Week 64 - What's going on???

July 12, 2010

Hi!
Kelsey told me that Jorge finally made it up here just in time for the reception!! YAYYYYY! It finally happened!!!! But no one else wrote to me about it so I am so curious to know how it all went. I want DETAILS! How is he doing here in America? Probably a ton of culture shock, haha. Poor boy. Please let me know everything all about it!
So I realized last week after I was all done emailing that I forgot to give you my new address. So here it is:
10 Vairo Blvd. Apt 245C
State College, PA 16803
Now you can send me some fun packages and letters and let everyone else know what it is so they can write to me in the last couple months left out here in PA and update me on their lives before I get home!
Alright, now I can tell you a little bit of what is going on out here. Things are going so good! Karen is still set for her baptism on July 24th. She gets cold feet every now and then but then she overcomes it and moves forward with faith. She is great. We had a lesson on the word of wisdom last time and her only addiction was coffee. But she easily committed to stop drinking coffee and stopped it that very day. I'm so proud of her :) When people let the gospel play a role in their lives, I love seeing their countenances change to become such a happy, bright person. It's beautiful. As for Chuck though, he's still doing good and wants to be baptized. He didn't make it to his baptism date this past Saturday though because he didn't ever talk to his mom about it. So we visited with him last night and set him with a new date of August 14th and committed him to just sit down with his mom this week and just talk to her about some of the things we believe in. Megan (chuck's fiancee who is a member) is teaching Relief Society next week too, so she's going to invite his mom to church. I never ever thought that this would be the issue I saw the most out on my mission....parents who don't let their adult children be baptized. It's a huge stumbling block in people's progressions, understandably. Children love their parents so they want to respect them, but that goes for each individual. So parents should respect the children too, especially when it's for so great a cause. Sometimes I just wish I could just stand on rooftops and clear up all confusions that people have about the church and everyone would believe me. Too bad it doesn't work that way though.
Here is my last story for the week. As I was doing my personal study this past week and during our weekly planning, I felt that we should look up some former investigators to stop by and see if they are interested again. I really, really, really want to find, teach, and baptize a family before the end of my mission so I was trying to look up all the families that have been taught. We stopped by a lot and they weren't home, a lot had moved, and we stopped by one house that I had actually starred in my notes because I felt so good about it, had moved as well. But the lady who answered the door was SO friendly to us! She talked to us for a long time and her son actually told us that he had seen us before. I guess the sisters had tracted into his grandma's house a little while ago when he was there and he remembered. Anyway, as we were talking about the church, she told us that she has been looking for a church herself. (Her name is Elizabeth by the way) She has gotten on this website called beliefnet or something like that and took a quiz about the things she believes in and it gave her a list of different churches that matched up with her beliefs. Ours was on her list!!!! She was going through and studying about the churches on her list but hadn't gotten to ours yet. So we got her information so we can teach her more! She seemed pretty excited about it too. I'm pretty excited about it! I'm praying that this is legit and that she sincerely investigates!!! That would be an amazingly awesome story!
Well, please let me know everything that is going on at home! I hate not knowing how things are going! Have an awesome week! Love you all! Keep being great member missionaries!
Love, Holly