Hola Familia,
Woot woot! Baptism
this week too! Pascual will be baptized on Ava's birthday and his FAMILY is
going to travel to come see it and they want to hear the discussions, too.
Which is new. Pascual gave me the phone
last night because his wife wanted to talk to us but we ran out of credit
before she could get to what she wanted to say. But we'll talk at the
baptism.
EEE. We're really in miracle mode. I didn't even
have people close to baptism in Madero, but here practically all our
investigators are the real deal (and there's a good 6 or 7 of them). They
actually WANT to listen to us and have baptismal dates and everything. And all
of them are such cool and such different people and I wish you could meet them
and that I had time to tell you about them. We'll have to have storytime every
night when I get home or something and we can go through my journals.
About a week ago we ran into a family sitting outside their
house in the street just having a good time and talking, and they all wanted to
listen, and so we set a date with the mom, Juliana, and daughter Maria who live
in our area (and passed the other references to the office). We visited them
yesterday and only Maria had time to listen (she’s 23 and has a
punk-stylish-short-cropped hair-do and usually a neon-pink forever 21 shirt). She
opened the door and didn't seem that excited to talk with us, but we sat down
and lo, and behold, she had READ the folleto (pamphlet) and THOUGHT about it and TOLD US THE THINGS SHE HAD
LEARNED ABOUT IT. That’s very atypical, guys. And the whole lesson we were
missionaries on fire, applying everything to her personal life and involving
her and asking great questions. At the end, we invited her to be baptized and
she was thinking for a long time so we were worried. And then... she just sort
of shrugs her shoulders and nods like she’s admitting something. And then she
smiled.
Hassiby came with us (she’s 16 and was accompanying us as a
member). She had been telling us about this girl that passes in front of her
house every day that she didn’t know, but who she felt like she ought to stop
someday to talk to her about the gospel. And during the lesson with Maria,
Hassiby bore her testimony in the middle and then said “Actually, you've walked
past my house a ton and I’ve always wondered who that girl in the neon-pink
camisa (shirt) was and felt like I
ought to talk to you.” You can imagine how Hassiby felt when we knocked on the
door and Maria was the one who opened it. :)
I don't know why Heavenly Father is putting so many prepared
people in our path. Teaching-wise and Spanish-wise, we are not very skilled
missionaries, but we DO push ourselves to have a crazy amount of faith that
Heavenly Father wants EVERYONE to be baptized-- so he will direct us how to
touch EVERYONE'S hearts to make them understand. And we seek his direction in
every aspect of every part of our work. We’re still not very good at doing
either of those things yet, but I think he gives blessings to people who try.
Can you send a thank you to the beautiful family of the
Bishop for their much-appreciated package of goodies? It's brought a lot of
happiness to a lot of people and I LOVED the letter and card.
Also can you thank Grandma for the letter too? I just got
the one from Christmas about spending it with Dave and Susan's family and I
read it in bed and it made me feel all cozy inside like I was with my family.
:) We have a cool family guys.
OH. And I got the Christmas card and just sat there staring
at the pictures for probably a good 5 minutes. There were only two
normal-family pictures on there, I noticed, and the rest was very typically
Ludlam. Thank you for your letter Mum.
Hermana Harper and I are doing a pretty good job fighting
the language battle and temptation to speak English. We're in spanish probably
85% of the time.
Sometime, I'll have to send pictures of the incredible
number of combinations we've made in the morning with platanos, hojuelas de
maiz, y avena. (bananas, cornflakes and oatmeal.) We get pretty creative.
 |
| Multi-ward Council (see accompanying paragraph caption) |
We had a reunion last night for all of the ward councils
in the stake so I aproveche la oportunidad (took
advantage of the opportunity) to get picrtures of all the people I never
had time to say goodbye to. I don’t really know the first three people, but the
smiling guy in the green tie is Bishop Garcia, then L t R Hno Manuel Chi, Hno
Pool, Hna Espinosa, the two kids of Hna Zuli, Hna Rita of the Fabulous hair
(you can’t see it in it’s glory with the flowers and everything), Hna Magi and
Hna Zuli (who teaches ballet in her house.) I still need one of Hno Matey, the
ward mission leader. He's one of the main people I want to see when I come back
someday; he's a very special person.
I didn't get to your questions, sorry, but it's on my list.
:)
We’re going to the offices right now to check for mail...
Love,
Hermana Ludlam
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