Hi!

We had a baptism yesterday! (not in our ward...but) It was really exciting and we had taught George the second discussion, because an older lady from our ward brought him to church the first time. She's awesome and it's so cute that this kind Samoan grannie has pretty much as adopted this skinny white guy, who has never had a family before, as her own son. We brought an investigator from another ward, who just happened to be at the visitor center as we were leaving to go to the baptism. She wanted to come along, since she's been reading the Book of Mormon and considering taking these steps herself. You could tell she really felt the Spirit. It was a great teaching opportunity as she asked us for a play by play as to what happens at a baptism/confirmation.

After he was baptized and confirmed a member, he went and bore his testimony of Jesus Christ, the Church and missionary work. He's gonna be an awesome missionary. I'm so happy for him.

This week has been busy. We had Zone Conference yesterday. It was my companion's first one. We focused on contacting referrals. Get em while they're hot. We went into the conference that morning and it was about 60 f. We came out and it was blizzarding. Fun fun fun.

They also challenge us to read the Book of Mormon, going through and marking the Book of Mormon with Our Purpose, so : To invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through FAITH in Jesus Christ and His ATONEMENT, REPENTANCE, BAPTISM, receiving the GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST and ENDURING TO THE END. So each capitalized thing would be a different color. I'm going to do it and also on the side of each page, put the question of the soul that was answered
somewhere on that page. Like, “Why do I need the Book of Mormon?” “How can I be happy?” “What's the purpose of this life?” “Why are there so many churches?” “Does God have one truth?” “How can I keep my family close and happy?” “What should I teach my kids?”. Just a few examples. But this is stuff people really care about and all those answers can be found in the Book of Mormon if we just read it with the Spirit. It's great and I think it will help whoever I give that book to. I have never had an experience, where I seriously delved into the Book of Mormon looking for the answer to a question...and not found it. It's always been
there. “Why should I go on a mission?” “How can I overcome a temptation I'm having?” “How can I help this person I'm worried about?” I have ALWAYS found my answer. And I'm so grateful for that. That's why I'm here.

We've only taught one investigator this week, thus far. Find, find, find. It's what I do here. We're working with the members to have the do the finding for us, but it hasn't worked out yet. Well, it worked with George...but it hasn't worked out in our ward boundaries, yet. So, we met Fernando at a Mexican restaurant. He just arrived from Mexico, so he barely espika de eenglish, but he wanted to learn. We use that as a finding tool. We went to his house and worked with him on his pronunciation then sang Families Can Be Together Forever and taught that principle. He had just shown us pictures of his 3 beautiful little girls he left behind. Then briefly explained the Book of Mormon and promised it would help him learn English faster if he read it. We gave him a copy in English and Spanish, so he could do the Elder Groberg thing. Then we taught him to pray in English and committed him to do that every night. Hopefully, he'll get curious about what he's learning and start asking questions. For now it's great for my companion, since he corrects her Spanish as she corrects his English. She's doing good and trying hard to learn.

I've been getting lots of mail. Thank you! Christian getting old! He's losing the baby fat on his face and he can write!!! He couldn't do that before I left could he? That's craziness! Madison and Ava both look like mini's of their moms. Except not so mini anymore. Okay, that's it. I'm putting my foot down. All you all stop growing up right NOW. NO getting taller. NO getting smarter than me. and definitely NO growing up and making me feel old. Just distribute that declaration around will
you? Thanks.

I love you all and I appreciate the letters and if you haven't written me one, Fakatomala! You can look up what that means in my last email. I love my family. Amigos...te quiero mucho.

Hermana Deb

E famili!!! Fefe hake?

Hey Family!

Como estan? It's been a good week. I finally feel like we're working with the ward. They're giving us assignments and we're doing them and following up. At the same time, when they haven't worked out, we've done some finding. It was ten degrees yesterday, sunny and we were out tracting. Of course the 3 people who invited us in were single males, so we had to schedule appointments and keep knocking. I'm just happy we got some good potentials, if not lessons.

The Visitor Center yields random little miracles. Like, people calling us back. That's a miracle. It doesn't happen full proselyting. We had two people we'd met call US, before we even called them. That's so exciting. we have appointments with them this week. Love it.

The cool thing about having a Tongan companion is we get even more spoiled than we usually do by the Polynesians. One of the Sisters brought at least $50 worth of groceries and just dropped it off at the visitor center for us while we were on tours. Literally 4 shopping bags full of food. Amazing. We called her and thanked her profusely, but I wish there was more we could do. Don't be surprised if I come home looking and speaking like a Tongan.

Tongan words of the day:
fakatomala-Repent!
fakasaseli- sillyhead
nutuhafu- droolface
namuku- smelly
owahohaha- don't bug me
ihe huafa o Sisu Kalaisi, amen. -In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

The combinations of vocabulary you pick up on the mish are very unique. The Samoans in Relief Society play this one up game to see who can do the best job of overfeeding the missionaries. After this, I'm worried/curious about how much we're taking home next week. I feel loved.

We have plans to go to Liberty Jail today. Sister Faivakimoana's got friends out there who want to show us around and take us shopping. Shweet! I'm finally going to get to see that dvd of Benjamin and I'm burning a cd for Julio. A recent convert in another ward that hangs out in the visitor center Sunday nights, since he has to work Sunday morning. He brought us good Mexican food from the ghetto side of town we're not allowed in, in exchange for some good Spanish religious music. I like
how the Hispanic culture works—you do a fava fo me, I do a fava fo you, capiche?

Life's good. Mission's good. Even when life's not good and the mission's not good...it's still good. Love you all 'heaps' (nz). Thanks for your support and your letters and for just being good. That counts for a lot.

Ofa atu,
Sista Dev

Sunday was so much fun. We literally RAN from the car to our appointments. We cut Correlation short, so we could run from an appointment at 3:30 to an appointment at 4:15 to the Visitor center by 4:45. Fun fun fun. I sang a solo in church....I'm still in shock. Sister Faivakimoana talked, I talked, then I sang “Abide With Me!” the lowest, shortest song I could find in the hymn book.

That night I really wanted to pass out, but planned instead. My companion said she wasn't sure she would make it another week if it was always like this :-) I'm such a good trainer :-) Actually, I haven't gotten severely lost yet. I'm always lost, but I haven't gotten myself REALLY lost yet. So that's a great personal accomplishment. My poor Kiwi companion is doing the best she can keeping me going the right direction with an atlas she hasn't learned to read yet. The midwestern road system organization makes zero sense. There are five “S 41st St Ter W” and about 20 “E 42nd St” 's. They're all kind of at the same latitude, but on completely opposite ends of the city. I'm glad I invested $30 in maps as soon as I got here. If
you have time, mapquest my greatest driving adventure so far--- “RD Mize rd”. The addesses change everytime it switches direction. Just look at the road and know that I was getting directions to a house from a little Oaxacan lady who doesn't drive herself.

I got a DVD of Benjamin! I got permission from president to watch it on a computer at the Visitor Center today. I'm super excited. Thank's a lot Lisa. Ud es maravillosa! I also found out that Sister Crystal Updike, one of the other sister's in the visitor center, isn't just another Virginian, but was in Lisa and Tom's Gospel Principles class all summer. She's here. I asked her how the class went, she said Tom's really smart. He did a good job of keeping the doctrine in line. Way to go Tom.

Honestly, this week's just kind of been a blur. Super fast paced, since I'm pretty much running the show, but delegating as much as possible. In fact, last night, I was so proud of myself. I called Bob, our investigator, last week to ask him if we could have an appointment at his sisters home. Called his sister. Set a date. Talked to another family so they could come and fellowship him as well. Asked his sister if that was okay. Then we spent 30 minutes making this awesome lesson plan. Got there right on time along with the other family. This was like my best
organized lesson of the year...except we forgot to call Bob. ) -: Minor detail. So much for running the show, everyone was just sitting there waiting for him to show up and his sister looks at me and asks what he said when I called him and my jaw just dropped. At least everyone else thought it was funny. My goal this week was not to forget anything. Like calling our only investigator for an appointment we set up for a week. sigh.

We rescheduled for next week and my companion had fun writing notes on every page of her planner “remind comp to call Bob.” She's one of those people just made for a mission. Loves to study. Loves to teach and testify. So I'm learning a lot from her and she's learning how to use a map from me. President Hacking also asked her to learn Spanish. So we're working on that. We have a lot of Spanish appointments this week. So I'll be translating.

Example,

“Yo se que la iglesia es verdadera con todo mi corazon y que Jose Smith
fue un profeta verdadera por nuestras dias y que El Libro de Mormon es de
Dios y tiene el poder a traer nuestras almas mas cerca al Reino Celestial
por medio del Espiritu Santo y nuestra diligencia duradera.” = The
Church is true. ;-)

The main thing that's awed my kiwi is the sheer NUMBER of churches here. And how many of them have the Book of Mormon as part of their accepted cannon. It's not enough to testify of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. They've got to hear and know there's prophet today and gain a testimony of him here. I'm still trying to explain the difference between Restorationists and RLDS and Community of Christ and Hill Cumorah Branch...but honestly I don't really know myself. The main thing that seems to be lacking is the rest of the Doctrine and Convenants. The leaders went at it in a pick and choose way, and the Community of Christ has about 95 sections in theirs, none of which talk about what actually takes place in a temple. They have concerts and the daily 'prayer for peace' in the big Spiral Temple. I haven't gone in yet. I want to take the tour.

I think my most spiritual moment this week was meeting a recent convert who loves her visiting teacher. They're best friends and they took us out to eat and I sat there watching them thinking, this is what the gospel's all about. I talked about Home teaching Sunday. It's the number one way to do missionary work.

Have a great week. Love you all.

Hermana Deb

I'm training!!! Whoa. Crazy! I'm too young to be a mother! I'm only 6 and a half months old for goodness sake! Hehe. Actually I'm pretty excited. My new compa is a Tongan from New Zealand and think she has extended family here. Well, she's Tongan, she has extended family EVERYWHERE. Our ward is half Polynesian so she'll fit right in. Her name's Sista Faivakaimaono. Say that 10 times fast. I'm glad I've been studying Tongan...I know “kai” means food. I don't if she's Spanish speaking yet. But I'm planning her best first day of the mission ever! It's going to be fun. I'm making a greenie survival kit (toe warmers,etc.) and I think it would be good if we went and taught some of the members and tracted some. Anyway, I figure if I just act confident and pretend I know what I'm doing long enough, it'll come.

Does anyone have some good creative finding ideas? Our ward pretty much takes care of firesides and things like that. There's not really enough Hispanics to teach an English class, nor can we commit that much time from our 3-4 hours daily in the area. I might look into a couple service activities this transfer, but mostly I really just need a new tracting approach. I'm in a rut. Sister Miller and Hansen came up with a survey at one point to go around and give people asking them about their religion, but I really don't know if that's allowed. And they were too wussy to actually try it :-) I think I'm going to try and do some family history this transfer (I say that every transfer).

It's been a good week though. We had 2 investigators come to church! Then we found out neither one is in our area. Actually, we helped one move out of the area. She moved into government housing and as we drove through I kept thinking. “The world works from the outside in, but the Lord works from the inside out.” Don't know who said that. Some general authority or another. But Hawthorne govt housing is this big beautiful compound of brick apt buildings. Super clean and nice. We moved her into a 2-level apartment with 3 bedrooms and wood floors and new everything. Way nicer than where we're staying. BUT, we also got stared/whistled at by her shirtless neighbor for 30 minutes while we carried stuff in. I couldn't help but notice the thug children on the street corner. I've never seen so many old broken down cars in my life. And the lady who was in the office the same time we were, requesting an apt change from the same neighborhood as her ex-husband's crazy axe murderer ex-girlfriend, is like 2 doors down. Eek!

Well at least it looks nice, and at least it's not our area. The elders are going to pick up teaching after tonight. We asked them to give her a home blessing. We'll still drop by and help them get daily contact with her, though. I love the gospel. The Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom are really wonderful things. The commandments work inside out. That apartment complex may look like Zion, but it's really just a big storage unit. A place to put those things that have value, but aren't serving their real purpose at the moment. sigh. We're teaching the Word of
Wisdom tonight. I love repentance. I hope our investigator does too, so she can save that money wasted on cigarettes and get out of storage.

We tracted a lot this last week. Mitt Romney questions opened a couple doors for us, so that was good. Not a whole lot of success, but through trying out some other houses around our referrals we found 3 new potentials to teach and made some appointments. w00t! So, the Church is true. Book of Mormon's the word of God. Straight up testimony, wha'. Pray for my greenie. She's gonna need it :-P

Love ya all,
Hermana Deb

ps Sister Hansen just said she's gonna miss me talking in my sleep, aww.
pps Kellen, Elder Dude is lost in Topeka! sniffle sniffle )-: Will you make me a new one? Por favor con azuca.

Happy New Year!

We kicked it off with a supercool joint priesthood-relief society lesson on guess what? MISSIONARY WORK! Actually it was more just inviting everyone to get to know their neighbors and giving them deadlines to do it. There are very many weaksauce excuses for not sharing your testimony, but I greatly dislike the excuse, “I don't know any nonmembers.” Well whose fault is that? How are you supposed to love you neighbor as yourself if you've never said more than Hi, bye and please turn that down, to them?

Anyway, we did work hard at that lesson, we handed out family mission plans for people to fill out, that we can follow up on, we showed the preach my gospel video and we called people ahead to roleplay for us. Meeting the neighbors, segueing to a gospel subject, testifying at every opportunity, talking to everybody, from the plane, to the store to your own family. I really liked some of the roleplays. Brother Brown opened up his scriptures 'on the plane' and sat there smugly just expecting Brother Poli to just ask about it.... “So, are you going to eat those
peanuts?”. It's all right, he rolled with it, gave him the imaginary peanuts and just told him about the Book of Mormon anyway. This ward has a good sense of humor.

Our ward mission leader has kind of a cool idea to have the ward missionaries go around and work with people to do missionary work in their homes, just like we do. It's a good idea, but we'll see how it goes. Maybe it will at least help people go and do their home teaching. Scripture study + Visiting/Home teaching + Family History work = Successful ward. Because there's about 20 multi-faith families in the
ward, that's an excellent source for our teaching pool, and we've visited quite a few of them, but if they don't already know someone in the ward or are used to the idea of people coming by to share spiritual messages, they're not going to be very open to us.

We went to get some things for a dinner we were invited to on New Year's and had to go down an unfavorable isle of the store to get some Martinelli's juice. NOBODY was making eye contact with us as we walked down the liquor isle. It was pretty funny. We grabbed our grape juice and 6 lil plastic cocktail glasses and tried to leave, but an older lady in one of the other aisles said, 'Hey Sisters!' and it turned out she belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Israel and used to be a tour guide at the Kirtland Temple. She started to sing us her favorite song from the LDS hymnbook, so we stood there by the cough syrup singing, “As I have loved you, love one another...” with her and listened to her stories about taking the Osmonds through the temple. Never a dull moment.

And my poor companion. She always gets in trouble for looking cute. This is why I don't wear makeup. That day some older Hispanic man who comes into the visitor center a lot was winking at her at a restaurant and started walking toward her and she had to run for it. Today, we were getting groceries at el Walmart and some guy who was a little challenged dropped an excellent pick up line, “So has anyone ever told you, you look just like Dolly Parton? But you're prettier. No really...” And proceeded to start telling her all the things about her that were purtier when I
quite subtley said, “Happy New Year!” and moved her along. My last companion, Sister Cameron, same problem. Some guy, slightly inebriated, walked up to us as we were walking back to our apartment started up a conversation with her, so I gave him a pass-a-long card and wished him a good day and good bye. Our college neighbors asked Sister Cornell if “mission ladies could like, date,” And what her weekend plans were. “Nope! Thanks for your time!” and away we go. President apparently trusts me as a bouncer. I do my best.

As you can be it's been a highly spiritual week. Actually it has. It always is. I've found a hidden talent for getting people into the God's Plan for His Family presentation when they were only planning on seeing the nativities. I shanghaied group of 3 that turned out to be a grandma, daughter and grandson. It was neat. And the daughter was the oldest of 10. So I told her all about being raised by Lisa, more or less, and testified about how cool my family is and how that closeness simply
wouldn't have happened with the Gospel. They didn't have much time, but what I said was true and they were open enough to feel that, and all three of them loved the visitor center, but the grandma said, “I've been studying about Judaism, but I've decided to change my focus. This was really interesting. I'm going to find out more about this church.” She wasn't up to meeting missionaries, but I gave her some good materials and just felt warm and fuzzy. I could tell this seed of faith landed on some very fertile ground and some elders somewhere are going to be excited when they meet this woman and her 10 kids and bajillon grandkids all open to learning the Gospel.

Anyway, life's good. Thank you for the support and letters and 3 tapes and influences. The gospel's true and it's the best cause in the world.

Love ya,
Hermana Deb