Holli - February 8, 2016

Linda's baptism (Chinese Sisters taught her)

Hello Everyone!

A big thank you for the Valentines package mom - totally made our day! Sister Ausen loves those pretzel, rollo things. And thank you Grandma and Grandpa Clark for the cute coin purse from Peru! I love it!

Okay, I seriously feel as if I'm meant to learn three different
languages on this mission!

We met Santiago at a bus stop and he could understand a little English but he could only speak Spanish. He was super nice though! We struggled through the few basic words we knew and he would respond. He told us he had met a trio of Sister Missionaries before and they knew a little Spanish. We managed to ask him if he had heard of El Libro de Mormon and our church. We then asked if he would like to read the Book of Mormon and he said yes! So we just gave him the Spanish Elders contact information and he gave us his number. It was awesome :)

Then we met this lady that knew only Chinese. We were walking towards her and Sister Ausen asked her when the Chinese New Year was. The lady started talking into her phone and we realized she had this translator app. Before we knew it we were talking back and forth through her phone and it was pretty cool. She told us where she lived and also the church she had gone to last week. We asked her if she was interested in English class and she said yes and then we told her English Class was at our church and she said: "Take me to your church!" We were a little stunned at first but we started walking towards the church. We couldn't really communicate so it was silent fifteen minute walk but
thankfully the Chinese Sisters were at the church and were able to tell her all about English class and the church!

So this Arabic family I told you all about last week (mom is Maria and the dad is Sam) - well we actually met Sam this week. We talked with him at the door for a while and he seems pretty set in his beliefs but he let us come into their home and talk a little more about our beliefs. They are the sweetest family - they moved from Egypt so they could worship Christ freely. It was really cool talking with them. We
told Sam about Sister Ausen's brother who speaks Arabic and hopefully they can contact each other so they can learn about the gospel more. We asked Maria and Sam if there was anything we could do for them and they said their kids (Angelina and Daniel) have English reading homework and they as parents can't always help them with that English
so they asked us to do it. We were like, heck yeah! Such a cool family but we hope they start reading the Book of Mormon soon!

We were walking down the street one day and we crossed paths with this one guy about three different times. On the third time I told Sister Ausen, "This is a sign!" So we stopped to talk to him. Turns out he is from Romania - and Sister Ausen's sister served her mission in Romania. So we got to talk to him a bit about the gospel and it was pretty cool!

We met this really cool family one night. They were this random name in our area book - there wasn't much about them, but we stopped by. Turns out that the missionaries had visited this family a ton a few years ago. Elizabeth and Rene (the parents) said they were very excited to see us. They told us they loved the Elders coming to their home. We met with them later in the week and Elizabeth broke down, telling us that the Elders brought a certain light and Spirit into the
home and once they didn't come over anymore, that light left. They are both Catholic and pretty strong in that religion but they said they would love having missionaries come by again. Kind of interesting!

We met this man named Jerry street contacting. He was an interesting guy! He told us he felt like a tadpole - all of these frogs were telling him about the blue sky and the green grass and everything amazing that was there when they jumped out of the water, but he had yet to gain the courage to jump out of the water and get to know that for himself. He told us everyone tells him about God and how great He is, but Jerry is fine being a tadpole for now, just swimming along. He
believes one day he might have the courage to jump out and explore for himself, but that day isn't today. We gave him a Book of Mormon though and he said he would read it. We hope he gains his courage that way!

We met this really cool lady named Brandy street contacting the other day. Sister Ausen had extra starbursts in her bag so as we approached Brandy (who has 3 kids under the age of 5) we asked if her children wanted the starbursts and she let them each have a candy. Kind of an awful way to contact but it worked! We ended up telling Brandy about English class and handed her off to the Chinese Sisters. It was great!
While we were teaching Brandy though, the little boys kept trying to look through Sister Ausen's bag and my pockets for more candy. Haha, but Brandy had them on leashes so she would just tug them back. So cute!

Jackie, the lady I told you about last week, had to move to
Bakersfield so she's over there now but she's attending church and hopefully getting into contact with the missionaries so she'll probably get baptized soon!

That's about it from here in Arcadia! Hope everyone stays healthy and safe this week! I love you all!

Love, Sister Dunn