Hola Familia!
Jimmy, Karina, and Melissa Reyna were all baptized this past Sunday! It was so amazing. When Jimmy came out of the water he gave a huge sigh of relief and looked so happy. Sister Garcia and I sang "I am a Child of God," because it was the first song we sang with them and is now their favorite hymn. Felix, one of my first recent converts from Maywood, gave a talk at the baptism. It was so good! He turns 19 next year and is going to be such an amazing missionary. It was so incredible seeing all of those seeds we planted come to fruition, and seeing how happy they are. It is days like that that make all of the hard days worth it. I love them all so much and feel like we have such a deep bond, especially because we were their first missionaries. We promised them that we are going to be there when they are all sealed in the temple.
As far as everything is going in Olympic, it has been kind of a struggle getting everyone to progress, but we're working on it. Leavin is doing really good, but just wants to do everything in his own way and his own time. He's a little bit stubborn about it, but he really loves the Book of Mormon and knows that its true and that he is going to join the church, so we are happy about that, and we're working with him towards being baptized, hopefully sooner rather than later so he can have the blessings of having the Holy Ghost help and guide him. A lot of people want to wait until they know everything until they are baptized, and they don't realize that baptism is the way we accept Heavenly Father's help and guidance to learn through our whole lives.
We had a really great Zone conference this past week where we talked about living the spirit of the law and giving our whole hearts to the Lord. It was really great, because I feel like as a mission we were getting so caught up in defining all of the rules that we were missing the whole purpose in a lot of cases. Its just like with the gospel, we can pray, fast, go to church, pay our tithing, and do everything right, but really it doesn't mean anything if your whole heart isn't in it, and if you are just trying to scrape by with the bare minimum than you are missing the point, because Heavenly Father wants us to be "anxiously engaged" in doing good and be "agents unto ourselves," (D&C 58) which means we are going to be proactive and do what we know is right and for the right reasons, not just because someone told you you had to do it. On the flip side it also means not doing what we know is wrong just because we weren't told not to do it. Does that make sense? I was really happy about the conference because it was something that had been bothering me and I had been really praying to try to figure out for a long time, so I felt like it was an answer to my prayers.
I hope everything is going well at home. I can't believe its almost Thanksgiving! I hope you all have fun getting ready for the holidays. I am so excited for the lights they are putting up here at the temple, and I think that we might get to be up at the Visitor's Center next transfer which would be fun. We'll see though. I'll find out about transfers on Tuesday. Well, have a great week! I love you all!
Hermana Dansie
I'm attaching some pictures from this week of the baptism, and also of my new haircut. :)
1. The Reyna family baptism!
2. Zone conference this past week (notice my hair before the hair cut- it was super long, ugly, and out of control)
3. Me in the "Birthday dress," its a tradition now for all of the sisters to take a picture in this really ugly dress when its their birthday. I missed it on my birthday, so I just barely took a picture in it this past Monday, which was the day I got my hair cut. Its still kind of long, but she cut off a lot. I really like it though.
4. On splits with Sister Nef in down town LA
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