Mar Vista: Transfer 10: Week 2 / 2/28/2011

Hey family!

It has been an eventful week. Wednesday we had zone conference. It was in the stake center where the Marquez family and the Reyna family were baptized, so it brought back a lot of good memories. We focused a lot on fulfilling our purpose and having the faith to ask for referrals and extend the invitation to be baptized in the first lesson to be clear with why we are there, and it was really good for me because I realized that a big part of why we haven't been successful in our area is because we were thinking of all of those things as if they were just nice suggestions, and now my companion and I are trying to think of them more as commandments, and we are starting to see really great results. It is definitely a trial of our faith because it can be scary inviting someone to be baptized, especially when we are in an area where we are lucky if someone will actually talk to us, and so when someone does you don't want to freak them out or scare them away, but I realized that people were getting more freaked out not really knowing what we were doing there when we weren't clear with our purpose.

For example, yesterday night we went to visit a family where the dad isn't a member, and we have gone by before and tried to be friendly and get to know them and maybe share a spiritual thought and pray with the family, which is nice, but last night we actually invited him to be baptized and asked what was keeping him from being baptized, and he said that basically he just doesn't know if it is true or not, so we told him that he needs to pray and read the Book of Mormon and really ask Heavenly Father if it is true. We could tell that he was a little taken back by us being direct, but he sincerely thought about what we were saying and he thanked us for coming over. The spirit was really strong, and I know that it was because we testified boldly and helped him clearly understand what Heavenly Father expects of him. Heavenly Father wants all of his children to be baptized, and someday everyone is going to know that this is the truth, and they are going to be able to look at us and ask why weren't we more direct in telling them that this is true! Anyways, I've been thinking about this a lot because we've been working on getting our ward involved in missionary work. We had ward conference and we had to get up in front of the whole ward in the chapel for Sunday school to give part of the lesson. We think it went well. Hopefully we will start seeing some results.

We got really excited this week to get a referral text with the information for someone in our area named Carlos that wanted to be baptized, but he turned out to be spanish speaking. It was still great to be a small part in his conversion process. We got to talk to his son about the gospel and Carlos was so grateful. Oh, and I found out that someone from my old area is getting baptized on March 15th! It really is so amazing to see someone change their life in such a physical way and to know that they are going to be happier because they have the Holy Ghost to help them out.

Saturday we participated in a mini-mission where two young women came with us in our area for a couple of hours. Heavenly Father really loves us and loves them because we had some amazing miracles when they were with us. We went to Subway for lunch and met a man named Ernie that was there at Subway studying the Bible and taking notes and everything, so we went up to him and started talking to him and he was really interested in learning more. He wanted to buy the Book of Mormon from us. When we told him that Christ came to ancient America he said "No way!" he was so excited about it. He lives in a different area of Los Angeles, but it was still really great to talk with him, and he wanted the missionaries to teach him and said that he would be baptized if he knew that it was true.

Well, I'm doing my best to stay as focused as possible, if you can't tell, ha ha. :D Things are going great with my companion. She is always asking me "Can I help you?" She is really sweet.

I love you all!

Sister Dansie