Mar Vista: Transfer 9: Week 6

Hello family!

I finally figured out how to attach the files from my voice recorder, so this is the duet that I sang with Sister Salazar for the Mission-wide Christmas devotional. She is singing high soprano and I'm singing alto.

Well, another week come and gone. Last Sunday we had a combined priesthood relief society lesson that we taught and introduced this year's ward mission plan. We also started a "40 day fast," where a different family in the ward fasts for forty consecutive days for the specific people in their lives that they want to share the gospel with and also for our ward goal of bringing three eternal families into the Mar Vista ward through baptism, reactivation, or completing a part member family. It went so well! The spirit was incredibly strong, and we helped people understand that our purpose is not just to add more people to the ward, but to help these families come closer to God, be sealed in the temple and to know that they can be together for eternity. We told the ward that as we exercise our faith we will begin to see miracles, and we have! We had three investigators come to church yesterday! It was a huge miracle because it was the first time we've had investigators come to Mar Vista ward since I have been here. I know that Heavenly Father was just preparing the hearts of the ward members and helping them be able to recognize the miracle that it would be to help bring families into the gospel. It has been so great to see things in Mar Vista changing for the better, and recognizing that all of our hard work is finally starting to pay off.

We also have had some really great experiences in the Visitors' Center. I realized that I never really explained what we do here at the Visitors' Center besides giving tours and teaching in the center. Every Visitors' Center is also designed to help generate teaching opportunities that lead to conversion around the entire world through referrals. We ask everyone that comes in if they have someone that we can help share the gospel with, and then we get a chance to call their friends or family members and ask if they would like to meet with the missionaries or receive a free DVD or the Book of Mormon. I have had so many amazing experiences calling people around the country and sharing my testimony with them, helping them come closer to Christ and opening them up to having the missionaries come over to help them know what to do to be happier in their family through following the teachings of Jesus Christ. So that is a huge part of what we do at the Visitors Center. I think that a lot of people get this idea that at the Visitors' Center when no one is there we just sit around and read our scriptures, which is true sometimes, but we also still get to do a lot of missionary work for people around the world. The way our schedule works we serve in the Visitors' Center half day and rotate through mornings or evenings, so usually about four evenings and three mornings every week we are in the Visitors' Center, and then the rest of the time we are out in our areas visiting people, knocking doors, and all of the stereotypical missionary stuff.

Well, I don't have much time left, so I'll just write about the other cool experiences that I had next week. Have a great week!

Sister Dansie