West is Best: Week 14: West Jordan best Jordan

Hola everyone! This week has been so fast. I can't believe that it's already Monday again!! I got transferred from magna last Tuesday to the oquirrh point 5th ward and my new companion is Hermana Warden! I knew her from zone activities last transfer and she is awesome. We have such a good time together haha.

Anyway last Monday we went to top golf and then played sports with some other missionaries in the zone. Then afterwards avalos and I went to go say goodbye to some people we were teaching and some other families in the ward. When we went to say goodbye to la familia de Leon, they had this baby deer in their yard that a bunch of neighbors were petting and stuff!!! Super weird.. so I petted it, and then it followed one of their neighbors into their garage down the street. Sooo that was definitely an interesting experience. Then we talked with them for a while and shared a message. Then we went to see Jade. Her whole family got mono this past week so they've been super sick which really stinks. But we went to go say goodbye to her and her family as well. Magna was such an awesome first area and I'm gonna miss it a lot, but it's great to be over here in West Jordan.

Tuesday morning was a little crazy. We had to meet up at the zone building for transfers and wait for my new comp hermana warden to come and pick me up. Hermana Warden had to drop her old comp off at a different zone building bc She was going to the other Spanish zone. So she eventually came and we went to our house. We live in the basement of a member family. They're pretty chill. So I came and unpacked a little and then we headed off to find some referrals that we had recent,y been given. The area I'm in now is a walking area and it's soooo fun! It's basically this gigantic area full of houses, and then our area goes across a highway and there's some more houses. It's definitely a nicer part of town than magna, but there's still so much work to do none the less. So we found a couple of them and set up some appointments for later in the week. Then for dinner we went to this inactive lady's house who is soooo awesome! Their family is my favorite of all time seriously. She's married to a non member guy who's pretty nice but isn't too interested in the church. Then she has 4 sons, one who is about to turn 16, one who's 10, one who's 5, and a baby. All of the sons are sooooo sweet. Alex who is about to turn 16 wants to be able to baptize Angelo, who is the 10 year old, soon. They have been coming back to church for the past month and you can see how it's made a difference in their lives. But we had dinner with them and she made these ammaaazzziinnggg flautas. Amazing. She says her dream is to become a chef after her kids are all grown up. I'd say she's well on her way to that haha. And then after dinner we shared a message with them about the 10 commandments and taught them little signs to remember them all! We had 2 other lessons that night. One was with this lady named Lola. She got baptized about a year ago but you'd never know that. She doesn't remember hardly anything about the church or the lessons that she was getting taught by the elders before. So we've been working with her and she's super confused. We testified of the Book of Mormon and how if she reads it, she can find all of her answers and she can feel that peace in her life that she needs. We also talked about prayer and how through prayer we can talk to god, and he can talk to us. It's a 2 way communication! She still had some problems and felt like her prayers weren't being answered, so we invited her to pray about the Book of Mormon and the things she has questions about. Then after Lola, we went to visit a family who was a referral that we got from temple square a few weeks back. They'd taught them the plan of salvation and the restoration already so we were thinking of talking about baptism with them. And so, they are probably the most catholic people I've ever met. But the thing is they're not religiously catholic, they're culturally catholic. So they just grew up with the mindset that they are catholic and they will always be catholic. They don't go to church really ever but they have this huge picture of Guadeloupe (Virgin Mary) in their living room with lights and candles around it and stuff. So anyway we went to talk to them, and Warden and her other comp gave them a BOM the week before and they read a bunch! All the way to 2 nefi 20! But as we were talking we were baring testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and they literally agreed with everything we said! Then as we were talking about the Book of Mormon, we invited them to pray about it and pray if the things we were talking about were true. But they didn't want to? It was weird. We tried to ask about their concerns but they didn't feel like they needed to pray about it for some reason. Idk. Son we just asked them to keep reading.

Wednesday was a lot of finding. We have a ton of referrals here. And we're walking, so it takes a while to actually find them. But it was great! And then we had a lesson with this less active lady Reyna. We talked to her about the plan of salvation and tied it in to family history! The spirit was really strong in our lesson and she was really excited to start doing family history so that she could get to the temple and do baptisms for her family! Then we had dinner with this awesome family in the ward, and then we did some more finding referrals. That was basically it haha.

Thursday we went and found some more after our weekly planning sesh, and then we met with this lady named maritza! She's so good. She's not a member but her husband is less active and trying to come back and get the preisthood. And it's nice because they live with his family who are all very active in the church and they have gospel discussions a lot. But she is amazing! She's definitely been prepared and she's looking forward to getting baptized and eventually getting sealed to her husband and 2 little kids after that. The only reason they haven't picked a date for her to be baptized yet is because she wants her husband to baptize her and he's working on getting the priesthood still and they don't know when he will be able to yet. And we also got some good news from the bishop Sunday! So apparently her husband met with the bishop and he will be getting the priesthood next Sunday and he will be able to baptize his wife really really soon!

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Friday we had a zone training! And we also found out that avalos (my old comp) and her new comp were made STLs over our zone and a few other sisters in the other Spanish zone. Bc our zone only has 2 sets of sisters and the other one has 7, they're helping the other STLs work with their sisters. Then after zone training we found a less active lady and shared Because of Him and talked with her for a while. She was really cute. Then we went to Rosas house again and and talked to her and Angelo for a while. Then we read the scriptures with them and encouraged them to keep reading as a family bc it would bring them closer together! Then after them we had dinner with the relief society president and her daughter. They're from Venezuela! And she made Arepas, and that's like classic venezuelan meal. It's like this bread roll thing but its thin, and you slice it open and put meat and cheese in it and omg it's so good! But they are so awesome. Then at night after we had a lesson with a guy who's been less active for a while and has had problems with the church in the past. So we talked with him for a while and talked about how we can find peace in our lives through the gospel! And then we had a bunch of other lessons Friday night back to back and we were literally running from house to house so that we could have time to actually teach them haha.

Saturday was a little crazy too. We had a ton of lessons and actually managed to talk to some people who never ever answer the door! We met with the Hernandez family again, the really catholic ones, and they hadn't really done anything we asked them to do. So we read in 2 nefi 31 with them and talked about the Holy Ghost and baptism with them. We are going to try and set up another time to meet with them and go back to temple square for a lesson there! Then we had another lesson with Lola that was interesting as well. Also, kinda off topic, but me and warden had this great idea to carry around this 15 lb. rock to work out our arms while we're walking and we've gotten some weird looks from people on the street. And these kids on bikes came to talk to us and they were just like "why are you carrying that rock? That's weird." Kinda funny.

Sunday was great! I got to meet the ward and like seriously this ward is huge! It's bigger than the peachtree city ward. Soooo many people but they're all so awesome! Hermana Warden even met someone that served in the same mission and at the same time as her parents who served in spain! That was really cool for her. Testimony meeting was super powerful and we had quite a few people at church so we were so happy! Then we went to Rosas house for late lunch. She got mad at us because we skip meals sometimes during the day bc we're so busy and don't have time to go back home to get food. So she made us some awesome tacos and we talked to them about missionary work! We invited Angelo, Andrew, and Alex to be examples to their friends at school and for the family to pray about people in their life that may need the gospel! They are an awesome family and I'm so excited for what's to come with them.

Well y'all I hope everyone had a great week! Remember that God loves you and hears your prayers!

Con amor,

Hermana Anderson