Holli - September 26, 2016

Out to dinner with a member after Women's Conference!

Sister Hobbs and I with recent convert Michelle!

Hello Everyone!

We had a wonderful week this week! 

We had breakfast at Brother Ballard's house one day and the stake presidency came. We talked about goals. Last year the stake had about thirty people get baptized and this year we already have about fifty so it is exciting to see people increase their faith and follow the Savior! 

So we have this awesome girl named Hana we've been teaching. She feels the spirit super strong in our lessons and is so excited to join the church. I'll try to send a picture to you next week. Bishop asked us to teach her and we just had our second lesson with her last night. The Spirit was so strong as we taught about the Plan of Salvation. Sister Hobbs and I had prayed and prayed about a date for Hana but nothing seemed super solid so Sister Hobbs invited Hana to pray about her own date for baptism. Hana got super emotional and choked out, "You can do that?" It was an amazing moment. Her only worry is sharing this with her family because they don't know about her interest in the gospel. But Hana is seriously one of the coolest people we've met!

We were in Alhambra one day searching for this guy named Fang Fang (everyone in Alhambra is Chinese) and we found Lin Tong. Her English name is Linda. Anyways, she came to the door and said, "no English, come in?" And we were like, Sure!! She's so sweet but she did not speak a lick of English so we did a bit of charades and I pulled out my cornerstone app (which translates the missionary lessons into different languages) and we asked her in like fifteen different ways if she knew who Fang Fang was. Then she called her husband and he tried his hand at english and then finally Sister Hobbs got the brilliant idea to just call the Chinese Sisters and have them talk to Linda. And then she became their investigator so it was fun!

We had a lesson with Ann one night. Her husband Jeremy is less active and she is a strong Catholic so we had a good discussion with her about the gospel of Jesus Christ. She is not willing to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true and we asked her why. She will read it but not pray about it. She basically told us this: praying about the Book of Mormon since she is Catholic is like already marrying Jeremy and then praying to know if another guy is right for her. She sees praying about the Book of Mormon like that. Betraying Jeremy to go with another guy. So we were all kind of like, "Uh, we have no idea how to answer that . . . " Any one have anything?

We are teaching this awesome girl named Alesia. Her husband Scott is less active and they live literally in the backyard of the church. So great. So we go over and Scott brings Kaden (their cute little one year old) out on the porch and then this cute little two year old girl named Ila comes over and then a few other kids in the apartment complex across the street start coming over. One of them was a seventh grader named Johnny. After a lot of the people had gone back to their homes Johnny stayed on his scooter as we showed Scott, Alesia, and Kaden the children's bible video about the birth of Christ. Then we asked Johnny if he knew how to pray. He shook his head so we quickly taught him, Scott, and Alesia how to pray. Just before Johnny was about to say a prayer for the first time, his grandmother shouts at him to go inside. But before he rides off on his scooter we invited him to pray by himself and he said yes!

Sister Hobbs and I prepared a song (A mix of Lord I will follow thee and love one another) and sang it for a baptism the Elders had and at Vanessa's nursing home. It was so fun. We invited the other Elders in our district to help out at the nursing home and they did a fantastic job singing ye elders of Israel :)

That's about it for the week here in Glendale! Hope you all have a wonderful week! Thank you so much for your letters, love, and support :)

Love, Sister Dunn