So James is now officially a member of Christ's true church! He received the Holy Ghost on Sunday, so now he's official! So exciting!!!!! By the way, is he not the cutest thing ever? He didn't have his giant grin on in the pictures we got of him, but still. His life's ambition now is to study the scriptures really hard so that he can answer questions in class like the other men do. He thinks that it's so cool that they know the scriptures so well and he wants to be able to participate too.
Okay so listen to this (read it!):
So remember that cool referral that we contacted last week? Well. We had set up an appt for this Tuesday aaaaaaaaaand... it fell through. She wasn't home. BUT. We already had a member with us for the lesson, so we just had her take us to see one of our investigators that we haven't been able to contact in over a month. We had THE coolest, most spiritual lesson ever with him, and then he completely dropped off. He likes our stuff on Facebook and stuff, but he won't respond when we text/call/stop by/Facebook him. It's SO frustrating. So yeah, I kind of felt like we should go try him even though it was 10ish in the morning and that has never worked when they tried that in the past. But as soon as I said something, all three of us felt like we should. So we did. Not only was he home (we set an appointment for that day at 4) but we also caught a less active that we have tried a million times out in front of her house! So we felt like that was probably a big part of the reason that we felt like we should go.
But wait! There's more!
So we're looking for a member to come with us to our new 4 o'clock appointment and no ones is responding! So again, we feel like we should call Sister Lemmon (the bishop's wife) and boom. Worked out.
Gary was definitely home, but he didn't answer, so we have officially dropped him which makes me really sad because he's awesome.
BUT again. We already had a member, so we thought that we'd stop by a potential investigator. Now get this, I've been updating the iPad area book for the last few weeks, transferring all of the paperwork from the giant-binder area book into the iPads. So I'm pretty dang familiar with the names of all of the potential investigators in there. Well we were planning on night last week and the name "Helen Garcia" popped up out of nowhere. Neither of us recognized the name or background info at all. So naturally we're like "heck yes we're going to try her!" But then we had so much nurse stuff all week that we never got a chance to. So we stopped by with Sister Lemmon.
We knocked about three times, we could hear the TV inside so knew that there was someone there. We were just about to leave when a young woman answers the door. She looks like she's barely older than me. We ask for Helen Garcia and this girl has never heard of her and has lived in that house for a couple of years. So we introduce ourselves. "I'm Catholic." That's great! We teach all about Jesus Christ.
She let us in. The house is really small and in pretty poor condition. There were three little girls in there (5, 2, and 4 months). The woman (Carinna, like "Karina") sits us down and then runs to get her boyfriend so that he can listen too. We taught them the Restoration and then had the boyfriend (Jerry) pray at the end. Then we asked them how they felt and they looked at each other, kind of surprised, and then started describing how they felt so much peace and warmth and lightness. You could tell that neither of them had ever really felt the Holy Ghost before. It was so amazing to see! They just want so badly for their girls to have a good life and good morals. They want them to be raised right, which is just what this gospel will help them do! We have a return appointment for tomorrow evening! They are just the sweetest little family, I'm so excited for them!
What was really cool then is that Sister Lemmon told us afterward that she had kind of felt off all day. She prayed and read her scriptures, but still felt weird. So when we called she figured that coming out with us is just what she needed to get back on track. Boy did it ever! She was so happy to have been there to witness that miracle. Stuff like that NEVER happens to us. Ever. I think only one other complete stranger has ever let me in to teach them in my 8 months on my mission.
So yeah. It was basically the coolest thing ever.
Last exciting thing: I'm talking to my family on Sunday!!!!!!!!!! I feel like it wasn't that long ago that I talked to them last time. Christmas doesn't seem like it was that long ago. I'm excited!
Anyhow, I love and miss you all! I hope that you are all doing great missionary work back home!
~Sister Kretchman
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