Howdy! :)
Okay, I have the biggest headache of my life right now haha we did a temple session today AND we are called to work at the VC tonight so we did a session at 8:30 with our zone rather then at 6:30 with the VC sisters (so we can sleep lol) and that meant we only got a 4 hour P-day...ahhhhhhh! I wanted to send out a package to Elder Vance and Elder Reid (yes Elder Reid...if you are reading this I am sending you a package!) but we saved the post office for last and yeah...the line was ridiculous! So...gotta wait til next week now. Ugh. Oh yeah and I decided that my Christmas present to my family is a phone call on Christmas Day ;) I'll make it up when I come home and get you all legit gifts my first Christmas back. Promise. Thank you Elder Vance and Mommy for the package! It was fun to get little notes from baby Monty and everyone else. I loved it!
Crazy moments of the week:
1. I totally lied to this lady for a solid 15 minutes pretending to be someone that I wasn't. It was horrible! I said the closing prayer after one of our VC nightly concerts and this lady randomly came up to me and was like, "Are you the no way girl?" I had no idea what she was saying at first and then she said, "do you say 'no way' a lot?" I then told her yes and she said how she talked to me on the phone a few weeks ago. Well...if you think about it I haven't been at the VC for the past 5 weeks haha but I thought maybe she was confusing a couple weeks ago to a few months ago? So I gave her the benefit of the doubt and listened to her as she continued this conversation we once had and nothing was connecting. I could not recognize this lady and then her daughter came up to us and this lady tells her, "this is the Sister from Cedar City, Utah!".......um....no. I am no from there haha I started to freak out and it was too awkward to correct her and tell her that she was talking to the wrong sister so what did I do?....kept pretending to be Sister Barney because she is the only sister missionary at the VC from there haha! Oh man, I played it off soooooo good.
2. We have a ward missionary in our YSA ward named Olivia and on Sunday, Merrideth looked at what I thought was me and said, "Olivia, will you give the opening prayer?"....I just sat there in shock wondering why she would call me by my first name and then Olivia stood up right in front of me and said the opening prayer. That was the first time where I was like, legitimately caught off guard being called by my first name. So weird...
3. We were teaching this Jewish guy yesterday and right before we say the opening prayer he asks if he can pull of a cig and smoke and we were like "uhhhhhh....." when then all of a sudden Sister Merciales said she was allergic to smoke hahahaha I couldn't keep a straight face that entire prayer and I know he didn't have his eyes closed so he just watched me struggle throughout that entire prayer. Classic.
4. So yesterday I was deaddddddddd. I just didn't have any energy and this is a usual phase I go through the week before transfers. So, we try to find our referral and haha the address was wrong (go figure) and as we walk back to our car I am just thinking about food. I just need something to give me some energy...and then I see a Starbucks. So we went inside Starbucks just to get a cookie but haha I felt soooo awkward being in there as a missionary! I mean, what if Ernie saw me in there haha he would never let me live that one down. It's not that Starbucks is bad it's just...people go there to buy coffee, not a cookie. However, I highly recommend their chunky chocolate chip cookie. So good!
This week was rough. Sister Mercailes and I had a huge blowout haha and it was on...Wednesday? So at that point I couldn't believe that I still had to wait a whole week for the next P-day. I'm not trying to sound like a brat here but haha I was soooo in the right! Haha maybe one day I'll share the instances that happened last week...mission companions are SO GREAT! :) They really are though. We had been good ever since and act like it never happened. We have transfers next week already! I have a feeling I'm going to go full-field. That would be fun! We are called 4 nights this week to work at the VC so that too is fun :) However, when I'm here I feel like I should be out knocking doors....it's going to be a hard adjustment whenever I have to go back. We are also only get 1 VC sister!! And another sister will need someone to finish training her. Oh and we are getting 50 missionaries this transfer! That is a lot haha and it's all because of the new age limit for missionaries! So exciting! We had a rough weekend. Isaiah came to church for the 3rd time on Sunday and after gospel principles told us that he wasn't interested in becoming a member anymore because he doesn't feel connected with the members because he is one of five other black people there and he wants to go to church with "his people". That was really hard for me to accept. He has changed SO much and I didn't understand why he just wanted to drop it all. He even said the closing prayer at the end of our lesson a few days back and it showed that he really did believe that there was a God if he was willing to pray! He said he isn't dropping religion but that he wants to be around people like him. We're going to give him time. I know that the time we give him will be when he comes to a realization that this is what brought him happiness or what helped him understand what happiness meant. I told him in a loving, bold way that everything we have taught him is true and that he won't be able to find all of it in any other church. He kind of laughed it off but he knew I was being serious and I know that he knows that any other church he goes to won't be the same. Each church holds bits and pieces of the truth but only The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contains the fullness of the gospel. The same day Nandi was suppose to come to church but something came up so she didn't come. We called the next day to see if she was okay and she asked us if the Westwood ward was the ward she's suppose to be attending. We told her it wasn't and how it's because of Troy that she was able to go there. She said that she felt like she should go to a church closer to her that she's suppose to go to. That made our part in transitioning her sooooo easy! She has already met the Elders that we would transition her to and she was totally fine in us giving them her information. It was bitter-sweet but we know that that was suppose to happen. So, in two days we lost both of our baptismal dates which was really hard! However, yesterday we had a HUGE tender mercy and met a lady named Nancy. We were visiting a member who just had a stroke and before we walked over to his house, we noticed this apartment complex. We realized that we had never knocked there before so we decided that after we visited our potentials we would try that complex. We knock on his door and the lady tells us to come in. It totally caught us off guard so we ignored it and knocked again and she invited us in again! We walk in and she tells us to take a seat haha so we did. Nancy told us some miracles that have happened in her life and it showed how much she really does love God and her knowledge of how much He loves her. She loved what we talked to her about and even invited herself to church! It was amazing! She even tried giving us three bucks because she was grateful that we came by haha! It was cool because that morning she was praying for some sign and then we knocked on her door :) We are meeting her again on Saturday and it just gave us hope that there ARE people who are prepared to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ into their lives! Just because bad things happen doesn't mean good things won't come. I kind of lost a little hope before we found Nancy that afternoon and she was what I needed in order to remember that no work is ever wasted!
I've been able to learn a lot this week. I've learned on how I can correct someone better. I've learned the importance of studying the scriptures and the importance of looking up things in the Bible Dictionary/Tropical Guide. I've learned ways on how I want to become the right mom for my children. Sister Poe gave an AMAZING relief society lesson and my goodness...the spirit was so strong. Something that she taught was how important it is to teach our children HOW to recognize the spirit. It's the same concept for our investigators! We need to point out experiences where we know they have felt the spirit and give them a confirmation to the feeling they feel. When I see a teaching opportunity, I need to open my mouth! I can't hesitate! That could be THE moment where it can all just click for them. Something that I loved from her lesson was the importance of all us being an example to the youth. My parents raised me up in a way that I am forever grateful for. They never really told us not to go out and drink or not to go do drugs but haha I was so scared to ever get caught doing either that I just never did it! They taught me good values though. They taught me charity, love, respect, forgiveness, all of these wonderful traits that I now have instilled in me today. In addition to my family teaching me and helping me become the person I am today, a good part of it goes to my home ward as well and other members from the stake. Just because we never get married, we don't have children, our children are grown up and out of the house does not let us off the hook on being examples for the youth. I want my future children to know that if their Young Womens/Mens leader corrects them on something, that their authority is just as important as mine. I want my children to be corrected by other people so they can learn! I don't have time to really explain it but my invitation to everyone is to continue being an example to the youth of the church. I am forever grateful for my YW leaders who taught me the importance of being a daughter of God. I am forever grateful for my parents for teaching me how to stand up for myself and how to be the best that I can be. I love you mommy and daddy! Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Hermana Baeza
1. merry christmas!
3. the VC sisters practicing christmas songs for our christmas program!
4. okay...maybe i'll get a dog one day...
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