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| LA Temple with Morgan, Tyler, and Sister Leyva |
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| Morgan's and Tyler's baptism |
Holy cow what a week! We have been so busy and loving every minute!
The big news is that Tyler and Morgan were baptized yesterday! The girls were so sweet and prepared. Tyler is 11 and Morgan is 9. Their mom, Sister Leyva is a returning less active. She was baptized in her teens and went on a mission but when she came back, became inactive. She has 3 kids, all of which are now baptized and she is slowly returning to activity. Her mom is the only member of her close family. They are the ones we got to take to the LA temple. The LA temple is absolutely amazing! The architecture is super cool. We went inside the visitors center and got to watch some awesome videos about family and missionaries and we got to see the Christus statue. After the temple though, Sister Leyva wanted to give us poor deprived missionaries a tour of LA so we saw Hollywood and other cool places, but it was so interesting to me. After the spiritual high of the temple it just didn't seem right going around to see all of this worldly stuff. And right outside those glamorous LA streets were old, run down, kind of scary places. There is such a huge difference between the purity and beauty of the temple and the glamour of the world. It really just opened my eyes and made me want to stay as close to the temple as possible.
So anyway the baptismal service went well -Sister Levya and Sister Levya's mother gave talks, we showed a few bible videos, Sister Bennion and I sang A Child's Prayer and half of the ward showed up and brought food for afterwards. So amazing! We had people standing in the back of the RS room because there wasn't enough room! President and Sister Villanueva even came so it was awesome seeing them!
Sister Bennion and I spent a large part of Saturday making cookies - an amazing recipe that I will have to send home :) . We had a two hour lesson with our Philippine friend Arman. He's pretty set in his religion but he loves to read and adamantly reads the Book of Mormon so the Spirit is slowly working on him. The best thing that happened though was he gave Noni (his wife) a copy of the Book of Mormon in
Tagalog and she started reading it. She was so touched by Joseph Smith's experience and said that she had had a similar vision/dream and it felt familiar. So cool right! I love the Spirit :)
Arman came to Stake Conference yesterday so that was great! The Evans (members who are Arman's neighbors) are such great fellowship. They had us over for lunch before we met with Arman and she gave us sandwiches to take home. Then for dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory and had leftovers and finally we went to this sweet members
house (Sister Ludwhig - she has 4 kids but none of them are baptized yet) and she had gotten us slushies from Sonic. We are fed way too much! I never thought I would say that :)
We went to the White's for dinner this week and the funniest thing happened. So Sister White asked the usual questions : Where are you from, How many siblings do you have. Sister Bennion told her I was a quadruplet and she freaked out a bit, and then freaked out a bit more when I told her we were all serving missions. Finally she stops us and says, "Wait, I’ve got to get this right so I can tell the ladies in RS. You're a quad . . . Quad . . .Quadriplegic?” Haha, we laughed so hard. So yes the word is out . . . I'm a quadriplegic :)
So it was really hot for a few days here but we did manage to run into a sweet lady named Irma on the street. She was walking her 12 year old dog and I bent down to pet him and his back legs were shaking so much! I felt so bad for him - he was so old! We talked to Irma for quite a while and she told us that she had been to a Jehovah Witness church - she shrugged her shoulders and told us it was informative. We
asked her if she felt there was something missing out of the churches she had been to and the experiences she had. She told us one of the big questions she had was, Where is truth? We gave her a Restoration packet and testified that it was true - she said she would read it and call us. Really good experience and hopefully the Spirit will continue to guide her so she can find that truth :)
We had a really interesting lesson with this cute old Chinese guy named Joseph. He walked into church one day, wanting to know a bit about our beliefs. We set up an appointment with him and the Gerard's (young couple - members) and as we were talking, we found out that he was starting his church and wanted to start one here in Arcadia. He asked if we had any small bible study groups he could attend during
the week. Brother Gerard said afterwards that Joseph was probably going to try to convert members to his religion. Haha, kind of funny but Joseph did say he would come to Gospel Principles so we'll see what happens.
We had promised Morgan we would come and watch a bit of her soccer game Saturday morning. As we were watching, Sister Bennion came up with an amazing gospel analogy. She said that Heavenly Father is a lot like our coach. He's telling us where to go and what to do because he can see the whole field and knows what is going on. Sometimes, as the players, we follow his direction, or sometimes we just get super confused and don't know where to go and kind of stumble around a bit. But whenever we mess up, whenever the adversary scores a goal on us, the coach doesn't get mad. He recognizes where we are weak and makes a plan to work on our weaknesses with us so they can become our strengths. Super cool, right?
That's about it from here in Arcadia! I love you all so much and can't thank you enough for the letters and support. It all means so much! Hope the week is great!
Love,
Sister Bennion and I spent a large part of Saturday making cookies - an amazing recipe that I will have to send home :) . We had a two hour lesson with our Philippine friend Arman. He's pretty set in his religion but he loves to read and adamantly reads the Book of Mormon so the Spirit is slowly working on him. The best thing that happened though was he gave Noni (his wife) a copy of the Book of Mormon in
Tagalog and she started reading it. She was so touched by Joseph Smith's experience and said that she had had a similar vision/dream and it felt familiar. So cool right! I love the Spirit :)
Arman came to Stake Conference yesterday so that was great! The Evans (members who are Arman's neighbors) are such great fellowship. They had us over for lunch before we met with Arman and she gave us sandwiches to take home. Then for dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory and had leftovers and finally we went to this sweet members
house (Sister Ludwhig - she has 4 kids but none of them are baptized yet) and she had gotten us slushies from Sonic. We are fed way too much! I never thought I would say that :)
We went to the White's for dinner this week and the funniest thing happened. So Sister White asked the usual questions : Where are you from, How many siblings do you have. Sister Bennion told her I was a quadruplet and she freaked out a bit, and then freaked out a bit more when I told her we were all serving missions. Finally she stops us and says, "Wait, I’ve got to get this right so I can tell the ladies in RS. You're a quad . . . Quad . . .Quadriplegic?” Haha, we laughed so hard. So yes the word is out . . . I'm a quadriplegic :)
So it was really hot for a few days here but we did manage to run into a sweet lady named Irma on the street. She was walking her 12 year old dog and I bent down to pet him and his back legs were shaking so much! I felt so bad for him - he was so old! We talked to Irma for quite a while and she told us that she had been to a Jehovah Witness church - she shrugged her shoulders and told us it was informative. We
asked her if she felt there was something missing out of the churches she had been to and the experiences she had. She told us one of the big questions she had was, Where is truth? We gave her a Restoration packet and testified that it was true - she said she would read it and call us. Really good experience and hopefully the Spirit will continue to guide her so she can find that truth :)
We had a really interesting lesson with this cute old Chinese guy named Joseph. He walked into church one day, wanting to know a bit about our beliefs. We set up an appointment with him and the Gerard's (young couple - members) and as we were talking, we found out that he was starting his church and wanted to start one here in Arcadia. He asked if we had any small bible study groups he could attend during
the week. Brother Gerard said afterwards that Joseph was probably going to try to convert members to his religion. Haha, kind of funny but Joseph did say he would come to Gospel Principles so we'll see what happens.
We had promised Morgan we would come and watch a bit of her soccer game Saturday morning. As we were watching, Sister Bennion came up with an amazing gospel analogy. She said that Heavenly Father is a lot like our coach. He's telling us where to go and what to do because he can see the whole field and knows what is going on. Sometimes, as the players, we follow his direction, or sometimes we just get super confused and don't know where to go and kind of stumble around a bit. But whenever we mess up, whenever the adversary scores a goal on us, the coach doesn't get mad. He recognizes where we are weak and makes a plan to work on our weaknesses with us so they can become our strengths. Super cool, right?
That's about it from here in Arcadia! I love you all so much and can't thank you enough for the letters and support. It all means so much! Hope the week is great!
Love,
Sister Dunn
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