This week has been absolutely nuts. We got to go to transfer meeting, even though neither of us were getting transferred. (Let's just say, ask and ye shall receive.) The Chaparral ward has been split and we now share the ward with elders. It's been an adjustment. One of the new elders is from the Philippians and this is his first time being in America. He is being trained by the other elder right now. We got to watch him experience his first piece of pizza, his first taco salad and so on. It is awesome. He is very humble and will teach us all so much! The bad part, he LOVES fish.......ya, that is not going to happen. Anyway, they are quite the funny pair and it keeps them us on our toes. We are trying to help the ward love them so at dinner we play a game of who can get the elders talking the most.
We also had the Hermanas move in with us. So that's been an adventure and a half. Not quite sure how to handle that situation. But we're figuring it out. I have to share all my stuff again:(
Sharon is so funny. She is actually the queen of dumpster diving. Didn't guess that from her picture, right? Every time we go over she seems to have something new she snatched up from the dumpster. One person's trash another person's treasure. She is doing awesome and is currently doing family history to take names to the temple.
Oh man, how do I even start to write about Alan. He is incredible! He just teaches himself all the lessons. We had an appointment set up to meet and he cancelled about three hours before. We called the member and made other plans for the night. About ten minutes before the lesson would have started we get a call from him saying it was back on. We rushed over and ended up hearing his days events. Turns out he had the worst day ever, I mean according to him he went to hell and back. He said he at one point he walked into the bar and sat himself down. He then looked around at the drinks he would normally buy. As he continued sitting there in the bar, he had a voice in his head tell him to get up and get out. He walked out of the bar without drinking and went home and walked his dog. He hasn't had a drink since we asked him to stop two weeks ago. At that point in his day he cancelled our appointment. He told us that he had another voice in his head say, you meet with those sisters today. You really think you don't have time to talk about the Lord? Call them up and go. And guess what? He did and we met. He is very close to the spirit and he gets answers. He is so passionate about everything and he is particularity passionate about the Lord. Lessons are a little off the books due to his unique experiences and colorful past but man alive do I enjoy them. It is a riot. Pray for him because we are witnessing a straight up miracle. In the lesson we were teaching him the Plan but He just couldn't wrap his head around the pre-earth life. So we kept talking about it and all these things and then our member felt prompted to say, "if we're going back to live with our Heavenly Father, that has to mean that we lived with him before because we can't go back to somewhere we haven't ever been." He exploded and was like "That clicked! That made sense!!" It was so powerful.
Peace is having a clear conscious, not having a lack of problems. I know that is true. May we all find peace in believing as it says in the Book of Mormon.
Dean. My man Dean. He is hilarious. We stared teaching him through he young men's president. He is half black and cracks jokes the entire time we teach. He thinks we are trying to recruit him for his color.....our member told him in the lesson that he will get a bigger pay out at Dean's baptism because he is black.....oh dear. It is really just too much. Other then that though, it is an amazing story. The member has been working with him for 7 years. He has sent missionaries over time and time again. He had given him the Book of Mormon and Dean wouldn't touch it. We showed up in the ward and talked with this member. We went and knocked on Dean's door after meeting him a church when the member got him to come one week. We went back to the member and informed him that we had an appointment with Dean. Our member was floored. Long story short, he is reading the scriptures, praying, coming to church, setting up his own appointments, asked his friend (the member) to baptize him and is cracking jokes the whole time. Gotta love the gospel. (and the member is certain it also has to do with sister missionaries:) I think that might hold some weight, not going to say it doesn't)
We have this mom and daughter we visit once a week named Rachel and Hope. Hope is 7. This week she wanted us to play a game with her and set it all up but we didn't meet at the house so she told us about it instead. You have to pick something you will be in this game and so Hope decided to pick for us. She told us, I am going to be a dog because I love dogs! Sister Price is going to be a unicorn because she has magic and loves unicorns! Sister Huber you are going to be a hot dog. Then she just stopped talking. At this point, Rachel and Sister Price are about in tears laughing because they found that so funny. I personally did not. Umm Hope honey, what exactly are you trying to say about me with that? That I like hot dogs? That I look like a hot dog? That I like cheap disgusting food? That unlike Sister Price I do not have magic? How did she even decide that was a remotely good representation of me? As the laughter wore on, jokes about me being cousins with the corn dog Hope was eating were thrown out and all dignity I had at the beginning was gone. We did not play the game and I don't plan on ever being a hot dog ever again.
This week we picked up a family through our members and it was awesome. Here's how it came about. Several weeks ago our nightly appointments had fallen through, and since we had gone through the ward list the night before trying to figure out who we needed to meet still we came across the Phillip's (who are active) and decided to stop by with the extra time we had. We had been talking to them for about 5 minutes when their neighbor came and knocked on the door! We got to chat with him and he was so willing and open to meeting with us but he needed to talk with his wife. So we gave him a Book of Mormon, invited him to church, and he was on his way. You better believe that we kept following up with the Phillip's trying to establish a way for us to interact with them more effectively than just knocking on their door (even though we'd already met the husband). So we really worked hard to set something up with the Phillip's and their neighbor and finally last night they put together an FHE with their neighbor, we taught the Plan (per request of Sis Phillips) and picked up the family as new investigators. So many other things played into this and obstacles were faced, but ultimately the greatest lesson we learned was the importance of persistence and trusting that the Lord made everything work together perfectly for a reason, but if we weren't willing to make the invitations and do the work when the opportunity was placed before us, nothing would have happened. It was incredible! So Todd, Jen, and Elijah are now our newest investigators. And let me tell you, they are SO prepared!
We had MLC this week and had training all about teaching, which I'm so grateful for because Temecula in particular is teaching probably twice as many Member Present Lessons, but is baptizing roughly the same number of people as before. Which screamed to us (Sis Price and I) that teaching skills have dropped drastically. So the whole thing was focused on Teaching Simply, Teaching by the Spirit, and Teaching Towards Baptism. So our job as leaders is to take this training and do Zone Training Meetings and present the training to our zone so they can start implementing them in their areas. And our assignment as the STL's is to do a training on teaching simply, which has been the focus of our entire time together. Needless to say we're really excited.
LOVE YOU ALL
Sis Huber
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