2/16/2010

Well my first week full-field and I'm sure all of you have the same question that I've gotten everytime I go to the VC "How are you liking full-field?" To be honest, it isn't all that different than any full-field day that I've had in VC transfers. The biggest difference is the area... there are hispanics EVERYWHERE! It is so wonderful to know that most of the people we talk to are potential investigators. Before it was sometimes hard, knowing that almost all the people we talked to were going to be American and that even if they accepted, we wouldn't have the chance to teach them. There are a lot of benefits of being full-field, in that we are able to make appointments much easier. And there are so many people to make appointments with! We already have 13 appts for the rest of the week. My very first day in the area we had a lesson with Thelma. She was there and waiting for us with the door open. She is a fairly young mother with an 8-yr-old daughter and a 6-yr-old son. She has a lot of questions and at first said that she just wanted to learn, but didn't want to prepare to be baptized (every time we teach a first lesson we ask if they will prepare to be baptized when they know it is true, we call it a soft commitment). We have taught her three lessons since I've gotten here. Last night she met us at the VC and it was actually quite a miracle lesson. The way we found out about Thelma was through a recent convert from Sis. Nielsen's last area. He is her brother-in-law (not technically because Thelma isn't actually married to his brother...) Anyways, Refugio is the only member in his family, his wife and children have been investigating for over a year, every since he started investigating. We called the sisters in his area yesterday to get his phone number to see if they could come to the lesson with us at the VC. However, we found out that they had an appt with his family at the same time as our appt and they were going to try and get his wife to commit to a date. So we didn't want to interfere with that of course so we didn't even call him. As we were about to start our lesson at the VC, Thelma's daughter came into the room from the hall and said "my uncle's here!" I guess they had been over at his house earlier that day and Thelma told him about the lesson and so he came to the VC to be there with her! The Lord really is in charge, because it worked out better for us with him there. And maybe that's what his wife needed, to be able to meet with the missionaries without him. All I know is that it is in the Lord's hands and he blessed us with the support of Refugio. He has such a great testimony and is someone Thelma trusts. Sis. Nielsen and I both felt last night that Thelma will get baptized, we just don't know when. One thing I have noticed about almost all of our investigators in this area is that they ask tons of questions. They always apologize, but they don't understand how much we love getting questions. You can see how much they want to learn, how much they want to understand. Many of them are going through very hard times, and are sincerely looking towards the Lord for help. We have also had a few times in the past few days when we have gone to contact former investigators or contacts in the area and have instead ended up teaching another member of the family. We had been trying to visit with a brother and sister almost every day since I've been here, and I still haven't met them. Everytime we talked to the brother's wife. Sis. Nielsen said that she wasn't originally interested, but the other day she was impressed to ask her if we could visit with her. Her countenance immediately changed and we set up an appt to come back and see her. That same night we were trying to contact someone they had taught once just a little before I came. She wasn't home but we spoke with her daughter at the door. They she asked "do you want to come in?" We went in and spent about an hour answering questions she had, and made an appointment to come back tonight. We have found 4 new investigators since I've been here. In Ensenada sometimes we found 4 in the whole transfer. (I really don't compare the two areas two much during the day, we are too busy to think about Ensenada, but I am just putting the comparisons in here so that you can have something to relate it to.) I really love being able to teach all day and be out working all day. Even though I love the VC there were mornings there that were really slow and we didn't talk to many people. If things go slowly here it is our fault and it is because we aren't working hard enough, so we always try and visit people up to the last minute of the day (last night we were finally able to contact a referral because at 8:45 we decided to drive all the way to the north of our area and try to contact them. Around 8:50 we were making an appointment for tomorrow, and by 8:55 we were headed back home).
I hope that everyone had a good Valentine's day and a good President's day. February is more than half over! Speaking of half over I figured out all my important middle days for the mission. They are all happening this transfer! On March 2nd I have 9 months left. At midnight between March 10th and 11th I hit my halfway, and on March 17th I hit 9 months here. This is a big transfer!
Desde Liahona 4 Este con amor,
Hermana Ladd