1/19 - It seems like I JUST emailed you....so
I don't have much to write about...just kidding. We've had some
pretty amazing things happen this week.
Thursday we had dinner with a lady from Chile. She made us a Chilean dinner. After that we had a lesson with one of our
investigators who is 13 and is currently being adopted by his
aunt & uncle who have 2 kids. He's pretty much their son, just
not legally. So we're waiting on the government to further the
adoption process along, then he'll be baptized!
Friday after weekly planning, we had a
lesson with our recent convert, M and her girls C and
S. They just moved out of our ward, so we have to meet with
them at the church because they'd rather meet with us than with the
elders in their ward. Who can blame them, really? ;) After that we
had dinner with the Cs. They're an older couple in the ward
who actually were in the MOTAB (Mormon Tabernacle Choir) a while ago. This was the first time I
had dinner with them, or even really talked to them. Not gonna lie,
seeing them at church, and mostly in choir intimidated me. They took
us out to Applebee's and they're actually really nice & cool.
Brother C served his mission in London & they decided to
get married after his mission, and she wanted to fly out to London to
marry him. He told his mission president about those plans, and he
didn't think it was a good idea, but he told him to talk to a member
of the first presidency(who was in the area at the time) about it.
Long story short, Sis. C ended up having an interview with a
member of the first presidency & she talked him into okaying the
marriage. So they were married in London, 2
days after he was released as a missionary! CRAZY, huh?
After dinner,
we went to visit some people. Our ward mission leader is so awesome,
he came up with a ward mission plan for the members to do a specific
missionary minded thing each month. January's challenge for everyone
is to hand out one invitation to church. We made a deal with him that for every 10 invitations we hand out, he has to hand out
1. So we've been doing that lately.
I LOVE Saturdays because people
are actually home! And we actually get to talk to them :) My comp still wasn't feeling well, so we didn't get out of the house
until about 1pm. From there we went to a neighborhood and tried
potential investigators. Again, saturdays are great because doors
open! Although no one we tried was too interested, we were able to
hand out church invites and plant seeds.
One super cool thing that
happened was we went to visit a potential named R. In our notes
it said he is super friendly and is reading the Book of Mormon but will never
convert. Funny, right? Well, we went and talked to him for a bit.
Really friendly guy, even gave us a home grown avocado & lemons!
side note: I still think it's crazy to see citrus fruit growing on
trees! It's amazing. Also the best oranges and lemons I've ever
tasted.
As we were leaving his house, we noticed his neighbor outside
waxing his boat. Usually as we walk down the street and we see
someone, we simply say "hi, how are you?" and quickly we
can discern whether or not they're open to us. This guy didn't seem
too open with us, but I thought his boat was cool & always a
conversation starter. So I started talking to him about his boat &
he opened up a lot and was friendly, his name is R as well,
we'll call him R#2. After awhile he asked about our missions
and we started talking about the church a little. He wasn't too
interested, aka he took a pamphlet but didn't want to take a Book of
Mormon. But I LOVE people who initiate conversation with us, because
it shows their genuine interest & it just makes me happy.
Remember R#2 because he has something to do with another story.
We had dinner with the Oakes, and after we planned to go see a contact and see if he's been reading the BoM. But as we were driving
we got a call from a newer member who likes meeting with us because it's a
break from her problems and she needs to be spiritually uplifted. We
weren't planning on meeting with her that day, so we were like "what
should we teach her?" we decided on Alma 32 which talks about
faith. We figured we'd start at verse 21 and go from there, but when
we were in the lesson we felt like we should start from the
beginning. NOW THIS IS AMAZING. The first 15 verses of so was EXACTLY
what she needed to hear. It's so amazing how the spirit works. Idk,
it's hard to explain, but it was a really cool experience. Even she
thought it was amazing. And Brother H mentioned to us on Sunday
that she "looked different" at church. It was cool.
Monday! p-day minus emailing because of MLK Day means you
have a LOT of time to do other stuff and spend money...whooops. I'm
trying not to. it doesn't help when your companion has a shopping
addiction.
So about R#2, I thought it was so amazing how he
started asking us who we were and what we did, and in my prayers on
Sunday night, I thanked Heavenly Father for him and asked if we might
be able to meet more people like that who initiate conversation. As
we were checking out of Walmart, our cashier said "what church
do you guys go to? is it Christian?" and we told her and she
asked where it was. "Do you have a card?" HECK YES WE DO! I
gave her a card with our number on it and asked if she's interested
in learning more "yeah! I need a church to go to!" "well,
awesome! give us a call sometime and we can meet with you to tell you
more". As we were walking out I thought "we
need to go back in there and give her a pamphlet" so we went to
the car and grabbed a Restoration pamphlet. We went back in and gave
it to her. She lives in Corona, which is outside our mission, but we
told her if she gets in contact with us, we can send missionaries to
her. She was really excited! MIRACLE! Prayers really do work.
So then
we went home to drop our groceries off, and we always pray when we
leave the house, so again, I thanked Heavenly Father for meeting her and asked that we might have more things like that
happen. Next we went to Goodwill, and as we were checking out, the
girl said "where do you guys work?" "oh, we're
missionaries!" "oh really? that's so cool! oh wait,
sisters. are you the ones who can't get married?!" "hahaha
oh no! we can get married" Then we talked a little more about
missions. I asked her if she's interested in learning more and
she said "yeah!", but she lives in Pamona which may or may
not be in our mission (part of Pamona is, part isn't) so I got her
name and number and told her we could get missionaries to teach her
more!
MIRACLE #2 on p-day! These things don't happen when you're a
missionary in Chino Hills, let alone on p-day! Too bad neither of
them live in our area, so we won't be the missionaries to teach them,
but it's still amazing! It was a great morning to say the least. Then
we had a sister's picnic in the park with the Rolling Ridge sisters. Then we played volleyball for zone activity. That night we had a nice dinner with
the T family. We made pizzas! Then FHE with Mama B & Emma.
Today we spent 3.5 hours in urgent care
getting Sister K fixed. Nothing too
serious but we missed most of district meeting, then went to Let It Be
to do service. I LOVE that place. It was fun.
love you all,
xoxo Sister Viraldo
1/26 - This week I really don't have much to
write about because it was a slowwww week as far as missionary work
goes. Sister K got orders from the doctor to rest, so that's what
we did. We were able, however, to do a lot of service for the Let It
Be foundation!
Wednesday we had zone conference in
Rancho Cucamonga. We had to wake up at 5:30 to be there by 8am. It
was a really great meeting with trainings from the zone leaders in
the Rancho A zone and the Rancho B zone as well as the best zone
leaders from the CHINO CHAMPIONS zone. President talked to us as well as his wife and our
Sister Training Leaders. The meeting lasted until 1, then they fed us lunch. That evening we had a lesson with the Bs, then went home until dinner with
Sister M & Brad. She took us to a restaurant called Islands.
Then we
came home and rested. (Like I said before, we rested a lot this
week.)
At 8:30 we went on exchanges with Sister H & Sister
S! sister S came and stayed with me in Carbon
Canyon. Thursday we had a lesson again with M and her daughters, and
we taught them SOAP! S-scripture study, O-obedience, A-attend church,
P-prayer. It was a really really good lesson. After their lesson, we went to Let It Be for a couple hours, then we
went out and tried potentials!
On our potentials list is usually the
date that the missionaries first found them. We have dates that go as
far back as 2009. And maybe one will say Jane Doe, May, 2009- knocked
into her, friendy, wondered about afterlife, gave her plan of
salvation pamphlet, said she'd call. And that's it. Then you gotta
think, okay, that almost 6 years ago. Should we go back and ask for Jane Doe or should we pretend that we don't know who lives there and
just tract into the house? It's a tricky question that I always ask.
So we got to a potential's house, his name is G. Ahh, what to do,
tract or ask for G? Usually that's when we decide "just go by
the spirit". So we knocked on his door, and a girl about 24yrs
old answered, and was super interested about our church! She's moving
to Puerto Rico this week because she's in the Army, but we told her
there are missionaries there that could teach her. AMAZING. So after
we met her, Sister S and I were talking and saying it
might have turned out quite different if she opened the door and we
asked for G.
We went to try a potential named R
and her son answered the door and said HE was interested in learning
more! Funny because I had that door, so I was the one who was mostly
talking. Usually I'm pretty good at giving a short Restoration at the
door, but for some reason this time I was a little jumbled and wasn't
very clear on things, but amazingly enough he was still interested!
THE BEST. Then we went to try a couple named R and R (WOW, a lot of Rs here), and the address we had
for them did not exist! We went up to a house thinking it was theirs,
but there was a locked gate in front of the door, so I said "let's
go try their neighbor just to ask if R&R live there"
So I knocked on their door and a hispanic man answered and was VERY
friendly, like he knew who we were. I said "I have a question,
do you know where R&R live?" He looked at us funny
and said...."yeah, I'm R and my wife is R" WHATTT!
So cool! anyway, they let us in and talked about how they know
missionaries in Mexico. Not sure how interested in learning they are,
but we're going back to see them tomorrow night.
Friday we did more
service at Let It Be then came home and rested. By 5 we needed to
leave the house so we went out to eat with Mama B and Emma. SUSHI!!
yummmmm. then ice cream :) Saturday we did a service project for Sis B. 3 sets of elders from our zone came and helped out.
We cleaned up half of her backyard. Sister K shouldn't have been
doing anything, but of course she did haha. Then we had dinner with Sister W. Sunday was super jam packed full of meetings, but
what's new?
Sorry, that was all over the place, I'm
in a rush. Transfers are Feb 9. Today is the first day of week 5 of this transfer! I
can't believe it! I think I'll be staying here with sister K one
more transfer and then I'll get transferred. but WHO KNOWS. it's
quite unpredictable. It seems like there's those sisters who either
have a LOT of companions and then there's those who have like 5. At
this rate, I'll have 13 (one each transfer) hahaha
I'm doing good! Not too sick. Just a
cold that I've had for like 4 weeks, it's getting pretty old, but
nothing I can't handle! Thanks for all your love and support. And
sorry for the lame letter this week, but I still love you and think
about you often!
xoxo Sister Viraldo
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