week 2

Oct 12, 2015

This week has been really good. Some days were less awesome, but we’ve seen some exciting success. On Wednesday we finally made contact with this lady named Joanie, who we’d tried to see pretty much every day since I got here. Her grandson, Elder Everette, is serving in this mission right now, though he’s in a different area. I’m not sure why, but she hasn’t seen him since he was little and his mom saw him recently and he got to baptize her. His dad is also somewhere in this mission. Anyway, we met with her and just talked a lot about God’s love and she seemed really open and her beliefs are already very similar to ours. We went back on Friday and taught her the Restoration and she was totally open to our message and we talked a lot. She is so, so sweet and grandmotherly and she even called us later that day to see if we were doing alright. She’s very centered on family and we are so excited to teach her the Plan of Salvation this week, either Wednesday or Thursday.

We got a referral for the first time which is a miracle because they’re hard to get and street contacting is sometimes not very effective – I’ll tell you why. In the whole time I been here we have hardly seen anyone walking the street. On Saturday we spent six or more hours walking and went through most of our available contacting area. We saw about ten people in all and only got eight contacts. People don’t come outside, not even in the parks. I am firmly convinced that the sidewalks here are purely for decoration because no one uses them. I’m not sure why they’re so proud of their California weather if they don’t go outside. Also on Saturday it was 100 something degrees outside. This is completely unusual. (Quick side note: It had rained twice since my trainer got here. It has rained twice since I got here. Normally the weather is really consistent.) It had been even hotter on Friday. with not a breath of air, so we had prayed that it wouldn’t be as bad, and that we could bear it walking for so long in the heat. That day was really hot and really tiring and the sun was merciless, but there was just enough of a semi-cool breeze that would come up every little while so we had some relief. The breeze isn’t even supposed to be cool at all. Apparently the winds blow off the desert toward the coast and it’s supposed to be hot wind. So I think that was a direct answer to prayer. Also, I was wrong about there being two gated communities in our area. There’s actually three. There are no major gathering places for people to walk around. It’s kind of like walking through a very well manicured, extra large ghost town. Even in the gated communities there are very few people outside. Our goal for contacts last week was 56. We got 20 and that was significantly better than the week before and we try to talk to almost everyone. We are seeing miracles, though not connecting directly to that. I know that God is rewarding our righteous efforts. The referral we received was after a long hard day and was totally out of the blue. We’ve been trying to get a referral for two weeks.

We are also trying to teach the Collins family. The mom, Leslie, has cancer. They want to be baptized, but we have to wait for her to feel good. There’s this awesome girl named Charlotte who had told a member that she wished she could go to church and the member was like “Well, you could come with me.” She wanted so badly to learn about the gospel, but her parents won’t let us teach her or let her get baptized, but they let her come to church and we do lessons for the young women on Preach My Gospel that she gets to come to. She read all of PMG and the Book of Mormon and is awesome. They’ve had her as an investigator for a while. We have to wait till she’s 18 and she’s only 16, but she is doing all she can.

Also, I forgot to tell you, but I saw Nick Huston and Marcus Perrenoud in the MTC.

Since I’m not learning a language, I got myself a Tongan Book of Mormon just for fun at the MTC. Then I got here and there is this awesome Elder from Tonga who I’ll have to tell you about sometime. I’m already understanding some of the words. But don’t worry, it’s not distracting me from the work. AND YES I TOTALLY WANT A UKULELE!!!!!!! Almost forgot that.

Oh, Thanks for the letter Annes! That’s super exciting about your math book! Love you.

Fisher, that’s so crazy about Sister Flora! My mission is going good. Sorry about the kittens.

Love you all!
Sister Blythe W.