Transfer #12

Good morning!

 

It's a beautiful morning here in....the city... :D Happy news everyone, I'M STAYING IN THE CITY ANOTHER TRANSFER!!! 5 missionaries were transferred out of the zone, it was so sad. Sunday night we all gathered together and shared testimonies. I was holding it together just fine, and then of COURSE we have to sing "God be With You Til We Meet Again." I completely lost it, bawling my eyes out, and I wasn't the only one. It was horrible. Haha, absolutely horrible. That's the worst part about transfers, saying goodbye, and watching others have to say goodbye. Good thing it's another six weeks before we have to go through that again. But I am very very happy to be staying.

We were gone most of last week on trade-offs with other sisters. We went to Emu Plains where all the fires have been and then we went to Richmond. I was with Sister Benjamin in Emu Plains and we had such a good time, saw many great things. We've been asked to try a new door approach when we go door knocking. We gave a training on it at the sisters conference but this was my first time actually applying it. I haven't knocked on doors in a long time so you could say I was a bit rusty. But we went to follow up with an old potential the elders found a long time ago. She was lovely, she invited us right in and we had a good conversation. She said there was a woman who lives in the cream house towards the end of the street who might need a visit from us, so we started off down the street to find her. Turns out there were a few "cream" colored houses, so we decided to try all of them. The first one, an older man answered the door and gave the typical, "What can I help you with....?" aka...get to the point. I told him that we just had a few questions for him and were wondering if he could help us out, he said sure. So I started asking some questions from our new missionary survey and then he invited us to step inside the door. We continued chatting and he stopped us again and invited us to come in and have a seat while he went to get his wife. We heard him say to her in the kitchen "Lynn, there are two lovely Latter-Day Saint women here with some questions for us. Why don't you come and we'll have a chat with them?" We stayed for the next 45 minutes and taught them about the Restoration. They're quite happy with the religion they have but they were lovely people. It turns out the new door approach works! We got into 2 out of 3 doors and taught a full lesson with them! Amazing!

Another little miracle for me personally. The sisters told us they scheduled a dinner appointment with a member for all of us and I asked, "Uh oh...did you tell them about my gluten burden?" She said, "Oh no! I forgot about that, I'll call her." It turns out the member is completely gluten free and only cooks gluten free...awwwe  Heavenly Father was lookin' out for me.

Richmond was great as well, I was able to visit some of the people that I used to teach when I was serving there. One of our members is in the hospital so we went and surprised her there and sang her a hymn. She was so happy to see us.

One of our investigators, ________ from Thailand took us out for dinner Saturday night, he is so great, the happiest person I have ever met. Unfortunately he works on Sunday and has only ever been able to come to church once, but he has Tuesdays off so we meet with him every Tuesday.  Sunday we have 4 of our investigators at church! Two of which have baptismal dates. ________ is going to be baptized this Saturday! :) We still have a few things to go over to help him be ready for Saturday but we're hoping all things are resolved and his baptism will go through.

For those of you who might not know...there are 36 days until Christmas, I made a chain-link countdown to put at the teaching center so we are always aware. :)

OH! One more miracle, how could I forget!  After our district meeting, I was joking with some of the other missionaries about how I could probably understand the Book of Mormon in Spanish better than I could the Chinese one. A few hours later I walked passed one of the tables that had a Spanish Book of Mormon on it so I grabbed it on the way out and was just flipping through it, reading scriptures out loud in Spanish to Sister Campbell. As we walked home, we were giggling a little about it but as we came to the entrance to our apartment building, there was a man there checking his mail and he ended up getting in the same elevator as us. I had the thought, how funny if this guy was Spanish and I happen to have a Spanish Book of Mormon with me.  I asked him how his day was going, etc.  And then he asked me, "Do you speak Spanish? I heard you speaking earlier." I laughed and said, "Well, I studied in school for 5 years you would think I would, but no, I don't." He then said, "I'm from Bolivia so I speak Spanish." No...way...what are the CHANCES! Of course, that's when we reached our floor and the elevators opened but he told us which floor he lives on and his name. I was STILL holding the book in my hands, I was like....NOOOOOO! WAIT! haha, but too late, the doors closed. But not to worry, I know where he lives :) Then Sister Campbell turned to me and said, "I was thinking the whole time you were reading how funny it would be if he spoke Spanish!" We were thrilled, little miracles :)

Well I love you all, hope you had a great week and will have a great coming week with Thanksgiving!  Enjoy, they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, eat some turkey for me!

Love,

Sister Raitt

Sister Stanbury, Sister McKinnon, Sister Campbell
Sister Raitt, Elder Maxfield, Elder Arona,
Edler Guevarra & Elder Davey
(Elders names may be out of order)