Javier Member Referral 12-21-2011

Hola Familia!

     

       This week was awesome! We were able to find 4 new investigators 3 of them all on Sunday! One of them was the son of a couple we'd been teaching, 2 we found knocking several months ago and went back to stop by, and 1 was a member referral! I was really excited about the member referral because we hardly ever get them. His name is Javier and he was actually a referral that a member received from a non-member friend who thought he could use some help. We had a lesson with him on Sunday and he's really willing to read and progress so we're excited to keep teaching him. We're struggling the most right now with getting people to church which consequently is making it hard to set people on date. We're teaching a lot of people right now who say they want to come to church, say they will, and then something comes up last minute or we mysteriously can't get a hold of them Saturday or Sunday mornings to confirm or they disappear temporarily off the face of the earth. So that's been our biggest challenge lately. Some of them say they want to get baptized but want to go to church before setting a date (they make a valid point) but we can't get them there. We'll be brainstorming ideas during planning tomorrow.        We've been having a lot of luck finding new people lately from going back to the potential investigators that I found earlier in my time here (the people that said we could come back "another day" or made an appointment with but they we're there). This is good because I think at this point I've knocked the majority of Marengo, Harvard, and Woodstock (at least all the Hispanic areas) and now going back through the second time with the lists of potentials is really working out great.       Jose has now been to church 11 times without missing one. I think pretty soon I'm going to start losing track of the number. We found out his doubt and it's a really hard one - His family. He's really sad that no one else in his family is willing to listen with him or be religious in any sort of way. He says no one in his house listens to him and his wife mocks him when he reads and prays. It's been really hard on him. We haven't had much luck with his wife either...she seems mad all the time and says "NO" when we invite her to listen. So we're hoping he will find more strength as we finish up the missionary lessons. We just recently though gave one of his daughters as referral to the Elgin Spanish missionaries so hopefully she will start listening and it will give Jose a little more "animo" (I can't think of a good word in English...encouragement probably).      For Christmas we were able to find someone for video chat! They have Skype on a computer and an iPhone. So I'll probably try the iphone to see if it will work out better than the last time haha. As for a time, I can call in the morning at 10:00 my time (8:00 your time). I'm assuming you'll all have been awake for at least 2 hours :) . If by chance it doesn't work out to call at 10 I can probably call at 4:00 my time (2 your time) so as not to conflict with church or BMW calling.      Oh also starting the next transfer (by the second week of January) my preparation day will be changing to Monday. So I will be e-mailing on Mondays (unless there's a holiday and the libraries close then they'll let us do it on Tuesday). They are also changing transfer day so that means I will be coming home a day earlier (Weds the 28th of March). Luckily that's still a REALLY long ways away, but just to let you know :).     Well I look forward to talking with you all in a few days! Hope all your Christmas plans are working out awesomely! Also I think I forgot to say "Happy Birthday Mom!" last week so..."Happy Birthday Mom!". And also Happy Birthday Megan! (save until Monday).I love you all!

Hermana West
       

Making Progress With the Members 12-14-2011

Hola Familia! 

      This week has been really good! I feel like we're starting to make more progress with the members which is great. I figured out why several of them never wanted to invite us over before...it's because the old branch president scared them all about feeding Hna's Miller and Delis. There were several who were really scared about making them sick because they both has Celiacs disease. So we were able to get an appointment with a family who we'd never been able to visit before last week and it went really well! I think they trust us a lot more now after talking with them in their home and they seem willing to help. On Sunday several of the members came up to Jose (our investigator) and talked with him and the family that we visited said they'd like to go over to visit with him and his family sometime. We thought that was awesome and are hoping it's a sign that the branch is ready to really start growing. We were also able to have two members come with us to appointments this week that hadn't come with us before. So we've been really excited about that because getting the members involved with our awesome investigators will probably help them feel more comfortable coming to church.       So Jose is still coming to church. He's more active than a lot of the members now but his main doubts about baptism come from his family. He says it's really hard to make that decision when he has absolutely no support and when his family has no desire to do it with him. The past few lessons now though his wife has been home during our lessons. She sits on the couch and watches TV on the other side of the room (she gets mad when Jose asks her to turn it off). Even though she still always says "NO" when we invite her to come sit with us I think she's listening to what we're teaching. So we're hoping that little by little we can help soften her heart.      We're excited for Maria Mendoza this week as well! She understands really well everything that we teach and has the desire to be baptized! We weren't able to set a date yet because she says she wants to come to church first. She says she's going to get Sundays off of work so she can be with her family and come to church. We had a member come with us who lives really close to her and she invited her to follow her to church on Sunday so that was awesome!      We had zone conference yesterday in one of the the Chicago buildings and it was really good as usual! Also I played the piano for a musical number put on by our zone. "O come all ye faithful" from the Hymnbook. It was a little nerve racking but it was alright. I only messed up really bad twice. haha. I think I mentioned it once before that I would probably be the one playing the piano for the branch a couple transfers ago. So I've been playing in sacrament meeting too. I ordered a simplified hymnbook from the office which helps (though some of the arrangements sound so easy and cheesy that I want to pull my hair out) so I've been doing a mixture of easy ones and normal ones. Sometimes I mess up really bad but I think I'm improving my piano skills at least. haha.Something random and cool that I heard about this week:       When I was in my last area with my second comp. Hermana Rojas, we tracted into a couple from India who said they would be interested in coming to our church. They let us in for a few minutes and we explained a little bit about our church and everything. They spoke with pretty heavy accents. We told them what time the English ward started and they said they needed a ride. We told them that someone could probably bring them and took down their information. After we left I had the idea to go around the corner to this member from the English ward who we had tracted into accidentally a week or so earlier. She was really nice, let us use her bathroom and said to call her if there was anything she could ever do to help us (she loves missionaries because she served a mission too). So we went over again and she said she would love to bring them to church. So after that we gave them as a referral to the English Elders and they started teaching them. Anyways the point for telling this story is that I found out last week that they both recently got baptized! It made me really happy to know I had a small part in helping them to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ.      Thanks Mom and Dad for all your support and for everyone else as well. I love you all and hope that you are enjoying your Christmas time! I am not sure yet about what time I'll be calling/skyping on Christmas. We'll probably try this week to find someone who has video chat options on their computer... I'm not really sure who would. Hopefully I'll know by next Wednesday and I can tell youlove,

Hermana West

Oh and P.S. I got the Christmas package. Thanks!

Member Family Helps Rosa 12-8-2011

  Hola familia!

       This past week has been great! One of the cool miracles that happened this week was Rosa. She's an old investigator who's mom is a less active member. We'd tried visiting with her a few months ago but kept canceling/ not showing up for our appointments. We decided to try her again Saturday night and found her setting up some Christmas lights. We helped for a little bit and had a lesson. Afterwords she asked US when we would be coming back. The next day was Sunday and before the Christmas devotional we called to remind her and ask her if she would be coming. She said she would "try" and mumbled something about looking for a ride right before we ended the call. After I hung up I had the impression that we should stop by the house of one of the members to see if they were going to the devotional and if they could pick her up. I was pretty hesitant because it was 1) last minute 2) I didn't want to make them feel bad if they we're going 3) I wasn't 100% positive that Rosa would actually go. But I couldn't shake the thought away so we went and asked them anyways. The Hermana was really nice about it and said that she wasn't planning on going because she didn't want to go by herself (the rest of her family was already in their pajamas and not planning on going). She did tell us though that if Rosa wanted to go she would go get her to see if they could go together (She remembered Rosa from when the missionaries were teaching her before). So we tried calling Rosa again to see if she still needed a ride and NO answer. I was starting to get a little stressed out but the Hermana said she would just go stop by her house and see. We thanked her and told her we were really grateful for her help. After we got to the the devotional we were a little afraid they wouldn't show up but they did a few minutes into the first talk! After the devotional the branch had hot chocolate and cake a few people introduced themselves to her. Rosa said she would like to start coming to church again so we think it all went very well.     Also on Monday we had Hermana Marta Perez from the MTC with us all day to observe Hermana Freeman's spanish (they're observing people who where in the MTC for 9 -weeks and comparing it to those from the test program for 6 weeks. It was a little nerve-racking but the day went way better than I would have imagined. We had 3 appointments set up and they were ALL there. Also we found three more lessons. 6 lessons in one day is the most I've had since coming to this area so we were pretty excited about that. We had a wide variety of lessons too with progressing investigators, first lessons, less active, and member lessons. We decided that Hermana Perez can come with us any day she wants to observe haha.      Sorry if my letter is a bit shorter than usual I have a lot to do today. Thanks for all your support I hope you all have a great week!
Hermana Kristen West

"7 New Investigators" 11-30-2011

Hola Familia!

      It has been getting a lot colder this week. The past few days it's been around 32 which with the wind is just horrible. I had forgotten how cold it really feels. I had been trying to mentally prepare myself for the cold hoping that I could convince myself that it's really not that bad but it's hard to keep that viewpoint sometimes. haha. It hasn't snowed yet or anything. One of the other Hermana's in the mission told me that she found these thin, windbreaker pants at target or something that helped her more than anything else last winter because it blocked the wind. I might try and find some like that too. Hopefully they're not too expensive or anything.        We found 7 new investigators which is the best I've had so far in this area! We found 3 by stopping by the house of an investigator we found a couple months ago but who moved back to Mexico. We kept feeling prompted to go back even though her family had never really showed a lot of interest before. We were able to set up an appointment with her aunt and 2 cousins. It was a really good lesson and they started talking about when we would come back before we even asked them! So it was great. We found another 3 by stopping by someone we contacted a few months back as well and we taught him, his wife, and his daughter. They say they believe everything we say but I'm not sure yet if they really have desires to change or act. I'm still excited to visit them again. The last one, Adriana, we found knocking doors in Harvard and she let us in. She expressed concern about not being able to answer her children's questions about the purpose of life and what would happen after so we started teaching her the plan of salvation and it went really well!       Jose is still coming to church (8 times in a row now) but is being really stubborn about baptism. He wont even let us set a date as a "goal" for his baptism. He said he will let us know when he's ready. The English ward is having a baptism for an 8 year old this week and we're hoping that if Jose comes it will help resolve some of his concerns.      Also the family that invited us over for Thanksgiving (In the English ward but also speaks Spanish) also invited over a couple who they had met through the missionaries a couple years back (Juan and Rosa). It was really interesting too because just the day before I had been looking over their teaching record in the old investigators section in the area book and had felt that we needed to do something for them but wasn't sure what to do because we didn't have their current address. So I guess it was a little miracle that this family had been keeping in touch with them. Juan and Rosa didn't seem too excited about the idea of us visiting them again but at least we have their current information now and hopefully sometime in the future we or other missionaries will be able to start teaching them again! The dinner was really good too. A traditional American Thanksgiving dinner as well so it was nice.     
Hope you all have a great week!

love, 
Hermana West

Training Hermana Freeman 11-23-2011

Hola Familia!

      Transfers were yesterday and I got a new companion. And when I say new I mean actually fresh from the MTC. So I'll be training for the next 2 transfers at least. Her name is Hermana Freeman and she's from Utah. They are testing out this new 6 week language training program at the MTC to see how missionaries do with the language in only 6 weeks compared to 9 weeks. So Hermana Freeman (and 2 of the other missionaries who came in this week) were only in the MTC for 6 weeks. She didn't have any Spanish classes before so needless to say the Spanish is going to be pretty rough...hopefully she can pick up on things quickly from here. In our first lesson yesterday with a (less-active member - Alicia) I had her share her favorite scripture and even though her Spanish was barely understandable the spirit was there really strong and the scripture was so perfect for Alicia that she started to cry. So despite whatever weaknesses and challenges we face the Lord can still use us as instruments in his hands :)
       Hermana Delis got transferred to my old area! I was so excited for her and was telling her everything about the area haha. President Doll had us do something different from the usual since Carpentersville is on the way to the Naperville stake center for us he had us drive down there first drop off Hermana Delis and then Hermana Frandsen (who's going home) and I went down in their car. So lots of driving yesterday but it was fun to talk with Hermana Frandsen again before she left.
       One of the families in the English ward invited us and the spanish Elders over for Thanksgiving because no one in the branch had. So we'll be going over there tomorrow. 
       Sorry my e-mail is a little bit shorter this week but I'm out of time. Hermana Freeman forgot her e-mail log-in info so we had to go all the way back to the apartment and come back and we're supposed to be done with everything by 12:00 today. So I hope you all have a fantastic week! I love you!

Hermana West