Adventures in Mesa: God Has Given Us So Much Potential!

Buenos dias familia & amigos! (7-14-14 email)

Can you believe another week has gone by? It’s crazy how fast time goes. We had another good week over here! Nothing too crazy, pretty normal, but overall good. Monsoon season is starting so that is fun. Yesterday we got stuck in a little bit of a rain storm, and I really enjoyed that because we haven't really had rain here since the beginning of March. And we are having lightning almost every night. So it’s really fun.

We had a bunch of lessons this week, so that was good. We found a good bunch of new investigators, so we will see how interested they really are. Some of them seem more like they want to teach us all of the religious knowledge that they have, rather than learning about the Restoration of the gospel. So... we will see where it goes. Haha we had a couple of interesting lessons this week. But we taught the Ramirez family a couple times and had dinner with them once, so that was good. We are sending them a scripture a day and I think that's helping them.

We are also teaching this guy named Raul, we always take Hna Lujan out with us to teach him and she does a great job. He is a funny guy and you can tell he has a gentle spirit, things weighing him down. So little by little we are helping him move forward. And we had one lesson with Vanessa and Gina. We brought some great members! It was a mother and daughter their same ages, and they got along super well. Just hit it off. We talked about the plan of salvation, and Vanessa expressed to them how confused she is about religion. They just bore their testimonies of the truth of the gospel and how they can find out for themselves. Vanessa has read every single chapter that we've given her, and asked us for more chapters that talk about Jesus Christ. She is so great, and sincerely looking for the truth. Her mom is reading and there for the lessons, but not quite as interested. Gina already believes in her religion and in Christ, so she doesn't feel like she needs this quite as much. But poco a poco!

Hmmm what else did we do this week? We were expecting about 10 investigators to come to church yesterday, we were super excited. Buuuut, nobody came haha. That's okay, it goes like that sometimes.

The Elders gave us this referral for a lady that honked them down on the street and requested missionaries to come by, her name is Anna. Then the next day they texted us another referral for a family that they used to visit (Celia and Reynoldo). We called Anna and set something up with her, and then we stopped by Cecilia's house. Cecilia was super nice and let us in, and then her friend came out and introduced herself saying she was going to go to our church for the first time this next week, and that missionaries were going to start visiting her. We asked her if she happened to be Maria, and she said yes! Haha, it was so crazy we found 2 different referrals at the same house. Anna basically told us she wants herself and all her children to get baptized. And they said they were going to come to church together, but something happened so they couldn't. I am excited to start teaching them both.

Our zone leaders are doing specialized trainings with 2 companionships at a time on things we feel we need to work on. So Tuesday was our turn. We practiced having powerful door contacts, and it was super helpful. (BTW one of my zone leaders right now is Sis Barr's nephew. such a small world.) They had some great ideas and we were able to practice with them and they helped us see how we could do better. Then later that day, they called us and asked if they could look through our area book and how we organized it and everything. So we met up and they started looking through it, and really liked how we organized it. The zone leaders asked us to set up guidelines and do a presentation on ZTM to standardize how we use the area book throughout the Spanish zones. So that was fun. And the other presentation at ZTM was the same practice we did about door contacts haha so it felt a little bit like a repeat, but it was still good to get more practice.

After ZTM we all went to this really fun BBQ place. I love Spanish work because there are not many of us, so all of us missionaries are like a family. We all love being together and we have a lot of fun.

Zone BBQ

The members in our ward are so awesome. They love the missionaries, and are very willing to come out with us and teach. The entire ward council is focused on helping us with our investigators.

There is this one member who does boxing, and this morning he took our whole district to his gym and we got to box. It was super fun, and a good work out haha. We did a little work out, then we practiced, then we got to get in the ring and box our companions and one other sister.

This week I read a talk by Elder Uchtdorf called "Of Regrets and Resolutions", and I really enjoyed it. It talked a lot about living life to its fullest. God has given us so much potential. We can be SO happy if we let ourselves. We are weak, but God is strong and has promised to help us if we seek it. Life is a beautiful journey that we are meant to enjoy. The more fully we live the gospel, the more true happiness we can obtain. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father loves us enough that He gave us a manual on how to live a good life. I am so grateful that He loves us enough to send His Son to allow us to overcome anything that might hold us back - spiritually or physically. I am so grateful that He loves me enough to give me you as my family!

Love you! Have a great week!

Con amor,

Hermana Haynes