Baptismal Invitation

Hello mama! I'm doing very well this week, though I must admit I got terribly tired a lot. Unfortunately, I've heard no new news about Singapore. One of the Sisters in the district, originally assigned to Denmark, just got her flight plans though. Apparently, the earliest they come is two weeks before the flight, so for me that would be on Wednesday, so we'll see. The email was a huge wake-up call for Chinese though and I've been doing so much better at studying. I'm having this constant battle though about whether or not I should spend time trying to read characters or just the pronunciation. It takes me forever to get through a verse of characters, but the pronunciation for a lot of different words are the same, so just reading that, I often don't know what it means and have to pull out my character book to see which character it is, then look up the meaning. It's a process. I've been listening to a lot more Chinese lessons, and I still only understand like every 10th word, but slowly getting more and more, especially if I listen to it multiple times. Sadly, I haven't been able to meet with Elder Baak at all. The two hour time difference with our different schedules makes it difficult. Sarah and Keith went on a rollercoaster this week. Sarah dropped her phone in the sink and they fought over that because it was their only phone and means of communication. But, Sarah came to a baptism and a relief society activity this week and loved them so much. They came to church on Sunday and seemed to be doing better. Not only that, Sarah asked the bishop how soon she could get married, and when the bishop said it was up to her, she said, I was thinking like immediately. 😆 The bishop told her she should counsel with Keith about it, but that he would be happy to do it for them after they get a marriage license. She's still got a ways to go with the Word of Wisdom and with two others smoking in the house, it will be quite a challenge, but she seemed to have gotten a lot of motivation to be baptized this week. Elizabeth had to go somewhere for a work meeting or something this Sunday, so she didn't make it to church and we weren't able to meet. She's pretty dang busy, but hopefully we can set something up. We texted Carol and invited her to the baptism on Saturday, and she actually responded, letting us know she was out of town. But, other than that, we haven't been in contact. We talked to Anabella, Bertha's daughter, this week, but we weren't able to have a lesson with them. It was pretty funny because usually I'm the one who leads things and I'm pretty cheerful, but when we stopped by, I'd been feeling super tired, so Elder Astel got to the door first, and when he started talking to her, she stopped him and asked if I was okay because usually I'm the one talking and I'm always excited. That cheered me up quite a bit and reminded me that people notice things like that and I need to be aware when I'm not feeling great and make a conscientious effort to be happy and find joy in talking to and helping others because it is a great joy. :) Mary continues to have lots of concerns, but because we were on exchanges she didn't feel comfortable sharing them all with the new Elder that was with me. So, that's not good because we'll probably both leave after this week. She said she'd text us her concerns though. Overall, it was actually a pretty decent lesson. We taught about the gospel by reading 2 Nephi 31, and she liked it and said it sounded like the Bible, but because it wasn't the Bible she's skeptical. We discussed why she found the Bible to be infallible and 100% the word of God, she shared with us many experiences she had where when she needed advice, guidance, or upliftment, she would open the Bible and she felt God was speaking directly to her. We were able to promise she would have the same experience as she turned to the Book of Mormon, and she committed to continue reading and praying. She's still skeptical, but has begun to understand a bit more. She asked about something we believed and asked where it came from and why. We mentioned that just like the Bible was written by prophets who had received revelation from God, Joseph Smith too was a prophet and had received revelation, and instead of questioning that like she usually does, she just said, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Juan hasn't ever been home when we stop by. We stopped by the lady we had met last week, but her brother answered and told us they had a family emergency and she had to leave to Stockton for a while. The brother himself wasn't in a very good state and we were able to share Romans 8:38-39 and testify of God's love for him. He was in tears and wasn't ready to set something up, but appreciated what we shared. We did meet with Marie again and we taught the Gospel to her and her daughter Abby. They had been reading and we invited her to be baptized and she said she would love to. We told her to pray about April 23rd, so we'll see how that went tonight. We hope to have all 3 of them baptized on that date but they haven't been to church yet and we haven't taught the husband so we'll be discussing church and such tonight. This week we only had Liam, and Sarah and Keith at church. Miracle: This week I wanted to really work on talking to everyone. On a particular day, I committed to talk to everyone I saw even if they were out of the way. One of those people, who was definitely out of the way, was Caleb. He was down a different street, but we saw him doing work in the yard so turned and headed for him. 😆 Turns out he was working for somebody, so it wasn't his home, but he wanted to take a break anyway, so he told us he had a minute. That minute was actually 45 minutes and we were able to sit down and have an entire restoration lesson with him on some random person's porch. Challenge: I don't know if it was daylight savings time or something else, but I was wrecked by tiredness this week. Can't wake up less than 4 times a night, no matter how hard I try. Good News: We were able to invite a family to be baptized:) Love you, Elder Jaxon Wardle