This is Anneli's zone on their last p-day by the boarder of Mexico.
This is Anneli and her new companion Hermana Saxon.
This is Anneli's mom. I have really been a slacker with this blog sorry. I'm repenting. Anneli has been transferred to Yuma, AZ. She is very excited for a new area and is enjoying it very much. There are 4 wards there and some are English and some Spanish so she is now teaching in English more than before. If you want to write to her please email me at andrealovesgary@yahoo.com. The mission president has asked us not to publish her address on the open internet. Here is her most recent email.
This was a very eventful week. We had a lot of good happen in our area. We started teaching a bunch of new people. It's been an awesome week full of wonderful experiences. We taught an older lady named Judy this week that recently married a widowed member of our snowbird branch. She's not a member, but goes to chruch with her husband often and is very skeptical about religion in general, but at the same time very open. She has a lot of questions! And they are deeper questions, so I've been studying a lot to know how best to answer her questions. We also started teaching another lady that is the girlfriend of a member in one of our english wards. Her name is Lori and she's awesome. She tries very hard to follow God and is going to another church here in Yuma, but lately has been feeling like something has been telling her that the LDS church might be true. So she wants to find out once and for all. We taught her this week and her daughters were also there, so we taught them all and they were very interested in the message and we are going back tonight to keep teaching them. Again, they have a lot of questions.
We also taught Laura. She's doing awesome and already sharing the gospel with her friends at work. It's awesome! Fransisco has been having some health problems, so it's been harder to teach him this week, but we're praying for him. He's excited and working towards baptism still, but we just want to make sure he's healthy first.
One of the girls in one of our wards, Bethany, works in a care center a lot like Bennion Care Center that I worked at a few years ago. She asked us to come by and visit a someone for us. So we stopped by this week. Immediately as we walked in the smells, sounds, etc. all reminded me of my time as a CNA and I was filled with love for the people there. She led us to a woman named Joyce. We got into the room and introduced ourselves to Joyce and then Bethany said "Okay, see you guys later." and ran out. We weren't exactly sure why she wanted us there, but we started talking to Joyce and got to know her a little bit. We found out that she is a member and that she served a mission when she was younger too. We had a good talk with her and then asked if we could share a scripture with her. The first one that came to mind was Mosiah 24:12-15. I read that to her and as I was reading, the words touched me a lot as I thought about her situation. She told us that she wasn't really sure why she was there in the nursing home and what purpose the Lord had for, but as I read those words I was overwhelmed with a love for her and I knew the Lord was aware of her. And I knew that He was aware of me. I can't really explain it, but I was filled with the Spirit. I was kind of a mess, but I just tried to explain to her the love I knew Heavenly Father had for her and how much He did know of her situation. It was a very special experience for me. I realized through that and other experiences just how much the Lord takes care of us in our lives. He knows what we're going through and He will help us with our burdens and make our lives joyful. I think the Lord is teaching me how to love here. Every lesson in church seems to be screaming that to me and through all the experiences, I see that need to love the people here.
So our zone went to Mexico last week. Well, not really, but we were about as close as we could get, probably within 20 feet. It was awesome! Here's some pictures that we took.
We've also been trying to focus more on member work in our mission recently, so we're talking to the families in our wards about what they can do to be better missionaries themselves. It's been amazing to see that as we've been talking to the members, they all have people that they have been wanting to share the gospel, but don't know what to do next. We've been encouraging them to invite these friends and neighbors themselves to activities in their home or at the church where they can begin to feel the spirit and then when they feel it's right to invite them to church or to firesides, etc. These things are really simple, but we've seen that as by small and simple things, members can really open the door to their friends to the gospel.
This week I got a lot of letters from the Parks 3rd Ward Primary. They were awesome! Thanks so much! One thing that I loved was that all of the little girls told me that they want to go on missions one day. That made me excited. Well, Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day everyone. Go celebrate black pride and hug a black person. They are so awesome!
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