Hello there!
Well lets see, this week has been great. We have been riding our bikes a lot and I love it. We get to talk to more people when we are on bikes instead of cars, so it is good for the work too. Not to mention the air is getting cooler....love it!
We had our first interviews with President Howes and had a full day of training afterwards. I learned a lot, like we need to work a lot harder. Our mission president has challenged us to baptize every week....right now that seems like a far off goal. BUT, we are trying to find more people and trying to plan better. With time we should make it. I am excited to reach that goal.
So one of the nights this week we had dinner at the house of an older couple, they have been married for about 5 years. It was probably the most interesting experience of my life. He was baptized when he was 41 years old, and since then he has had vision after vision and crazy crazy things happen in his life. We found ourselves sitting and listening for an hour and a half about all sorts of false doctrine.....hahaha, it was so crazy! To say the least, I am very grateful for the simple truths of the gospel and how we have a prophet that guides our church and he will never lead us astray:)
We also got a referral from someone in our english ward and went over to meet the people right after our lovely dinner. The member that told us about them said that the dad had just left the family and they were not very active in their church that they attended.....boy was he wrong. The family is so sweet! They let us come in and get to know them and they started asking about how our church got started. We got to the part about the great apostasy and how the people rejected the gospel and shared a few scriptures about the apostasy....and they were could not see how the bible talked about it at all. One of the daughters started Bible bashing and we couldn't get through to any of them because their hearts were so closed off to everything. Moral of the story....as missionaries we really need to focus on finding people that are receptive to the gospel. We can talk to and preach to any one....but we have to seek the ones that will be receptive to the spirit and to the message :)
Well general conference is coming up on the 6th and 7th, fun fun fun! We have a baptism for a little boy named Hector on that sunday after conference, so we are super excited. He is soooo good!
One fun little thing we did one night was go scorpion hunting. FREAKY! So when it is dark out, if you get a black light and go walk around outside, and when you find a scorpion it is a bright green color and stick out so good! It was pretty sweet....in a creepy crawly way :)
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
September 17, 2012
This week has been good. I am learning that missionary work is a lot more than just teaching lessons. We study and have training and plan for so long sometimes. We usually don't get out to teach until around 1 or so. But this is the Lord's work....so I will do it His way....sometimes it is just so much studying, haha.
Because we have 2 wards, every 2 weeks we switch where we have dinner appointments. So far they have been in the spanish ward...and I finally had my first experience where I couldn't eat something. Haha it was so funny! Every one is convinced to the fact that members will loose respect for you if you don't eat all of what they give you. If you eat it too fast they end up just giving you more, and if you eat to slow they think you hate it.....it is a very VERY fine line, haha. So on Friday we had dinner at this family. Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful for the food that they cook for us. But have you ever had something called mole before? (hint....its not the little critter that digs in the dirt) it is some sort of sauce that has chocolate and tons of spices. Well they dished up a whole plate full of the sauce mixed up with some shredded chicken. I tried to eat it....but after the 5th or 6th bite I literally almost shared it with every one else at the table. Haha. It was so funny! Thankfully the family didn't hate me and they were really nice to me at church still :) But my companion said that that was some of the best mole she has had on her mission.....I think that I might be in trouble, haha :D
In our english ward we just got a new ward mission leader, his name is Brother Keesler and his wife is a ward missionary too. They are so great! We ate dinner over there last night and talked about the missionary work in the ward and he is on fire. He is just what the ward needs to get them all fired up. So hopefully we will get more and more teaching opportunities in our english ward. The only trouble with that is that it is super tricky to learn spanish. My companion is good at spanish, but she only speaks it during lessons, and everything we do pretty much is in english.....so I guess I am just supposed to learn it in the 2 or 3 hours we teach in spanish for the day? I just don't know......there has got to be an easier way, and I hope we figure it out fast or else I am going to forget everything I learned in the MTC. But I really am loving everything going on out here :)
One neat thing that happened this week is that we got a referral from someone in another ward to go talk to a guy named Grant. The friend said he is super interested in the church and wants to learn more. We went to visit him on friday and this guy is awesome! He already went out and bought his own Book of Mormon and started reading it. We have high hopes for Grant:) I am learning more and more that it is all about desire. If someone doesn't want to change their life and find out for themselves that the Book of Mormon is true, they will not care about it. It is funny, when we are walking down a street sometimes people will see us coming and all of a sudden we will see 6 or 7 grage doors go down at the same time. It is just a funny thing to me that something so good can be rejected so fast. But anyway. It is a fun experience. I love you all and hope all is well.
Because we have 2 wards, every 2 weeks we switch where we have dinner appointments. So far they have been in the spanish ward...and I finally had my first experience where I couldn't eat something. Haha it was so funny! Every one is convinced to the fact that members will loose respect for you if you don't eat all of what they give you. If you eat it too fast they end up just giving you more, and if you eat to slow they think you hate it.....it is a very VERY fine line, haha. So on Friday we had dinner at this family. Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful for the food that they cook for us. But have you ever had something called mole before? (hint....its not the little critter that digs in the dirt) it is some sort of sauce that has chocolate and tons of spices. Well they dished up a whole plate full of the sauce mixed up with some shredded chicken. I tried to eat it....but after the 5th or 6th bite I literally almost shared it with every one else at the table. Haha. It was so funny! Thankfully the family didn't hate me and they were really nice to me at church still :) But my companion said that that was some of the best mole she has had on her mission.....I think that I might be in trouble, haha :D
In our english ward we just got a new ward mission leader, his name is Brother Keesler and his wife is a ward missionary too. They are so great! We ate dinner over there last night and talked about the missionary work in the ward and he is on fire. He is just what the ward needs to get them all fired up. So hopefully we will get more and more teaching opportunities in our english ward. The only trouble with that is that it is super tricky to learn spanish. My companion is good at spanish, but she only speaks it during lessons, and everything we do pretty much is in english.....so I guess I am just supposed to learn it in the 2 or 3 hours we teach in spanish for the day? I just don't know......there has got to be an easier way, and I hope we figure it out fast or else I am going to forget everything I learned in the MTC. But I really am loving everything going on out here :)
One neat thing that happened this week is that we got a referral from someone in another ward to go talk to a guy named Grant. The friend said he is super interested in the church and wants to learn more. We went to visit him on friday and this guy is awesome! He already went out and bought his own Book of Mormon and started reading it. We have high hopes for Grant:) I am learning more and more that it is all about desire. If someone doesn't want to change their life and find out for themselves that the Book of Mormon is true, they will not care about it. It is funny, when we are walking down a street sometimes people will see us coming and all of a sudden we will see 6 or 7 grage doors go down at the same time. It is just a funny thing to me that something so good can be rejected so fast. But anyway. It is a fun experience. I love you all and hope all is well.
Monday, September 10, 2012
September 10, 2012
Well Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!! How are you all?
I am doing just great!!! My first week in Arizona has been fantastic! So lets see...the first day we met the mission president, President and Sister Howes....they are so great. We also got to go OYMing which is where you just go walk around the street and talk to people (it stands for open your mouth), that was quiet the experience. Some people looked at us like we were crazy (oh wait, I am :) and some people felt bad for us out in the heat so they talked to us, and there were 2 or 3 that were interested in our message. It was a great experience with getting comfortable just talking to people about the gospel.
The next day we met our companions. My companion is Hermana Taylor, she has been on her mission for a year now and is from minnisota...yeah I have no idea how to spell that, haha. She is great and I am learning a lot from her so it is a good experience. And we have a car, cool huh? yeah for air conditioning. Because the spanish areas are really spread out, it looks like I will have a car for most of my mission. When we get to an area we will bike around though. Speaking of the bike.....so I was told that all I would have to do it pop the tire on the bike and everything else would be assembled.....yeah.... about that. The bike was here waiting for me in about 10 different parts. Thankfully one of the ward mission leaders is really good and bikes and he is putting it together for me. Nice huh?
The members here are great. We have had dinner every night and they are so nice! We are in an area called Queen Creek. In our area we have part of gilbert and some other places that I don't really know the names of yet (maybe chandler is one of them).... But anyway, mother dear you should send my Aunt Robbies address. I won't be going to visit her, but it would be cool to have. So we are the missionaries for 2 wards, one is them is english, and one of them is spanish:) If you thought that 3 hours of church was long....think again! haha. Our english ward starts at 10 and then out spanish ward starts at 12 and we go to all 3 hours of that.
This week we have been doing a lot of work in our spanish ward. We have 2 people being baptized soon, one is an 8 year old boy who's parents are not members, and another one is named Ana. I don't know too much about her, other than she lives in the middle of the desert! The catcus's out there are incredible! Another family that we are working with in the spanish ward, the wife's name is Mirse and she has 4 kids. They go to church every sunday and read and pray. The only think keeping them from baptism is the father. He had a batismal date and then someone anti-ed him.....so we are trying to work on that family a lot! The work in our english ward is a little slow right now. We are only teaching 1 person. We just got a new ward mission leader and he seems super excited to get the work started up again in the ward. We are really just trying to excite the members and help them get comfortable sharing the gospel with their friends so we can find more people to teach. Tracting definitely is not the way to go, people just get mad you have the nerve to knock on their door....but through members it is so much better!!!!
Anyway, thats been my life the past week :) I love Arizona. It is so beautiful in a desert sort of way. So far it has rained 2 days since I have been here, and I guess that is sort of a big deal. And it has been humid like you said it would mom. But it has been getting drier. And I was in my first dust storm. That was so crazy. you just see a cloud of dust in the air and all of a sudden you are just standing in it. We were told to try our hardest not to be out in one of them because you can catch valley fever...I don't really know what that is....but I am going to try my hardest not to find out:)
I love you all and hope everything is well. Just so you know, you can write the mission home address if you have a letter for me during a transfer week...or anytime for that matter. We get that mail about once a week when we see our zone leader. But I would prefer getting mail at our little house that we live in. I love you all and wish I had more time. But just know that I love you and miss you. I am so grateful to be a missionary in Arizona. I absolutley love it and I love sharing the gospel with these people!!!!!! love you all!
Saturday, September 1, 2012
August 30, 2012
So!! hello again! I love Thursdays for 2 reasons....we get to go to the temple and I get to e-mail you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) So lets see...there is only 5 more days in the MTC! I am so excited to head out. We just got a letter from our Mission President today and got our schedule for the first day in the field. We get to Phoenix at 9:15 and will meet the President and his wife there. Then we will have pictures and lunch and interviews and meetings, and then we will spend the night in a members house. This is getting SO real. :)
So one of the Elders in my district, Elder Thorson, is going to Peru for his mission. He during week 3 he was suppose to go to the Peru MTC......but his visa never came. Sad huh? So anyway, his visa still hasn't come so they reasigned him to a different mission until his Visa gets here. It was fun, it was like watching someone open their mission call all over again, and he is going to Chicago illinois.... so that was reall fun.
At the temple today, one of our Teachers Hermano Angel came with us. We have gotten really close to our teachers, they are awesome! Hermano Angel is the one that tells us stories and practical info about his mission, and Hermana Olsen is one of the most spiritual people that I know. It was been really fun getting to know them and learn from them too:) I am going to miss it!
The MTC has gotten a little repetitive the last week.....its kind of just the same stuff going on, suprise suprise, haha. Tomorrow instead of class and a 'normal' schedule, we have in field training.....meaning that we are so getting ready to go:) Woohoo!!!!
I am excited for the next part of my mission to come. I am so grateful that I get to help share the gospel with some of the best people around, how cool is that? I know this church is true and I am so grateful for it in my life. I love you all!!!!!!
Hermana Lori Crawford
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