Monday night after P-day we went and found some less actives whose membership papers were in our area book. We had a feeling we should go find them and meet them. Why not, right? Members that were baptized over 5 years ago and they haven't attended since? Of course we are gonna go find them! We met Eloise and Brian who are mother and son, Eloise's husband was working. We recently got a GPS from a member who donated it to our car so we plugged in the address and went a searching! We found Eloise and talked with her a bit. She and her husband and son, Brian were baptized in Hermiston, Oregon, and then moved to Toppenish for work. She is such a sweet lady who doesn't know how to read, but she listens to the Book of Mormon on tape, (YES! Partially active!) We were extremely happy to meet them and have a return appointment on Friday. Still haven't met her husband, but we will this Friday :)
Tuesday we did service at the food bank again and got a whole bunch of bananas. They are always trying to give us food, not because they can, but because they have extra that will go bad soon, so they gave us some and then gave some to the Scouts, who were finishing service hours with us at the bank. We had some awesome lessons planned, which all ended up falling through, which was so so sad, but in return we did some solid knocking and contacting of 'formers', which helps us clean out our area book. We met Ricardo while knocking, who's a solid guy. Super nice and welcoming. His family wasn't home at the time and he was headed out to Yakima to work, so we took down his name and address, but then he said he wouldn't be able to meet with us for another month because he's working HOPS.... #goshdarnyouharvestseason. We definitely assured him we would be back in a month at his request. He looks forward to seeing us and getting his family together when we come back.
Wednesday we had our District meeting and decided we would focus on inviting members every day to come out with us, because we can't find many members to come out with us for lessons or tracting. I also was able to give a training on diligence and how we are responsible to be diligent to our Heavenly father, our companions, but more importantly ourselves... It's so crucial that we are on time, and obedient because it brings miracles! Exact obedience brings blessings and miracles! Then we had some less actives we visited, and then had dinner with the Guzman family. They are both converts with 7 kids, and they are partially active where they live currently. But we were able to talk a lot about the temple and baptism covenants. Then we had another lesson with Katrina! This girl though... She has so many questions and seemed to become more confused while we watched the Restoration video. Luckily we had Brother Ibarra with us during this lesson and we were able to include his testimony and his solutions to her questions. She's having a hard time accepting that there's a direct correct authority from Heavenly Father. We will work on that though. There are some missionaries that have been able to teach the Restoration with only the Bible. Who of my missionary friends knows how to? Can someone help us out? Email me! :) Much Appreciated! We then started our exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders, who are such gems! I left Toppenish and served in Yakima for the day with Hermana Cain. She's from Georgia and she's the first missionary of her family and siblings to go. She's a diamond! She taught me so much! The only little down part of exchanges was that they work in a walking area.... Merp. They have a car for the first half of the week and then they give their car to the elders, who they share it with. I can now say I have rock hard shins! I really enjoyed taking a break from driving though... I really do love walking!
The whole next day was full of rides to appointments and walking. I loved working in Yakima that day! I guess you could say I got a little break from Spanish, because we taught in English all day. That was because the Sister Training Leaders, who have been called to speak Spanish, are in an English walking area, which sounds silly, but it's as the Lord wants :) I was able to meet a lot of wonderful English less actives and try to give English lessons... It was so weird to not be speaking Spanish! We finished out the day with a lesson with some sweet less actives, who drive truck and who are sick once in a while, but they have great faith! Then Hermana Taua and Johnson drove to us in Yakima and we exchanged back. They were able to find some awesome potential investigators for us to return and see this week!
Saturday was a lot of knocking as well. We met someone SO SOLID! Cezar answered the door very shyly but curiously. We talked a little bit about faith and blessings from having Christ in our lives. We invited him to pray with us before we left and he turned out to be VERY hesitant. He's catholic, so he's only used to the crucifix hand motion thing. So we taught him how to pray from the Restoration pamphlet and he said a really short, sweet, powerful prayer. "Dear God, please help my struggling family, please help me find work, Amen". We told him he did a great job! We set up a return appointment for Sunday night. We also received a call from President Lewis... He asked Hermana Taua to sing in a big conference we are having tomorrow with Elder Packer's son, who is a member of the area of 70. She accepted, and he invited me to join with her as a duet if she'd like. We said we'd do it!
Sunday was a little hard to pay attention because there weren't that many people at church, a lot of our members are going back to work for harvesting the Hops. #darnyouhops. Neither of us felt the Spirit much, we didn't know why. This continued all day and we started to have contention between us without the Spirit. Before returning to Cezar, who we met the day before, I had to get out of the car and stretch and just try to relax. I couldn't relax without the Spirit with us then. The spirit of contention was so harsh we barely spoke outside of lessons and prayers before lessons. After saying a prayer to bring the Spirit back, the only bad thing was... when we arrived at Cezar's door there was a note... "Somos catolicos aqui". We are catholics here! NOOO.... Darn it. We vaguely saw him as we walked away, but he quickly shut the door when he saw we left him a note with our number. It was really sad to see this in result of not striving enough to have the Spirit with us. We were able to talk today about what we can do better to keep the Spirit with us as a companionship, and we start our goals TODAY.
It was a great week, and I wish luck to my friends going back to school and to working at the schools. Have a great week!
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