This week was crazy

Dear Family,

This week was crazy! So much to tell and so little time.

First of all, I AM SO SORRY I FORGOT TO DO BIRTHDAY SHOUTOUTS!

Aiden, hey buddy, I hope your birthday was SO AWESOME! I love you so much. Please dont grow up, I want to come home and find you exactly the same so we can hang out and play.

Grandma D, I love you so much.. how old are you now? You need to stop having birthdays grandma because without your oldest grandchild there to help you celebrate, is it really a celebration? I dont know if yall did anything on Saturday, but I hope you know that I was thinking about you. 

Kirra, so, you are kind of young, I approve of this birthday. Next year we can hang out. I love you tons girlie, and I hope your birthday was super fun.

So This week we visited the Family Fransechi. They are investigators, but they are really old and the wife is bed-ridden and they cant get baptized. They are the sweetest couple ever and have a huge testimony of the gospel. When we went to visit them we had a little spiritual thought planned out to share with them but Hermana Fransechi asked us if we could just sing hymns for her. It was really cute and Hermano Fransechi asked us if we could come by again soon so we are going to visit them today. 

Oh man, as I am writing RIGHT NOW Eye of the Tiger starts playing in the internet shop... Music makes things so hard to focus.

We had a lesson with our investigator Diana again and we decided that we needed to talk to her about the Gospel (5 steps: faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, and enduring to the end). She had a lot of questions about the Holy Ghost. We were able to bear our testimonies about him and the impact he can have on our lives. She is definitely searching for this conformation before she makes the decision to be baptized so it was really good for her that we could explain the importance of listening to the Holy Ghost and the blessings that come from recieving it after baptism. 

So on Tuesday we were waiting in front of the church for a member that was going to go do visits with us, but she was running late so we decided to contact people that were close to the church, but there was practically no one outside, so we started picking random scriptures from the Book of Mormon and reading what they said and tried to apply it to our lives... it was really fun but about after 10 minutes of that a man yells at us from the restaurant across the street, as he is getting in his truck, he just yells "Doctrine and Covenants 4" and drives away... WHAT? We have no idea who he is, but he knows D&C.. so... yeah we are searching for him.. but we really have nothing to go off of. Mysteries of Life I guess.

We have this less active member. Her name is Rachel, but its pronounced Raquel. She is the only member in her family, her children arent members (they are all grown up and moved out) and she divorced her husband when he made her choose between the gospel and him. Needless to say she was really strong in the church, and she still has an amazingly strong testimony, but she stopped coming to church. We decided to try to animate her a little so we went over to her house and she showed us how to make this banana cake which was super cool (she loves it, she used to do it for her profession). I have the recipe. 

We have this super cute boy in the ward and he lives really close to us so we almost always pass his house. This week we past and he came running and had this huge scratch on his hand like he fell and got part of his skin scratched off, so I asked him, "Nefi, what happened to your hand?" (Yeah, his name is Nefi (That is Nephi is Spanish)) and he tells me, "Mi piel se fue" which was so funny... it literally means "my skin left" I was dying... Children Spanish is SO FUNNY. 

We have another family that we are teaching. Family Villegas. Its a mom and 2 daughters. The girls are 14 and 15 and they really want to learn English. They have been hanging out with the young women and are going to church every Sunday.. they are so solid. The mom is a different story, she loves to talk when we go over and has no problem with the church, but she hasnt been really interested. This last week we decided to divide and conquer, so while I was teaching the girls English, my companion was teaching the mom the gospel. Turns out she had questions about baptism and tithing. My comp is the primest so you know she did an awesome job teaching her these principles. Afterwards we had the girls share what they learned in Enlish, and what the mom learned about the Gospel. She said that she understands the need for baptism and she told her girls that they need to get baptized and that she also understands why paying tithing is important. She also commited to go to church. On Sunday, the girls showed up with money in hand and said that it was tithing from their mom, but the mom didnt show up... so we are going to go visit them tonight. Its unbelievable, we have 2 investigators who are paying their tithing, but still havent accepted a baptism date... 

I gave a talk in Sacrament about missionary work yesterday. I would like to send yall a brief but very important thing that I learned.. "Cuando entendemos que todos somos hijos e hijas de Dios y que el Evangelio es la unica cosa que nos salvara, podemos entender de que manera podemos ayudar a nuestros hermanos y hermanas a recibir el Evangelio restaurado. Esta es una de la mas importante cosas que podemos hacer en esta vida".

Translation: "When we understand that we are all sons and daughters of God and that the Gospel is the only thing that will save us, we can understand the way we can help our brothers and sisters recieve the Restored Gospel. This is one of the most important things that we can do in this life".

I know the importance of sharing the truth with the world. I am so grateful for yall and everything you do. I love you all so much!

Love, Hermana Eardley