Holli - August 31, 2015

Holli with the Zimmermans

The Hertzlers feed us every Fast Sunday!

Hello Everyone!

So this week has been pretty exciting! It was super hot so we had lots of fun biking and tracting. We visit this one older lady named Sister Steadman at a care center and she is always the highlight of the week. She is super sweet and nice but pretty confined to her bed. We walked in on Tuesday for our weekly visit and she had this horrendous black eye! It was terrible! Apparently she had tried to leave the restroom
by herself since no one came to help her and she tried jumping into her wheelchair and totally smacked her face against something hard. I wanted to laugh and cry and take a picture a the same time, but that probably would have been rude. We had a great visit though!

We recommitted our investigator Brandy to a baptismal date for September 20th so that is super exciting! She doesn't have a ton of confidence in herself but she's still reading the Book of Mormon and praying - we just have to get her to church!

We did have our first encounter with an atheist the other night. It was very interesting - he could probably tell you every fact and statistic in the book. Honestly though, he sounded exactly like Korihor in the Book of Mormon - he wanted evidence that there is a God. The funniest thing he said was: "There are thousands of galaxies, millions of planets, and Jesus Christ or God has time to listen to
you?" He said it so incredulously and Sister Duncan and I were like, "Heck yeah He does! He loves us so much that He wants to listen to us.It was so sad to see his heart so hard. No matter what scripture we used our how strongly we bore testimony, he just brushed it off.

We had an amazing lesson with the Zimmermanns the other night. It was only Chad and Socorro but the Spirit was so strong. We had it with a member (the Moore's) and they just took over and it was great! Chad told us that he feels relaxed when he reads the Book of Mormon and sometimes he gets choked up even though he doesn't know why. So
awesome! What 13 year old boy says that? Sister Duncan was so funny, she said, "Me too Chad, me too!" They want to get baptized so bad but Jayson, the dad, will take a while. And he wants to take a while. Pray for them!

So ready for the crazy news?!? So it is transfer week and I am being transferred from Claremont to Arcadia! My companion is Sister Bennion and this is her last transfer of her mission. So I'm killing her! (Haha, that’s mission talk for I'll be her companion before she goes home) which stinks because she is super awesome and we'll only be comps for 6 weeks but whatever! Sister Duncan will stay in Claremont and finish a Sister Chatterton's training. She is freaking out - taking over the area and finishing training. I'll miss her like crazy but I've heard nothing but good things about Arcadia. And guess what? Nigel Goodwin lives like right across the street from our apartment complex! Super crazy, right? Yeah so I am excited! Sister Bennion is the youngest of 7 and super awesome! It was her birthday August 23rd and she got all of these Reeses Fast Break candy bars in the mail and she stuck them in the freezer and she said I was welcome to them. Haha, instant friends! 

We ran into this lady on the street the other day who only spoke Spanish. Ok so she was sitting on this bench and rocking back and forth so I was kind of worried about her so we went over and started talking and then we found out she couldn't speak English so I tried my hand at it. Haha, I could only remember hablar, tener, and hola. It was bad! But we managed to tell her to come back to the same place at the same time the next day and meet the Spanish Elders. We showed up the next day and she didn't show up at first so of course we thought either she misunderstood us (which was very possible) or she just didn't want to learn more about Jesu Cristo. Thank goodness the Spanish Elders were late because the minute we saw them riding down the street, Marcella (that's her name) appeared. Tender mercies!

We went tracting with Madeline one day and it was so hot! She is about to go on her mission to Fort Worth Texas English speaking and she's so excited. We ran into another Spanish speaker (Catalina). Yet again I had to try my hand at Spanish and I failed miserably! Needless to say I am now diligently reading my Spanish Book of Mormon, hoping to have an experience like Elder Groberg had in the movie, The Other Side of Heaven. Madeline took pity on us and bought us water and ice cream bars afterwords. Super sweet!

The Ward almost made me cry yesterday as they all came up to say good bye. I had only been there for 3 months but they seriously were like family. They're all we have out here as missionaries!  Anyways, that’s about all of our week here in Claremont. Hope everyone's week goes well!

Love, Sister Dunn