Hola Family and Friends,
This week was AWESOME! Happy Easter! And happy General Conference!
Conference was so super awesome. If you were unable to see a session, watch it!! Each session was so powerful. Before going to conference, I had several questions and thoughts going through my mind. They were all answered. It truly is amazing to have living prophets and apostles who lead and direct the restored church of Christ on the earth. Watch it!
This week in our area was so wonderful and I've learned so many things. I love the way that Hermana Q teaches! She is great at asking inspired questions and helping children and adults alike find how the gospel relates to them.
This upcoming week, we are hopefully going to have a baptism. Brother F is an amazing person and he loves searching for truth. I was really impressed when I met him for the first lesson not only what he knew--but to see his conviction and faithfulness to that truth. His wife is Hermana C, a member of the church, who started coming back to church regularly about two months ago. They are both progressing wonderfully together and have made the gospel the first priority in their home. We are so excited for them.
We have seen many miracles although this week was irregular in schedule and activities. I mentioned that we were in the process of moving last week, so we found time for that, I got sick this week too, but there was still time for everything else, and we had more than normal conferences and meetings, but we still could do all the most important plans we had. The Lord helped us so much!
Yesterday, after conference we had about two hours of proselyting time before our missionary curfew. We went directly to our first plan for the hour. It was far away, and we were unsure if they would be home. When we got to the home---surprise! The parents of the girls we are teaching were not available. We spoke with the young girls outside and asked them if they knew of anyone else we could go visit. The girl responded no, at first. As she thought about it, she said, well there is someone that lives right there on the corner of the street.
"Who are they?" We asked.
She said, that's my aunt house, she's never gone to church before, but the Elders used to teach them.
We just about said, thank you and goodbye in the same sentence to the little girl as we headed off to the house. We knocked and a really happy woman greeted us. We introduced ourselves and invited her to hear more about the church. She told us, "right now, I can't be visited. I have a painful headache, but please come back again this week."
We set up an appointment and asked her about her family to know if they were also interested in hearing about the gospel. She told us that they are hardly ever home and that it was difficult to find them available. She paused and looked at us for a moment, then said, "Well, why don't you come inside and meet them. They are here right now. We've started talking out here, you may as well come inside and sit down."
YESSSSS!!!!! We incredulously hopped right on inside and met her family. :') They are a beautiful family! We spoke a little with them. Elders had met and taught them only a year before and they spoke about how they left an impact on them. The mom told us, "I loved how they talked about the importance of the family, they always talked to us about the family."
They were really humble as we spoke with them. I was impressed by their desires to change. As I watched them participate and listen and respond to our questions carefully, it was seriously the best to 'see' them feel something. We invited them to be baptized and they each accepted right away. They were unsure about being baptized in such a short amount of time, but as they let themselves be taught and motivated by their faith in Christ they accepted a baptismal date. We left feeling SUPER HAPPY! It was an answer to our prayers yesterday to find this family. It was another direct answer from a loving Heavenly Father.
Earlier this week, we were looking for old investigators but didn't know how to get to the street. We walked down the long highway and passed by a man watering his lawn. He caught my eye and I felt impressed that we should talk with him. Before I knew it, Hermana Q darted across the gravel path and asked him for directions. AWESOME. We talked to him for a little bit and invited him to accompany us at church. We also taught him about the Restoration of the gospel, he accepted another appointment with him and his cute wife his week.
It was so cool to see how we've been praying for such specific miracles (like finding a complete family or a future leader of the church, or future priesthood holder) and the Lord leads us to them. Most of the time it's by accident on our part. But it's definitely not an accident that we are trying the best we can and seeking knocking and asking, and the Lord gives us all that we need.
Like this afternoon, we went downtown to a commercial grocery store that has all the food a missionary could want at a great price and sometimes with American brand foods that you can't find anywhere else--aka paraíso yo. We got all of our dream foods, like milk that doesn't taste like cheese. haha, and got onto a combi (small bus) home. I'm laughing right now about the milk reference because we got onto the combi and Hermana Q told me how relieved she was to find cold milk (not from a carton) that didn't taste like cheese....when we suddenly hear someone next to us say. "Wow, it is so great to hear people speaking in English."
In perfect English!!!! 0.0 haha...I LOVE it when that happens because people tend to bring up the fact that they speak English right after you say something dumb (like I did this week. We passed by a man with a curly afro on our mototaxi, and I said, "Wow, look at his majestic hair. It's glorious, definitely better than mine can ever be."
Then the chauffeur says..."I speka little Inglish." 0.0 haha)
Back to the story! We started talking to this guy on the combi and we asked him where he's from.
"I'm from Las Vegas."
WHAT. ME TOO DAWG. I'M FROM VEGAS TOO!!!!!! "What part are you from?"
"I've lived everywhere, I used to live on Rainbow and Torrey Pines."
O_O
"We are basically NEIGHBORS sir!!!"
And Hermana Q is from another part of Nevada, so there was just a whole lot of commonality and normalness going down which was so weird. We made references to things back home and he understood!! Then we just start talking and I'm in total disbelief and shock at the strangeness and uncoincidentalness of this whole situation. My neighbor is on a random Mexican combi in this small town, and we just happened to get on the EXACT SAME combi out of the 12,000 who could've gotten on at the exact time that they did.
He and his awesome mystically quiet family member who was also on the combi have been to Utah and have met missionaries before. His grandma, who they were on the way to visit, used to be taught by Elders. Their gma's house is 5 minutes away from where we live. They invited us to go visit her and gave us their address so that missionaries could visit them where they currently live.
Wow.
So cool, are miracles real or what? It was a clear witness of the love that Heavenly Father has for the both of us and it was a message to me that He knows where we are at and is working alongside us. He's sent us here together for a reason to help the rest of His sons and daughters who are within our reach to help. We can't do everything but with Heavenly Father's help we can do enough. We can do exactly what He wants us to do. Wow, so cool. I know I write that a lot, but for real. It's awesome.
I love all of you so much. I hope you each have a wonderful week and count your blessings because I've personally seen that there are so many!!
Love you,
Hermana Fernelius
1) Random comment from conference: "Elder Bednar looks like a bird. Elder Birdnar." Se paso.
2) I went to the hospital on Thursday because I almost died after a cita [appointment]. (I'm being a little dramatic :) but not at the same time o_o) The doctor took a physical exam and an ultrasound, found nothing wrong, basically told me that I was crazy and sent me home. All is well now, Hermana Q took good care of me.
3) We didn't have a fridge this week, and we kept forgetting about it. So Hermana Q I think was also sad about it when we bought a little bit of bread and she says, "When we get home, I'm going to warm up my bread in the fridge." hahaha We didn't have a microwave for a week either so that was a little distressing also (joking) and it is clearly starting to affect our emotional wellbeing.
4) Introducing a new missionary vocabulary word: MANDMENT: Like commandment and mandamiento BUT BETTER
Love you all!!
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