Week 33

Hello all!

This week has been stressful but really good. It seems like that is how most of my weeks have been going lately. Our investigators who are doing good are doing really good, but our investigators who are not doing good are just not prepared to have the gospel right now or don't want to act even when they know it is true. So that has lead us to do A LOT of finding this week. That is when we block off a chunk of time to just go find people to teach. We have been going through our ward list and visiting every member in our area and inviting them to the Easter Pageant coming up. We also spend a few hours at the park passing out cards. We haven't been knocking on a ton of doors lately, though. That is our last resort to find people because it really isn't productive.

This week we had the really cool opportunity to go to the annual Missionary Musical Fireside that our mission puts on. There were different choirs from different faiths (Dad, I was thinking of how you always said you liked gospel music when the Baptist choir was singing), and a few from our church. We had the stake choir from Mesa as well as the mission choir. I, with no ability to sing whatsoever, was a happy audience member. We had five investigators who came and LOVED it. It was so cool to see them be touched by the spirit. Each of our investigators had a different impression come to them as the music was sung and played. At one point, one of our investigators who has never come to church leans over to me and says, "I know all of these songs! Maybe I will come to church next Sunday."

We had a good talk with a less active member about preparing to go to the temple. The father of our family of investigators got to meet President Sweeney (President Sweeney doesn't speak Spanish and our investigator speaks very limited English) and President asked him if he was baptized and our investigator said "not yet!" So...That's awesome. And my very favorite thing that happened was that the director called all of the children up, because they were going to sing the song they had been practicing for weeks, and our nine year old investigator pops out of his seat and just walks up to the stand and stands with all the primary kids as they sang. IT WAS SO CUTE. We were a little nervous he would be embarrassed when he got back down but he seemed to really enjoy it, so overall great experience. The car ride there was SO funny. Our 75-year-old investigator was driving and Sister Ferre was in the front seat with the directions. So first, Sister Ferre accidentally missed the freeway turn off, and then we realized we had bad directions. Our investigator was getting so upset (her version of upset that just makes us laugh, because we know she loves us more that she is truly upset) and just kept calling Sister Ferre an idiot. I was dying. It took us 50 minutes to get there instead of 25, with a huge amount of U-turns and a stop at Jack In The Box for directions. But we made it!

Sister Ferre braided some cornrows on my head
during our weekly planning meeting. Fun times.

That investigator I talked about in my last email is progressing so well. He loves church and hasn't missed a week since he was introduced to the church. He is super excited for his baptism and the members that introduced him to the church are just as excited.

We teach a part member family whose 8 and 9-year-old daughters are not baptized yet. They are just the cutest things ever. They had their baptismal interview this last Saturday and passed, so they will be getting baptized this week. Their whole family is so excited for them, and so are we!

Tonight I have our second exchange of the transfer, and I get to go into the YSA/French area and I am PUMPED. Sister Ferre got to go to the French area already and said it was an amazing experience. I will have no idea what is going on if we have French lessons, but I am excited to be introduced to another culture. Hopefully they actually have French lessons tomorrow - I will let you know how it goes! The French work in our mission just started a few months before I came into the mission and it has already grown so much.

Well that is mostly it for this week. I am doing great and loving being here. For as much stress as there has been these last few weeks, it has been worth it. These people are so amazing and getting to teach about Jesus Christ all day is a dream. My testimony of my Savior has grown so much. Every time we speak of Him or sing about Him or read about Him in the scriptures I have an undeniable feeling in my chest that He is real and He died for me. I feel so blessed to be able to rely on that knowledge. It brings me comfort every day, especially in the more stressful times.

I love you all and hope you are doing great at home - have a wonderful week!

Sister Doxey