October 20, 2014
Dear Family of Awesome Adventurers
and Epic Kingdom-Builders & Friends,
My anticipated mission release date
is July 28th, so you can either come down and get me and we can all go to the
Nauvoo Pageant that ends August 3rd or something like that OR I can come home
then we can all go on the awesome church historic/mission trip that is our goal
for this summer. I hope we do get to see the pageant though, I hear it's
phenomenal!
For sure, the weather here is getting
COLD! And rainy, like home :) I sent an email to the Pukahi's and I
did get the address thank you so much!! Josh continues to be in my prayers as
well. I appreciate all of the love our family has for one another and the
amazing opportunity we have to learn more about families. I don't think I have
learned so much abut the importance of families than I have thus far on the
mish (besides the beautiful experience of having the best family in the world,
of course :)
THIS AREA IS ON FIRE!! We have
4 baptism dates and the Elders have like 12! (One of them from us, an awesome
guy named Scott, who's totally ready for the gospel, Thank you very much :)
We're working with a couple of new families, one with a baptismal date. In one
of them are Rena (who has stage 4 cancer), her husband Byron (who is struggling
with a drinking problem worsened so by his wife's declining health), Trisha
(their granddaughter who was our initial contact), and Kiesha (who we have met
with the most and takes care of Rena a lot). We were not sure whether or not
Rena may survive past her scheduled baptismal date, so if she cannot make it to
church 3 times, we hope President will let us know how to go about preparing her.
The other one we have taught the Restoration to both of the sons, but have yet
to teach it to their mother Krisha. She is very interested in changing churches
and appreciates our visiting them since her grandma passed away, whom she was
close with.
We met Claire and Tyler, sisters, at
one of our less-actives Cynthia's, and they were very interested to learn more.
Tyler is a pregnant transgender and Claire is 21 with a 3 year-old daughter.
She wants to find a church that she can raise her daughter in and realizes that
baptism is something that should be important, since she's been baptized twice
trying to find the right one. She was iffy about how the church judges people
who have had children out of wedlock. We told her the story of one of the women
from Meet the Mormons and how she was able to raise her family in the church,
even when she too had made that decision herself. They were both really excited
about the movie and said they'd see it before our lesson with them and the
Williams family on Thursday.
Set a date with Dominique who is very
excited to work towards baptism. She knows that there are many things she has
to get in order before she does so, but she is willing to work towards November
22nd.
One of our investigators, Eric, came
to church on Sunday and although he wasn't comfortable with how formal
sacrament meeting was, he enjoyed the discussion in Gospel Principles and
Priesthood. The Garcia's, especially Brother Garcia, fellowshipped him
wonderfully.
Jessica, Nick, and their mom Chris,
are hilarious. Chris, who is not religious at all by any means, has such great
questions about the church and missionary work. We told them of our purpose and
Chris expressed how miraculous it was that after Nick had posted on Facebook
that if God was there, he could really use the help, not two days later we met
them! I hope that things continue working out for them. Jessica has been
reading a little of the Book of Mormon and also more about Mormons. We referred
them to lds.org
and urged them to continue meeting with us, praying, and reading on their own.
Even though they have not set a baptismal date yet, if they continue on this
path I know that they will discover the truth for themselves and what a
blessing it will be for them!
Thank you so much for everything,
sorry this is so short, I will write more next week!
-Sister Weaver-
