(written 29 Jan 2018)
By the way, I'm trying a new format for my letter, just this week. I have taken some selected portions from my letter to President Lewis, and am adding large portions, sometimes whole paragraphs, to the original. I'm also doing some slight editing (mainly of paragraphs and some minor changes to formatting), with the concept being that you will get a more detailed and juicy account than he got (he's a busy man, and doesn't have time to read huge emails. My letters to him are still large, but I do try to limit myself).
Hello everyone! I hope everything is going fantastically well wherever you may find yourselves. Everything has been heating up here in Moses Lake, in pretty much every respect.
This has been a very, very, very, good week. We have seen a lot of amazing things in this area. First of all, it turns out that one of our investigators, Roxana, is INCREDIBLE!!! Seriously, she has a TON of potential. We visited her twice this last week, and one of those times was a tour of the church. She absolutely loved the tour, and said of our visits, "I felt like before, there was an emptiness in my heart. However, when you started visiting, I feel it being filled with this wonderful peace and tranquility." She came to church yesterday, and the members were extremely welcoming. She has already made several friends who are members, and doesn't really know anyone else in the area.
The only thing holding her back is that she's not married right now to her boyfriend, who is currently not in town (we've met and taught him as well), and is not sure she wants to due to the fact that they have completely different goals in life. She wants to stay here, and he wants to move to Mexico. If he goes to Mexico, she will not follow. It's a little bit of a tricky situation, but it'll work out eventually.
For now, she has been asking a lot of questions about baptism and how to prepare for it, she just doesn't feel like she can commit to a date quite yet, partially because of the boyfriend situation. She loved church, and wants to come more regularly! That's the first time one of our investigators has come to church in this area, and it was great! Sunday was a multi-stake conference broadcast, and Elder Christofferson was among the speakers. It was broadcast from Salt Lake to several stakes in this region. The Spanish translation arrived in a different building than our normal one, across Moses Lake (the Stake Center on Division street as opposed to our normal building on Grape Dr.)
We went to Roxana's house beforehand to show her how to get there. Afterwards, we showed her the baptismal font, since it's in that building (also the building we use on P-Days to email and other things). It was a little hard for us to open the Font, though, so we had to borrow a bunch of keys, use those keys to open the door to a closet with other keys in it, and try unsuccessfully to use those keys to open the accordion doors to the font. However, we eventually managed to sneak through the restroom to enter the font itself to show her. She loved it, and asked a lot of questions. We will be meeting with her again tomorrow!
We also had an amazing miracle last night (among many others). For those who don't know, we missionaries set goals for how many people we'd like to find, teach, and have accept a specific return appointment. This is called being a "new investigator". This last week, we wanted to work hard and find 4 new investigators. However, by the time Sunday rolled around, we had still only found 1 all week.
Late Sunday night, around 6 or 7 o'clock, we were walking back to our car when we felt the impression to knock a specific door. We did, and found a really nice Catholic family of 3 who wanted us to come back. We had a great little lesson, and set up a visit for this next Wednesday. They are now new investigators, bringing us to our goal of 4. That's more than we've ever had before. But wait! It doesn't stop there!
We went to go talk with one of our other investigators, Aurora, but she wasn't there for the lesson. Instead, her teenage daughter Vanessa opened the door and we talked for a bit. It was even better because we had brought some members with us, the Bergesons, and Sister Bergeson is over the Young Women! It was great. At first, Vanessa said she liked talking to God but didn't believe God could talk with her. We shared with her her identity as a daughter of God, and taught her to pray and how to recognize the Spirit. At the end, we invited her to ask God if she was really His daughter and pay attention to her feelings. She did, also asking for protection for her family. She afterwards began describing in detail when she thought God was communicating to her. We felt privileged to see her learn before our eyes how God really can talk to us and answer our prayers. We set up a return appointment with her and her whole family and she is now a new investigator. That brings us to 5 for last week. We feel really blessed.
Love you all, and hope you have a fantastic week! Adios!
Elder Adams
Questions from Editor Mom
Can't wait to hear from you today! - Good, because you don't have to wait any longer! :-)
How was your week? - Fantasmical!
Do you still have a lot of junky food left over from Christmas? - Waaaay too much, yes. I'm quite proud that it's not all gone yet.
Are you eating healthy food? What kinds of things do you have for breakfast? lunch? dinner? - It's ironic you ask, because we just decided to splurge and I'm sitting here eating a Frozen Yogurt. Still, normally, it's decent. For Breakfast, I'll either have cereal or some nice cheesy scrambled eggs. For lunch, I'll usually have a grilled cheese and salami sandwich. However, I sometimes switch it up and have a tv dinner or something (last week, for one of my lunches, I had creamed chipped ham on toast, or whatever it is that we sometimes had back home). For dinner, we'll have a member feed us half of the time, and the rest of the time, it will be either a grilled cheese and salami sandwich or a tv dinner (I only started getting the tv dinners recently, mainly because they're really fast and pretty darn good).
What's your favorite snack? - It really depends. I don't snack often. However, when I do, it's usually from the massive selection of Christmas Junk, because I want to get rid of it. Also Babybel cheese.
How are your investigators doing? - GREAT! Especially Roxana. She is a straight gem! She is one of the most prepared people I've ever met, and she came to church yesterday and LOVED IT! We're meeting again tomorrow.
Are you looking forward to or dreading the next transfer? - I'm looking forward to next transfer, but Elder Shoemaker and I are probably going to be split up. If that happens, I'm going to miss him. :'-(
What are you doing for exercise these days? How about for fun? - For exercise, I usually do push-ups, lift weights, run around the apartment, you know, that kind of stuff. For fun, (on P-Day), I sometimes play sports, I play board games, talk with other missionaries, sometimes play the piano, and just do random stuff.
What do you do while Elder Shoemaker plays basketball or whatever on P-Day? - See above ^
I love you and hope you are still waking up happy every day. - You know me. As long as I'm waking up at all, I'm happy :-)
Love you!
Elder Adams
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