Little Ms. Missionary: Letter #42 (July 7, 2014)

How in the world is it P-Day again already?! I feel like I just had P-Day yesterday! Time is seriously just flying right on by. It's my eighth transfer already! Sister Fjeldsted and I are still together in Huntington!!! We survived transfers! We kind of figured we would since I haven't even been here for a whole transfer and she has only been here for about a week and a half longer than me.

So let's see if I can quickly sum up the week and then I'll explain more in depth.

This week I/we:

-Taught Jennie Supawong

-Shattered my iPad

-Got a new mission president

-Didn't go to the temple with James

-Started teaching a sweet couple

-Had people ask me for a pass along card

-Watched some illegal fireworks and some really pathetic legal ones

-Got some sad news from a less active that we are working with

So, Jennie first. We taught her the beginning of the Plan of Salvation. She is just so sweet. It's kind of sad because she has dedicated her whole life for the past 20ish years to raising her daughter. Her husband left her to raise her daughter alone, so her daughter has been her focus for years and years. But now her daughter is all grown up and successful, so Jennie feels like she doesn't really have a purpose or a goal anymore. We talked to her about how we all have a purpose in life and how living this gospel will help her to find her purpose. I know that this will help her so much and I'm so excited for her to have these blessings in her life!

My iPad. My poor, poor iPad. I've dropped it a couple of times and it cracked a little bit, but he other night I wast feeling very well and I just lost my grip on my iPad and it fell and just cracked all over the place. So now I have a new one. Well, an old one, it used to believe to a Chinese elder that I served with my first transfer. It has Chinese keyboards in it and he had a stopwatch running that just kept going after he left so it had about 131 days on it!

James (my rent convert from Glendora) went to the temple on Saturday( to do baptisms)! I had really hopes to be able to go when he went for the first time, but I didn't find out until last minute because I'm not in that ward anymore. I was really sad that I couldn't go, but I am so happy at he went! He's still going strong! I just love him so much!

I met President Villanueva on Tuesday when I went in to get my iPad replaced. Him and his wife were introducing themselves to all of us in the lobby and President got to me, looked at my tag, and sadly exclaimed "so many hard names!" Haha, poor President. Apparently his wife speaks better English than he does, but neither of them speak English very well. I still can't believe that the Becerra's are gone. It's too weird.

So the other night I was praying and just got a feeling that we should go see Gilbert the next day. Gilbert has basically disappeared off the face if the earth, so it seemed really silly. But I got up after my prayer, wrote it on a sticky note, and then went to bed. So we changed our plans a little bit the next day so that we could go find him. Which we didn't. We still can't find him anywhere. BUT. We found Jamie instead. She was just standing there and so we went over and asked if she knew Gilbert (she didn't) and then started talking to her about the gospel. Her and her family are going through a lot right now. They are staying in a motel temporarily until they can find a place to live, but they can't find a place to live until her husband finds a job, which is hard because they have no car and their phones are disconnected. Anyway. We promised her that the gospel would help her on her life and she said that we could come back the next day to teach her and her family. So we started teaching her and her husband yesterday! Her boys were sick, so we just taught the parents outside. Jamie told us that after we talked to her before. Her heart felt all fluttery. We have another lesson scheduled for Wednesday!

Okay, now this was way cool:

We were on our way to zone meeting and I tried to talk to the woman sitting next to me on the bus. But she didn't speak English (most people here don't). So I have her a Spanish pass along card. Then the lady across from me asks "do you have one of those in English? Can I have one?" Um, heck yes you can! And THEN the lady on the the other side of me asks if she can have an English one too! That NEVER happens. Ever. It was so cool! And I'm pretty sure the lady across from me looked upMormon.org on her phone rig then and there. And then she asked me if the handwritten number on the back of the card was for our church, I told her that it was for us missionaries, and she is just like "oh okay, cool." So maybe she'll call! Who knows! So cool though.

So we had two Fourth of July BBQs. The second one went on into the night (we left for curfew, no worries) so they started pulling out fireworks. I grew up watching fireworks shows, but in CA it seems that there aren't vey many places that do them because of the fire hazard I would assume. So the Besaw's (whose house we were at) pulled out some of the little ground fireworks. It was kind of funny because this was obviously a family tradition that a few of he families in the neighborhood do every year. I've only seen fireworks like that a couple of times, so I couldn't tell you which ones were snakes or piccolo Pete's or flowers, but they sure could! There were a few booming ones in the sky that other people were shooting odd, but apparently those are the illegal ones. Which is unfortunate, because those are the kind that I love. Oh well.

And then the sad news. We have been working with a family where the mom is less active and the dad and kids are not members. We have been struggling to see them for the past few weeks, which is strange, because the mom loves having us over. So we caught her at home yesterday and she told us that something horrible had happened that I won't get in to, but that resulted with her husband no longer being with the family. It is so sad. Sister Fjeldsted and I struggled to focus on anything else for he rest of the day.

It is so sad for me to think of how corrupt the world is today. But I realize that the one thing that will help this family me most is the gospel. It made me so grateful for my own loving family and for the truths of the gospel that I know. Me and Sister Fjeldsted are the only ones that the mom feels comfortable talking to about their situation right now, so we are going to do everything that we can to help them get back on track. What is really amazing to me is that this ward hasn't had sisters in over 15 years. But this sister needed sister missionaries. The elders had always focused more on the non member dad, so they wouldn't have had the right connection with her to really be the love and support that she needs. I am so grateful to know that we have a loving Father in Heaven who is so aware of our needs. He knew what was coming. And he knew that she would need our support. So he made it possible for us to get here, and then to develop a bond with her that will help carry her through this time of trial.

Sorry that this email is all over the place, it has been such a crazy, awesome, fast, sad week.

I love being a missionary. I love knowing that the Lord will take puny little me and use me to help others to find happiness. I am grateful for opposition in all things because it helps us to learn and grow. I know that this gospel is true and will bring everyone who accepts it unmeasurable happiness.

I love you all do much! Go out and do some missionary work!

~Sister Kretchman

The timer on the new ipad has been running for this long: