Mar Vista: Transfer 10: Week 5‏ / March 21, 2011

Hey family!

Wet, cold, and rainy. That is how I would describe these past couple of days. I don't know how missionaries in Seattle do it. There was a point where the water in the curbs was so deep I had to attempt to leap over to get on the sidewalk, while my poor companion was fighting with the umbrella against the wind, which lead to it flipping itself inside out and my leap just let the wind pick up my skirt and almost flash the world as we are getting soaked in the meantime. We couldn't stop laughing, it was so funny. :D Good thing no one else was crazy enough to be out in it to see us, because we looked pretty ridiculous. I’m not complaining though, we only get a few bad weather days here in sunny California, so really it just made me appreciate how good I have it to be here in California, and how hard it must be to serve in places with bad weather. Well, all missions are challenging in their own rite, no matter where they are and what the circumstances.

Diane came to the Visitors' Center this week which was good. She had a terrible week though- one of those Murpheys' law, everything that can go wrong does go wrong kind of weeks, so we weren't able to meet with her. We had another woman come to church with us this week though. Her name is Melinda and she is so cute! She was going to another ward but lives in our area and so the first time we met her was at church, and she came up and gave me a hug and was so friendly and nice. She is in her late twenties and she found out about the church because a lot of friends from her work are Mormons and so is her husband's sister, and she said that she always felt like there was something about the religion that really interested her. We gave her a Book of Mormon before sacrament meeting started and she treated it like a prized possession and asked us where she should start reading from, and then the sacrament talks were perfect because they were all about the Book of Mormon and how it was another testament of the divinity of Jesus Christ. It was amazing! She loved it and was so open. The only thing is that she is super busy getting ready for big tests and said that she can't come to church again until April 3rd, but that she will read the Book of Mormon in the meantime.

In the Visitors' Center this week I've had the amazing opportunity of sharing the gospel with people from all over the world. An Italian man walked in the other day just out of curiosity. He didn't speak any english, and we could only somewhat communicate through spanish- as I awkwardly tried to speak spanish with an italian accent. i showed him all of the exhibits that we have in Italian. I also gave him a Book of Mormon in Italian and so a few times when I couldn't figure out how to say what a word was I quickly flipped to a scripture that had that word- like "prophet" or "angel" and things like that. It reminded me of the time we were lost in Florence and I only had one page of guidebook italian that I was trying to shout out the window to people to figure out how to get to the train station. I think that Italian is going to be the next language I try to learn. I also was able to give a tour to three people from Taiwan that were here for their cousins wedding. They live in the U.S. and spoke really good english, but it was still really neat to give them a tour. I also gave a tour to a really awesome Born Again Christian guy from England that came into the Visitors' Center with his girlfriend who is a member of the church. He was here in Los Angeles visiting her, so she wanted him to see what the church was all about. He travels the world as an adventure guide and does hiking tours in Scotland and Morrocco and all over. He even did some stuff with Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild. Anyways, so it was just really neat to see the gospel being spread to the four corners of the earth and being part of that.

I love you all! I know that this church is the same church that Christ established when he walked the earth and that we have it again today. Christ is our true and living Savior, the Son of God, our Redeemer. He loves us and is always there for us, and through him we can repent and be cleansed from our sins. We just have to be humble and let him in and allow him to heal us and to change our hearts, so that we "have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually." Keep thinking about him as often as you can! Reading the scriptures will help. I've been learning about him more and reading Jesus the Christ and it is so amazing!

Have a great week. :D

Sister Dansie

Pictures: We took a few photos in front of the temple with the city in the background, and the last one is at Leavin's baptism.

Mar Vista: Transfer 10: Week 4‏

Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles! We found someone that wants to be baptized!!!

Her name is Diane and she is amazing! She is in her 60s and has lived in Mar Vista for all her life. Her parents were what she jokingly called "jack mormons" from Utah, and they fell away long before they had Diane, who is number six of seven kids. None of the kids grew up in the church, but one of her brothers was converted and is now a bishop, and one of her sisters recently joined the church within the past couple of years, and Diane has seen how it has changed her sisters life. We met her on Tuesday, and meeting her was a miracle in and of itself. We felt like we needed to go see a potential investigator on a certain street, and when we got there we saw that the address doesn't exist. We decided to tract around the area to make it worth our trip out there and hopefully find someone. I always feel that if we are guided somewhere than Heavenly Father has a reason for us being there, so we need to at least talk to one person in every place that we go. So we started tracting and weren't having much luck. The first five houses were empty, and a couple of people on the street rejected us. We finally knocked on a house with someone home but they weren't interested at all. So we said, well, we'll try this one last house by where we had parked our car, and we found Diane! She was so open and friendly and wanted us to come back.

When we called to set up a lesson she asked us to bring her a copy of the Book of Mormon, even before we had mentioned it. We had a lesson with her on Saturday with Sister Larson, this awesome Iranian lady from our ward that converted from being a Muslim and is an incredible member missionary. In the lesson we talked about Jesus Christ and the atonement from scriptures in the Book of Mormon, because she has been going through a lot of hard things in her life right now and we asked her how Jesus Christ had helped her and she said,"Honestly, I don't know." We talked to her about her relationship with Jesus Christ and what he did for her, and how by being baptized she could access the blessings of his sacrifice for her in her life, and then Sister Olsen courageously invited her to be baptized. We ask them directly "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God? She said yes, that she does want to be baptized and that she has never been baptized before in any religion, and she thinks that it would really help her. Then the second part of the baptismal invitation is asking to set a date by saying "We will be having a baptismal service on the tenth of April, will you prepare yourself to be baptized on that day?" It is one of the few very specific things we say in order to be very clear and direct with our purpose. So Sister Olsen did the first part like a champ, and then she got so excited that Diane said yes that she said "Will you be baptized April 10th?" And Diane said "What?! April 10th? Really? So soon?!" She was a little shocked, but we were able to explain to her that it was just a goal that we are working towards, and that baptism is just the gate to receiving more blessings and guidance from our Heavenly Father. Cute Sister Olsen after the lesson was like "I'm so sorry I messed it up!" But I told her it was fine. Diane's only concern is not being prepared, because she doesn't realize how much the spirit has prepared her already. She came to church and stayed for all three hours, even though it is painful for her to sit for long periods of time and she is taking care of her son who just got out of the hospital and she was a little worried about leaving him, but even with those possible excuses she stayed! She is so solid. We know that finding her was a miracle that happened as a result of our 40-day ward fast.

Another miracle was that I got to see Leavin be baptized, finally! He is a guy I taught with Sister Garza in Olympic that wanted to be baptized, but that told us that he would do it in his own way and time, and he finally did! Sister Garza and I sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" in Spanish at the baptism. It was so great to be there and see everyone from my old ward. We also saw the Ramos couple from that ward that we went by to visit a couple times. They were a young couple without any kids that have just been in the church for about two years. When I was with Sister Garza we felt really strongly that we needed to visit them a few times, although we didn't really understand why. We talked to them about missionary work and the Hermana told us that she really wanted to invite her nonmember sister to the Visitors' Center, but that she was scared. We took the couple out to an appointment with us, because we thought that maybe we had felt inspired to go there because they would be good to help us with a family we were teaching, but the appointment fell through so we took them tracting for a little bit. The Hermana was really shy and nervous, but she did it and we had a good experience. We committed her to invite her sister to the Visitors' Center and she did, because she said that going tracting helped her to have the courage to invite her sister. So a couple of months ago i was at the Visitor's Center when hermana Ramos and her sister and sisters family all came to the Visitors' Center, and they loved it. Yesterday I saw the whole family again with Hermana Ramos at the baptism, and I found out that they were all baptized last week! It was really amazing to see how something small that we did helped to trigger the process of conversion for this beautiful family.

Things are finally really coming together! I have realized how incredibly important it is to follow the spirit, because in both of those experiences we would have completely missed out on being part of helping these people, but the fact that we did follow the spirit even when it didn't make sense to us and we couldn't understand why gave us the blessing of helping them. And now Heavenly Father gave us the blessing of being able to look back and see some of the fruits of our labors. It is like how King Benjamin says that there is no way we could ever earn the blessings that God gives us, because every time we do something good he blesses us even more. He gives us more than we could ever dream of deserving. I am so happy that I am here serving a mission and serving my Heavenly Father and that I can see his hand in my life and in everything around me.

I love you all! Have a great week.

Sister Dansie

Mar Vista: Transfer 10: Week 3‏ / March 8, 2011

Hey family!

Things are finally starting to happen in Mar Vista! People are actually talking to us and setting return appointments! They haven't been following through with those appointments, but still, we're seeing progress! Almost every day this week we had a miracle experience with someone who wanted to talk to us that we had the opportunity to teach. Our first miracle was with a man named Deryl. We were fasting for our day in the ward's forty day fast and we felt really strongly that we needed to go to a certain street in Venice, and when we were there we were rejected about five times and were on our way back to the car when we saw a man across the street. We awkwardly crossed the street to go up to talk to him and said something like "Hey, we're just trying to spread the good news about Jesus Christ." To which he responded "Of latter day saints?" We got talking and found out that he had dated a Mormon girl for about a year and knew a lot about the church, so we shared some scriptures with him from the Book of Mormon and he was really interested in talking about it. We got his info and called him and he actually called back and told us that he was pretty busy working on a movie, but maybe we could set up a time for Saturday. We're still trying to get a hold of him again to meet with him, but that was a little miracle.

Yesterday we were fasting again for help finding people that are prepared to receive the gospel and we tracted into a Chinese woman named Stella that let us right in to her apartment. She has been studying the Bible with her Christian friends and was really open to the things that we talked to her about, even though she doesn't consider herself to be Christian. We invited her to be baptized when she finds out that it is true, and she said that is she knew it was true she would be baptized. We also had a kneeling prayer with her and she offered it, which is always a great sign that someone has a willing and humble heart, and you could tell that she felt the spirit. It was really refreshing to have someone be so kind and open to receiving us in their home. So both of those miracles happened as we were fasting, which is another testimony to me that when we are showing our faith that the Lord does bless us.

I've been having a lot of fun with Sister Olsen. She is really pure and innocent and sometimes says some really great blond things, and we just laugh at them together. She is from a two stoplight town in Idaho called Rigby, so everything is just so new and foreign to her. The other day she asked a random man on the street "Are you a member?" We also had some guys that wanted us to talk to them for a little bit and then brought up the question "Do you practice Celibacy?" Which led to a discussion on the Law of Chastity. They were really nice talking to us, although their minds and their motivations abviously weren't very focused on the gospel. Los Angeles is just getting more and more disgustingly sleazy that the concept of the law of chastity is completely shocking to most people, and is actually the number one issue that keeps people from baptism in this mission. i mean, you should see the billboards around here! Those poor elders. Finding a virtuous woman here really is like trying to find a ruby. Anyways, so we got back in the car and sweet Sister Olsen asks "What's celibacy?" and then after a brief explanation she stated "Well, I've never talked about THAT with a complete stranger!"

The best was when we were at a members house the other day. The member is from Guatemala but is now very into american culture as she has been here married to an american for a long time. I was saying something about how I wished I was latina because they age so beautifully. Then Sister Olsen pitched in and said "yeah, I wish I was luh-teen-oh so i could wear the gangsta clothes and look cool." I was terrified for a second but the member just laughed. And asked how are gangster clothes stylish? Apparently Sister Olsen really likes hip hop music, which is where she was coming from in her mind, but I had to explain to her in the car afterwards that gang violence here is a very real thing and so she has to be really careful talking about it like its cool because most people here actually know someone who has been affected by and maybe even killed from gang violence. We were mostly just laughing about it, but i also told her that she has to be careful to not say things that could be taken as racially offensive. Ha Ha, it was just really awkward all around, and we were just lucky it only happened with a sister that understands that she didn't realize what she said had actually meant. So we've been laughing a lot and having a good time.

Oh, and something else cool is that my recent convert Karina came in to the Visitors' Center the other day with a less active and a nonmenber friend, and she was bearing her testimony to them and her non member friend wants a Book of Mormon and the missionaries. It was so cool to actually see how the small part that I had in the conversion of Karina is branching out into a domino affect as she now bears her testimony and shares the gospel with others around her. She is also the Relief Society secretary in her ward and was so excited to tell me about it. It was so amazing!

Well, I love you all! Have a great week!

- Sister Dansie

1. Sister Olsen's mom made these cute headbands
2. Mini Mission
3. Gangsta Sister Olsen
4. Zone Conference