Dear
Mom and _________,
First of all, thanks
to everyone for the birthday wishes! It was definitely a memorable day and I
felt loved. It started out with a worldwide missionary broadcast, which was a
good reminder to get back to the basics and let the Spirit teach. After lunch,
my companion and I went to volunteer at the community garden, which is one of
my favorite places in Sonoma. It was sunny! The middle of winter and there I
was working in a garden with a short-sleeved shirt. After that, we had dinner
with one of the greatest people in the ward here and she knew it was my
birthday and they went all out for it. She had even invited some of the people
we were teaching to come too, and they did! It was a sweet surprise. For dinner
she made a great salad and then meat prepared in a special way that they only
prepare for special occasions in Sinaloa, where she is from. She also made
pasta, which of course I love. Then we had cake and they sang to me in Spanish,
English, Samoan (one of the other missionaries at dinner is from Samoa) and
then they had me sing it in French. They are some of my favorite people! It was
a wonderful day, and as a very dear friend pointed out to me, Jesus Christ
established His church on His birthday and I had the opportunity to help
establish His church on my birthday too. One of the lessons we taught before
going to the garden was about the Restoration of the Gospel and as I recited
the experience that Joseph Smith had in the Sacred Grove, it hit me again how
important that event was to me personally and the Spirit was definitely present
during the lesson.
Other than Wednesday,
the rest of the week wasn't that eventful. We had long meetings on Thursday and then Friday and Saturday flew by. My companion and I have realized that
most of the people who have been meeting with missionaries here aren't really
interested in finding out if our message is true and acting on it, they just
seem to like missionaries and let us in to share a nice thought and they don't
progress or move forward. We know that there are people who are ready to accept
it and act on it, but we haven't found them because we've been spending so much
time with these other people who aren't ready at this point. So, we're pretty
much starting fresh this week. We planned in a lot of time to go out and look
for new people to teach and help. I know that there are people who are ready
and waiting and I'm excited to see the miracles! It took a lot to take that
leap of faith and decide to stop seeing people who we know will let us in for
sure even though they won't act on the message in order to go out and find
people who may or may not be kind and let us in, but we are both confident that
our Heavenly Father will lead us and guide us and help us find His children who
are ready to hear His voice. I'll let you know how it goes next week! I don't
know that we'll find them all this week, but at least we'll get off to a good
start. Have a wonderful week!
Hermana Burton
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