed all of things before. She really seemed to just accept it all.  It was great! (My companion got frustrated and was crying in the bathroom from like 10:30 to 11:00, so I tried to help but I didn't know what I could do.My second night staying up past 11:00)

On Thursday we did some contacting in a duplex complex. It was nice to be able to go out talking to people. I really have tried to love people more, but also to try and be more sensitive to their needs. It was a great time for contacting! I also picked up some new investigators on facebook which is great. We are supposed to teach 1 lesson for every hour we are online, to make sure we are actually accomplishing something while being online. It is a good motivator for me so it is always nice to have more people to talk to. Later in the evening we taught a less-active from the ward. She is a single mom so it is easier for us as Sisters to go into her home. She is a talker though,t so it is hard to teach a lesson.  But we got it done.

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On Friday we had planning and correlation which actually took up most of the day. We were home for dinner and my companion was stressed out so she decided to go for a run. She ran up the hill on the property we live on and when on the top we thought we heard someone yelling help. So we ran back down to tell the Bishop. He and his mom came out and drove us back up on one of the carts they use to get around. It was fun to be on the cart, but we were hoping everything would be ok. It turns out that there is a goat farm nearby, so it could have been that. They checked at the neighbors house that was near by and they said all was well.  I am glad my companion and I heard a call and hearkened to it together! In the evening we needed to ask the Bishop's family for something so it was nice to have a good little chat with them since we live so close to each other.

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Saturday we walked to see some potentials and investigators in a neighborhood and 2 hours of walking later we had contacted a referral, made an appointment with our investigator, and contacted 20 people! It felt great! Then we taught our investigators - Lupe and Estela. Their house was a little crazy but we set baptismal dates with them both. In the evening we had our Saturday night lesion of stake conference. The funny thing is that I was there for the last stake conference of the Woodland stake 6 months ago, so it was good to be back. Elder Sabin was the visiting authority. He was full of stories to tell and relate to. We spent the night at the Sister apartment in Woodland in order to save miles.

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Sunday we went to special meeting for investigators and recent converts and Yasmine actually came and told us that she wants to get baptized on the 13th of April! It was great news. Then the 10:00 session was great too. The thing that stuck out to me that Elder Sabin said was, "There are many things that are interesting, but there are more things that are important". There was a lot on balance in the Sunday meeting. The fun thing was we stayed in Woodland for the day, so I got to eat dinner with the Perez's again. It felt so normal to be in their home. It was a little weird to have different experiences and to have been separated for 5 months, but it was fun. (I was really excited to eat dinner at their house. The relationship wasn't exactly the same like when I left, but it was good. I was a little disappointed, but grateful for the relationship we had) I ate a cerrano chile. It was so hot, but worth it in order to say that I had done it.

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Overall this week was crazy, but great. I am so grateful for all of the experiences I have had in order to help me more now and in the future. Keep learning and growing!

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Con amor,

Hermana Cornwall

The "Bishop's" property on which Sister Cornwall lives.