Dear Family,
So this was a pretty happening week. Hermana Andelin went
home early Thursday morning, so now it's just Hermana Edmondson and me. The
nice thing about serving in the metropolitan area of our mission is that we can
take investigators to the Mesa temple grounds and visitors center any time we
want. We went twice this week and it was awesome! The first time was with our
investigator, Armando and his daughter. It was cool because I haven't ever been
able to actually spend some time in the visitors center. We watched the 20
minute Restoration movie and did the family proclamation walk through. On
Wednesday night, we went with the Acevedo family and did pretty much the same
thing. The mom got baptized a few months ago and her 2 sons are preparing to be
baptized in June. We're still working on the husband, but he came to church
last week.
Sunday was stake conference and Elder David F Evans of
the Seventy came as well as another seventy I don't remember the name of. It
was way cool! This is the 4th stake conference I've been to since November,
even though they're biannual, my transfers always just work out that way.
Rafael's baptism was Sunday night in Yuma and I was
planning on skyping in. Before stake conference started, I jokingly asked
President Toone if he was planning on going to Yuma that night for anything,
but he said no. After the meeting President Toone drove up to me in the parking
lot and asked for some more info on Rafael and his conversion story. He said
"I'll make some phone calls and see if I can set up a meeting in Yuma this
evening and you sisters can come in the car with me and go to the
baptism." I couldn't believe it! He told us we would stay the night in
Yuma with Hermana Lambert and her new companion since after the baptism and a 4
hour drive, we would get home after midnight. So we ran home and packed as fast
as we could and met him at the mission home. We got to Yuma at about 5:00 and
met up with Hermana Lambert at the house of the familia Mendez and had dinner
with them which was way fun. Then we went to the church to fill up the font and
set up chairs. A whole bunch of people showed up...except for Rafael! He got
stuck in Mexico that morning with some car problems and then a huge line to
cross the border and his phone died. We stalled by showing Mormon messages,
singing songs, having the branch president and President Toone speak, but after
an hour, we gave up. The branch enjoyed pizza and tres leches cake and then
everyone left with still no word from Rafael. I was pretty bummed, but it was
soooooo good to see everybody from the branch and to see Hermana Lambert again.
President Toone had to get back that night for an
emergency in Tempe, so we didn't get to stay the night and we got home early
this morning.
I was able to sleep pretty much the entire way though.
This week, we met a man named Ricardo outside the church building.
He said he felt prompted to go to the church right then. He's searching for
truth and said he wants help to stop drinking. We set up a return appointment,
but he gave us like 4 different weird addresses, none of which made sense. We
went out looking for him the next day and by some miracle, we were just driving
down a random street and saw him outside and it ended up being his house. We
taught him and committed him to baptism in the first lesson!
On Saturday, we knocked on the door of a lady who hadn't
been taught since August. She had moved, but the new person who lives there is
named Manuela and she let us in. She told us she really wants to get baptized
and she had been praying for someone to help her do that. She just moved here
from New Mexico a couple weeks ago.
Hope you have a great week!
Love,
Hermana Gubler
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