email of 28 December 2009

Hello hello once again!

It was SO good to talk to y'all on Friday! I hope the rest of your Christmas was great, and that Grandma's party went well also! The rest of my Christmas was really good, as was the day after, and the day after, and the day after THAT, which is today, is turning out to be pretty good too!

I can't say that anything TOO exciting or noteworthy has happened since I last talked to you, except that we had 5 investigators at church this yesterday!!! THAT is exciting, let me tell you! We have some great investigators right now, and the last week or two have been pretty miraculous in that area. We had some pretty cool experiences tracting, and were able to find about 3 people to teach, who are just ready! It's so awesome to see the light in their eyes and their countenances that just help you to see that these people truly are elect, and have been searching and are ready for the truth! One of them is Rosy, who is from Honduras. She actually took the missionary lessons there, and most of her family was baptized, but she never was. She recognized us right away when we knocked on her door, and we've been able to teach her once so far, plus having her at church this week. She's great, and really wants to be baptized, but DOES need to get married first, so we're working on that. There are several other people that live in her house who are interested as well, so we're working on teaching them as well, espeically her husband/boyfriend, Reymundo. We've met him a few times, but haven't actually taught him yet because he's always working.

We also tracted into a guy named Alberto, who is definitely one who has a "countenance". A good word to describe him would be "sober". Not in the alcoholic sense, but more along the lines of Alma 37:47 and 38:15. He's been so attentive and understanding when we've taught him, and has really felt the Spirit, especially when we asked him to pray in the first lesson. He's very humble, and we're really excited to see him progress!

One more -- Estela -- is the neighbor of a reactivated/recent convert family, who is the other one who we've really noticed a light and "elect-ness" about. She's expressed to us that she's really looking for the truth, and we can tell that she really is. She really felt the Spirit in our first lesson with her, and was so focused during the whole lesson. It was wonderful!!!

So, currently, those are our Spanish investigators, and I just love them! One of the best parts is feeling pretty able to understand and communicate with them in their own language! Not perfectly, mind you, but I think I get most of what they're saying, and they seem to understand me pretty well, so it works out great! And it's SUCH a blessing! I know that there's no way I could do this on my own, and it's really neat to be on the receiving end in this way of the gift of tongues.

Anyways, so the work is going well here! Actually, it seems to be going really exceptionally well, and we're just loving it! We have several investigators in english as well, which makes in total, 10 progressing investigators, 6 of whom have baptismal dates! Really and truly, we ought to have more with baptismal dates, but we'll be working on that this week.

Quick funny story about one of the families we're working with right now -- it's actually the recently reactivated/recent convert family who introduced Estela to the church. It's a single mom (Nicolasa) and her 5 kids, who live in the projects. We've been working with this family since we first got here; they'd become reactivated before us, and two of the kids were baptized, but they still have their struggles, and the older son was still really less active. Anyways, they've just recently started to really warm up to us (most specifically the oldest son, Juan, and the middle daughter, Rosa), which has been awesome. Anyways, so when we were over the other day, and were about to teach a lesson, we asked if Dom (the middle son) would demonstrate/teach how we pray so that everyone would know what to do. Well, he was holding the dog, Pallaso (clown in spanish), who is a pretty sad looking little one-eyed chihuahua. So he said, demonstrating using the dog, "you fold your legs, bow your head, and close your eye." SOOOO FUNNY!!!!! I know that my telling it probably doesn't give it justice, but it was hillarious!!!

alright, well, I love you all and hope you have a great week!

The church is TRUE!!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU!!!!!

Hermana Sallie

ps I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!

HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!!!!!