We Get To Stay In Hialeah!

from a 24 September 2013 letter

Dear Everyone,

Hermana Houghton, R, and Hermana Ware

I don't even know where to begin! The picture of a baptism is R. He is so sweet. He absolutely loved his baptism and came back that night with A for a two-hour-long devotional/fireside/missionary farewell. Loved that too :)

Another transfer is at its close. Our district, from left to right, is Sister Fletcher, me, Sister Espinosa, Sister Ware, Elder Ward, Elder Shepherd (going home tomorrow), Elder Williamson, Elder Pond + Elder Burgon (our zone leaders, the gingers. Elder Houghton would fit right in, colorwise!), and Elder Allen. Leaving the Hialeah district tomorrow are Elder Ward, Elder Shepherd, and Elder Burgon. Do you know what that means? I get to spend another transfer with Sister Ware in Hialeah!!!!!!!

Let me just take a minute to tell you how wonderful and amazing Sister Ware is. She is kind, generous, smart, hard-working, and faithful. And we get along SO WELL. We jinx each other about 10x/day, and we're on the same page regarding just about everything. Plus she likes peanut butter almost as much as I do. I am SO happy that we get another transfer together :) Also, we're in the best area in the mission. Our area is densely packed with amazing people, 99% of whom speak Spanish. Our ward is small but full of powerhouses - this week we got the most member-present lessons of any area in the mission! Our zone is on fire - we had a goal of 30 baptisms for the month, and we hit that goal on Sunday, with one week left in the month. SO EXCITING!

So, some fun things from this week.

I learned a lot about following the Spirit this week. We had a couple of interesting experiences that highlighted what I've been thinking about. 

On Saturday night we got turned around and lost - which is hard in an area that has maybe 5 or 6 named streets in a city with the grid system. As I drove my head just flew up into the clouds and we ended up somewhere different than I'd been planning to go. We decided that obviously we needed to be doing something different than what we had been planning, and thought of a former investigator whom we've never met but whose name we had read earlier in the transfer and who lived right by where we got lost. As we parked next to his apartment building an older woman walked up and stared at our car. We jumped out and asked her if we could pray with her. She loved it - absolutely felt the Spirit and wanted to get baptized.

She didn't come to church. That night during the fireside (we don't normally attend, but this one was missionary-themed and attending were a lot of non-member friends and family of Omar Villeta, who leaves on his mission tomorrow) I started feeling antsy about an hour in. So we decided to go out and follow up with some people who hadn't come to church and find out what had happened. We got to C's house and found her two grown daughters outside. One of them had met with missionaries years before and they had helped her out a lot. The other was going through some hard times and wanted God more in her life. Sweet! Now the entire family is investigating the church.

Following that Sunday night visit we needed to go back to the church. Somehow we got turned around again, and to get back on track we were going to drive right past N's house. She had been very sick when we'd visited her on Saturday night, and hadn't come to church or answered the door Sunday morning. We felt like we should stop by and see if she was all right. We pulled up and the door was open! She was still feeling very poorly, but we asked if some priesthood holders from the ward could stop by and give her a blessing (and they confirmed her too!). 

(OK that was the part about following the Spirit. Now on to continuing the story about N :)

Early Monday afternoon we biked down to N's house to visit her. She was there, as was her sister " "I. She told us that after the priesthood blessing she had felt entirely better - when we'd come by before she could hardly walk, and her son was talking about coming from Spain to bring her home with him. But the church is true! Priesthood power is real! She was healed! We had planned on teaching a lesson on the Plan of Salvation to her - simplified as she likes to talk a lot. But then the rain started pouring. So we taught the entire Plan of Salvation to her and her sister. "I" accepted baptism and gave us her information so that we could have the missionaries in her area come and teach her. As soon as we finished teaching, the rain stopped.

SO COOL. (I worry about the number of times the word 'so' is written in caps in this email... sorry bout that!)

Oh, one more thing. Remember J? He is so awesome. This week he shared with us all about King Lamoni's conversion and the importance of the priesthood keys and the apostasy in the Restoration of the church. He got confirmed on Sunday!

I love you all a lot! I hope everything is going amazingly well in your neck(s) of the woods - keep me updated!

<3

Hermana Houghton