February 11

I guess I forgot to mention what my area is. I'm serving in the Independence 3rd ward. I'm slowly becoming more and more familiar with the area and the people. My companions always like "Let's go visist so-and-so!" and I'm like "Yeah, alright! Whoever that person is!" My companion is so funny! She's totally like a Disney Princess! She actually wants to work as a princess in Disneyland like me! I think it would be so much fun to do that with her if the opportunity came!

Also a cool little tidbit, I'm working at the Independence Visitors Center! I had my first presentation the other day, and luckily it was people that were already members. Sister Raymer and I took them through "God's Plan", which is super cool. It's a new thing they're putting in the Visitors Centers, and I actually first saw it in the Mexico VC. It's this really cool series of videos about family and you go to different room for each one. That's usually the presentation that makes everyone get teary-eyed. I don't know if they have it in the Salt Lake VC yet, but I imagine they'll put it in there eventually. I also did a history presentation with my companion, though I'd never been through it before so I didn't have a lot of things to say. I tried to cover the spiritual part of the presentation while Sister Raymer relayed the history.

My first investigators are pretty cool too. They're Spanish speakers, but they speak a lot of English, so that's helpful. Basically, they took the discussions before and they didn't understand any of it since it was taught in English, but their dad told them they had to be baptized, so they did. They didn't continue to go to church since they didn't understand why, so now we're teaching them the discussions again, and they understand a lot better since their English has improved since then and I gave as much of the lesson I could in Spanish. It was good to put my Spanish to use. It was nice because if I didn't know a word in Spanish, I could just say it in English and they'd most likely understand. It was fantastic to teach them since they seem so sincere about understanding and learning more.

Also, I got to meet 3 different investigators that we now have set on date for baptism on the 15th of March! It's really exciting! The first two are Mike and Derrell. Sister Raymer has been meeting with them since before I got here and I just got the opportunity to be there to ask if they would be baptized. The third person however, this sweet Native American woman named, we just met yesterday when we were outside shoveling snow. She said "When you guys are done over there you wanna help me out over here???" We're like "Sure! We'd love to!!!" So we went over to her yard and started talking to her and shoveling. She eventually invited us in and we tried to tell her about the Restoration of the Gospel, but it was hard since she talked a lot, but we got her committed to being baptized! Me and Sister Raymer don't think she fully understands the importance of baptism, and that she's just excited to have new friends since she gets lonely. But hey, it was pretty cool for me! My first investigador that me and Sister Raymer met together!

One last thing, the other day we were proselyting and we went and talked to this woman named Geri. We tried giving her a Book of Mormon and she kept on saying that she didn't want it since she's already a member of the Baptist church. She didn't seem too happy with us, though we tried our best to be nice. That seems to happen a lot out here (doors getting slammed in our face I mean). As me and Sister Raymer got in the car, I just had this feeling that I should go back and bear my testimony about the Book of Mormon, soI did. I was nervous, but it turned out really well. She didn't accept the book, but we ended on better terms.

That wraps it up for this week. Talk to you later.

Hermana Candland