Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Email #73 (Gilbert, AZ)

January 12, 2015

Buenos Dias!!!
Hola mi querida familia, como estan toditos?
Well all is well in Gilbert, AZ. It's quite cloudy right now but we've got a little bit of rain the past few days so that's good. This past week was transfers and we had an AWESOME transfer meeting. Man, I just love President and Sister Nattress. They are the best. They are always so good at inspiring us missionaries and giving us the animo to be better, more effective and sanctified missionaries, while at the same time expressing so much love for all of us:)
Anyways, this week was a good one. We found some new investigators! We had an amazing experience with following the promptings of the Spirit. We were on our way to visit the Arlandiz (a cute couple of viejitos that got baptized last year) and we drove past two older women working outside. I immediately knew we had to go talk to them, and then Sister Haycock said "We should go talk to them." So we parked the car in front of the Arlandiz' house (which is right around the corner) grabbed some copies of the Book of Mormon and walked over to them. We started talking to the younger of the two, who in broken English told us that her name was Carmen. We asked her where she was from and she said "Sinaloa, Mexico"! Naturally, we started speaking to her in Spanish. She is very religious and has a firm testimony of Jesus Christ so we had a great gospel discussion and invited her to read the Book of Mormon. As we were about to leave, the other older lady we had seen with Carmen earlier came out from the house. So, we went to introduce ourselves to her and (thinking she was American) started talking to her in English. But she didn't speak very much English either and we found out she is from Guadalajara! I could not suppress the grin on my face as we started to speak to her in Spanish:) Her name is Victoria and she is 87, and she is suffering from the beginning stages of dementia, and she recently lost her husband. She invited us inside so she could show us her house... haha it was so cute! We sat down at their kitchen table and chatted for a while and I told Carmen I had been to Mazatlan before and we chatted about that and other things for a bit, and then we gave Victoria a Book of Mormon as well and shared a scripture and invited both of them to read it!:) They were SO sweet and willing to listen to us. And then later in that week we went by again, this time with the Arlandiz, who live super close. We went by and they weren't home, but their daughter and her husband were there cleaning the carpets. We talked to the daughter for a little bit and she opened up about the difficulty of losing her dad. She new he was older and he had lived a good life, but it was still very hard for her to say goodbye to him. We were able to testify of eternal families and invite her to watch "He is the Gift". She kept on thanking us for coming by and seemed really surprised that we had showed up again because Victoria had told her all about us after we had stopped by the first time:) It was a very cool experience, and I know we were led to go to the Arlandiz that day so we could meet that family. I don't know what will happen with them, but I know that because the Spirit guided us to talk to them, and we followed it, a seed has been planted:) I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY.
We were also able to find a new friend from the UK! He is at the flight school and was very interested in reading the Book of Mormon and very willing to hear our message. He was actually a street contact. We talked to him and gave him a pass along card and he gave us his number and address, then last week we went to see him and we gave him a Book of Mormon:) He is a cool guy and says "Cheers" in a british accent whenever we say bye to him. It's the best! haha

So, yep! Our week was a good one:)
Here are the answers to your preguntas, Mamita:)
1. see above for new investigators!
2. Ricardo is doing well, we still haven't seen him but we've been in contact with him via text for the past little bit. He went to a fireside in the Mesa mission a few weeks ago and got in contact with the missionaries there! He is also reading the Book of Mormon and he loves it! He wants to be taught with the Jensens still so we will continue to teach him over there as soon as things calm down with his wife:) He is awesome!
3. Tim is awesome!!! We gave him a little break this past week but we saw him on Saturday and a miracle happened! He got a new job offer! And it's one that pays better, he'll be doing something he loves AND the schedule is way more flexible so he'll be able to come to church on Sundays!!:D GO TIM! So when that job starts, I'm sure he'll be progressing a lot faster than he is now. Max’s prayers have been answered (thanks Max for not giving up on TimJ).
4. I didn’t realize I never explained the T-shirts we had on New Years Day! The Giraffe is our Mascot because we are the Gilbert Zone:) haha it started out with our Zone Leader, Elder Hoffman saying that we were the giraffes and it has escalated to a giraffe with a snapback on a t-shirt:) GO GILBERT GIRAFFES!!! Haha #
LES QUIERO MUCHOOOOO!!! Have an awesome week!
Moroni 8:3
Hermana Lattin

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