Letter from 12/5/11

I asked Beth about her new companions and here is her response

 

Hermana Webb is from Hyrum, UT (I don't know if you know where that is, but it's apparently near Logan).  She's awesome!  The other day she was leaving a voicemail in Spanish for one of our investigators to try to confirm our appointment with them.  You know you've been a missionary too long when ... you end your phone call with "Decimos estas cosas..." (in English, that's "we say these things...")  Luckily she caught herself before she went any farther.  Needless to say, we were cracking up about that one for a solid 5 minutes (at least).

 

Hermana Alaalatoa is from Samoa.  This is actually her first time in the United States.  I'm just glad I only know 2 languages now (well, okay, sort of 2, since I'm still far from fluent in Spanish).  Hermana Alaalatoa's learning her 3rd.  She's fluent in both Samoan and English, and then they called her on a Spanish-speaking mission.  I would die! 

 

Here are a couple of things she mentioned that she thought you would all enjoy.

So, now for some other fun moments of the last few weeks.  First, a little over a week ago we were on our way back from lunch with a member and we were stopped at a stoplight.  This homeless man with a keyboard was crossing the street in front of us and when he got to the other corner he started blowing kisses at us.  I felt horrible because he was still looking at us, but as soon as it happened we all just died laughing.  We couldn't look at him because then it would be even harder to keep a straight face.  I finally risked it, because I wanted to see if he was gone yet and he started blowing kisses again.  It was great.  And the fact that he was carrying a keyboard made it that much better.

 

Going along with that, Hna. Alaalatoa has these strips of paper with really random "odd facts".  The best one is, "The average human will spend up to 2 weeks kissing in his or her lifetime."  That's just perfect for missionaries!

 

And, the thing that ties all of this together is that (one of the elders in Watsonville) sister (who's also on a mission right now) recently got proposed to by one of her investigators (she didn't do anything to encourage it either).  He had a ring and all.  Needless to say, she got transferred immediately! 

 

I asked her how things were going with her investigators and here are her answers.

 

Getting baptisms is like pulling teeth.  We finally got a baptismal date for one of our investigators for this coming up Saturday and then she decided no.  She still wants us to come and she wants to get baptized (and she's had all the lessons plenty of times and been to church many times, so she could get baptized tomorrow), but not yet.  We can't figure out what's holding her back.  She's the only one of her siblings who didn't get baptized when her parents returned from inactivity last year.  We do have a couple scheduled for January though.  Hopefully at least one of those will actually come to pass.  We also have a fairly new investigator and we're hoping to invite her to be baptized this week.  She's awesome!  Her parents are less active, but she called us a couple of weeks ago because she wanted to learn again and come to church.  When we went to teach her last Tuesday she said she had read 6 chapters of 1st Nephi in the past week!  She also went with us to the temple on Saturday to see the Christmas lights and a special dance performance they were doing about the birth and life of Christ.  She loved it!  I love Meghan!  She also wants to study marine biology (which of course makes me love her even more)!

 

Will let you know more after I hear from her tomorrow.