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