Mar Vista: Transfer 11: Week 4 / April 25, 2011

Happy Easter!

I hope you all enjoyed Easter! We had a great morning in our ward and then afternoon at the Visitors' Center. We surprised our ward by giving all of the families a family home evening game activity that we made called the "Feed My Sheep Game," where they put the names of people they are working with on sheep game pieces and then move around the steps to track their progression for when they are ready to be taught by the missionaries. It also has a booklet with ideas of how to help them get to the next step. It was a fun project that Sister Olsen and I have been working on for the past month or so during slow times here at the Visitors' Center. Hopefully it will help people get involved in missionary work, and especially the families with young kids. Over half of our ward is made up of families in the UCLA family housing that is adjacent to the church building.

It has been an interesting week, to say the least. We've spent a lot of time finding, because a lot of the people we are working with haven't really been progressing, well, or at least it is just going to be a longer process. We tracted into a Hari Krishna spiritualist community in Venice that was pretty interesting. They told us that they were interested and open minded towards all religion, so they invited us in for a minute. There were seven of them, one family- A mom and dad and their two year old boy, and then four other men. They had one wall that was dedicated to being an altar, to which they added our pass along card picture of Christ that we had given them. They started talking to us about Hinduism, and basically trying to convert us, and I didn't really know what to do (Yes, I probably shouldn't have gone in in the first place, but one of them seemed really interested in the Book of Mormon), so as most of the situations where I don't know what to do as a missionary, I turned to my cop out and asked if we could sing something for them. They said yes so we sang them "I am a Child of God." We were just going to sing and leave, but then they wanted to sing us a song, and we didn't want to be rude, so they busted out a harmonium and drums and started singing a song in sanscript which basically just repeated "Rama rama" over and over again, and it went on for at least five minutes. I didn't know what to do. We couldn't escape. Then they finally stopped and they explained that "now they sing the song in double time, to have higher vibrations and more connection with God," so they went again for the next couple of minutes. They were such nice people, it was just an interesting kind of culture shock, especially for little miss Sister Olsen from Rigby Idaho. So that was kind of a fun experience. Only in Venice. :D

We also met some other really good potentials, one of them is a ten year old boy that is really interested in learning more, and the other is an Iranian woman that just walked in to church this Sunday, and we just happen to have another Iranian woman in our ward that is about her same age and that is the most incredible member missionary I have ever met. It was just another testimony that God does watch out for all of his children and have a plan for all of us, because it was just so perfect that she recently moved in our area and then just happened to come in to church.

Well, have a wonderful week! I love you all!

- Sister Dansie