Week of Thanksgiving

Well, Thanksgiving was pretty crazy. We got invited to four different Thanksgiving dinners, but only had time to go to three, and only had room to eat two! 

This week was my first baptism! Levi got baptized, and it was a very sweet service. His mom gave the talk on baptism, and had a hard time getting through it because she was trying not to cry. It was very touching to see how much this meant to her. Their family had been less-active, but with their son's baptism you can see in them a renewed desire to be active participants in the Gospel and in the Church, and they seem to have grown closer together as a family.

Love you All!

Sister Daelemans

A whole transfer gone already?!?

My first whole transfer is now complete! This also means that my time with Sister Khumaryan is half over, since in six weeks she will be traveling back to Armenia. I don't know what I'm going to do without her!

This was a good week.

First, our investigator Rita will possibly be moving her baptismal date from January to December 5th! Her boyfriend, who she wants to be the one to baptize her, won't be able to travel to California in January, which would mean postponing her baptism until February. Not good. BUT, he was already planning on coming to Lancaster the weekend of the 5th, and Rita said she would like to be baptized then! YAYAYAYAY! She is already so prepared!

More good news. We have been teaching a man named Richard, who is an older gentleman that lives in a veteran's home. He knows the gospel is true. He knows the Book of Mormon is true. He knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet. But, he hasn't been coming to church. Why? Because before he met us he had been going to a Baptist church, and he is absolutely terrified to stop going because he believes all his friends there will hate him if he leaves them for the Mormons. Well, that's a problem. Last week we tried to help him overcome this fear, and to trust that if he did what he knew God wanted him to do, God would help him and bless him no matter how big of a sacrifice it would be. Richard didn't commit to coming, but he said he would think about it. Well, God works miracles ladies and gentlemen. HE CAME TO CHURCH THIS SUNDAY!!! He "claims" it is because he missed the bus that usually takes him to the Baptist church, but Sister Khumaryan and I think otherwise. He is a very special man. Whenever we teach him the Spirit is so strong. He has had several opportunities throughout his life to accept the Gospel, through friends who have been members of the church, but never did. This time he will though. I just know it. All prayers for him would be greatly appreciated. If he comes to church again next Sunday I am certain there will be no stopping him after that! :)

With Thanksgiving coming up this week I have been thinking about how grateful I am to have to Gospel. Gratitude is the catalyst for every other good virtue (according to some General Authority but I can't remember which one.) When we are grateful, we are more humble, we are more faithful, we are more generous, we are more loving. I know that if it weren't for the Gospel, I would be a very unhappy person. Many of the temporal things in my life would probably be the same, but my outlook on life would be completely different. Because of the Gospel I know who I am, that I am a daughter of God, and that my purpose here in this life if to prepare myself to return to Heavenly Father. And I know that I can only do this through Jesus Christ.

The Lord is good. He works many miracles, but we have to first have the faith that He can and that He will. I am grateful for the many miracles that I have already seen since being on my mission, and I expect to see many more!

Love you all and have a great Turkey-Day!

Sister Daelemans

Early Turkey-Day!

This Saturday my companion and I got invited to an early Thanksgiving! One of the other sister missionaries is going home next week, and since she is from Australia where they don't have Thanksgiving, one of the families in the area decided to have it early this year just for her! (I guess you could say we benefited from her non-American-ness.) Thanksgiving has grown on me over the years. I think I like it almost as much as Christmas. A holiday completely centered around eating and being grateful for all that we have :)

It was another fast week, even though not that much happened. Our two investigators who are getting baptized are progressing steadily, but we haven't had progress with anyone else. But that's okay. People have their agency, and our responsibility is just to invite them to Christ and to participate in the Gospel. If they decide not to accept this message, that is between them and Heavenly Father.

It is getting very windy here. Last night I had a hard time falling asleep because the wind was howling so loudly. And yesterday we had a crazy thunderstorm! It wasn't very long, but as we were leaving a members home and running to our car it was hailing! There was enough hail that the ground almost looked like it was covered in snow!

Here is a picture of my district. This is our last week together before transfers, when three of them will be going home and more of them may be transferred to a different area. They are great! I'm grateful to have served with them for my first transfer.

Love you all!

Sister Daelemans

One Month Down

Another week, another email.

This week did not go the way I thought it would. We had appointments and lessons scheduled for every night, but almost all of them got canceled. But it's okay!! We did a lot of service and talked to a lot of people and everything was just peachy!

One of the services we did this week was at a camp for disabled children. It is called "The Painted Turtle." They have a bunch of cabins up in the mountains and there is a lake and a gym, and it's just a really nice facility. Anyway, we went up there to help them prepare for a special Family Weekend where families would come up and stay there with their kids for a couple of days. We made beds and cleaned bathrooms and stuff like that. It was with our whole zone (9 missionary companionships) so that was also pretty fun.

We also did service at a member's home. She is going to have surgery this week, and wanted to clean her house before that happened. We helped her dust because she can't reach a lot of things in her house. Apparently, when you live in the desert, everything gets dusty super fast.

At the beginning of last week Sister Khumaryan and I had 10 investigators, 7 of which had baptismal dates. But we had to drop a lot of them because we've been having trouble contacting them or they won't keep appointments or won't keep commitments. It is frustrating, but we also know that we shouldn't be spending our time with people if they are not yet ready for the gospel. Their time will come, later on when they are more prepared.

Our progressing investigators (those who are keeping commitments) are Levi and Rita:

- I think I talked about Levi in last week's email. He is 9 and will be baptized at the end of November. His family invited us over for Thanksgiving, which I am already looking forward to!

- Rita is a woman who found the church through her boyfriend who is a member living in Colorado (I might have mentioned her as well...?) She came to church for the first time yesterday! It was wonderful seeing her there. She seemed a little nervous at first (new setting, new people, new everything) but by the end I think she felt a lot more comfortable. She even made a comment in class which was awesome! She is getting baptized in the beginning of January.

We have another investigator named Richard. He is in his 80s, and has had a lot of previous exposure to the church. He knows the church is true, and that the Book of Mormon is true, but he is currently attending another church where he has a lot of friends and is afraid to leave. He fears that all his friends will reject him and that he will be completely alone if he joins the church. We are doing our best to encourage him, and we see that he is slowly but surely gaining more confidence in the knowledge and faith he has in the Book of Mormon. Hopefully next Sunday he will come to church!

Love you all!

Sister Daelemans :)

PS

I realized I've been super bad at attaching pictures! This one is from the MTC, when we got to go to the Provo Temple for P-Day. 

Halloween and Stake Conference

This has been a very good week. Our ward had a Halloween trunk-or-treat and chili cook off, which was super fun. Sister Khumaryan and I didn't hand out candy for the kids, but we handed out pass along cards with pictures of Jesus on them. Jesus is much better than candy!! 

This weekend was also Stake Conference, which was really great. On Halloween, missionaries are usually sent home early so that they are not outside during trick-or-treating, but because there was the adult session of stake conference that evening, we got to go to that instead! There was also a session on Sunday morning.

(While going to Stake Conference was great, it was actually kind of annoying as a missionary because whenever we would invite people to church, we had to explain when and where church usually is, but then tell them that we wouldn't have normal church this week, and then try to explain why and what a Stake is, and it was just annoying and probably really confusing for people.)

As missionaries, we knock on a lot of random doors. I honestly have felt up until this week that this is a complete waste of time. Well, not anymore. This past week, within the space of half an hour, we found not one, but two new investigators on the same street while tracting. Both of them have baptismal dates and we will be going back to teach them this week! The Lord really is preparing people for the Gospel, it is just a matter of finding them!

We are teaching a 9 year old boy whose family are members, but because they didn't have him baptized when he was 8 he will now be considered a "convert baptism." We have been teaching him for several weeks, but his family finally decided on a baptismal date. November 28th!! So excited for him!! He is scared of water, so next Saturday we are going to take him to someone else's baptism so he will know what to expect and won't be scared for his own baptism.

Love you all! Hope everyone had a great Halloween. Now we have Thanksgiving to look forward to!!

Sister Daelemans