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!
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