Week 12 - Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa

Hello friends and family!

How are you all?? I love you!! This week has been good! To start it off on Tuesday we taught our recent convert Angel! We showed him the Easter video and were able, with the help of the churches new web site that goes along with the video, talk with him in depth about Christ and all that happened the week leading up to Easter Day! It was supercool to watch all the things click in his head as he recognized different things and put things together! The spirit was super strong during the lesson and I absolutely LOVED teaching about Christ and his life!

I love the Book of Mormon

We tried to contact a potential investigator named aurora who we have talked to before. She lives with a roommate who made it very apparent we weren't her favorite. So when we went to her house she wasn't home but her roommate was.  She wasn't wearing her glasses so she couldn't see who we were so she actually talked to us haha. Anyway we asked her to tell her we came by and she said ok and who are you guys again and we said the missionaries. She blinked and then went ohhhh the Mormons and she clasped her hands and did a very long bow towards us in her doorway and then went yea whatever adios and closed the door. It probably wasn't something to be funny but I found it hilarious, she bowed to us.

We also taught Lilia, a less active, again this week!! She has been coming to church for a while now so she will soon be considered active again which is so awesome! I love her so much she always offers us fruit when we come over and calls us her Bonita Chicitas.

The work here is moving along. Recently it has felt that everyone is canceling on us which gets frustrating and sad some times. BUT the work goes on and we have time to just contact everyone we can and I love contacting! It's so awesome and fun to just meet people and talk to them even if they want nothing to do with us. So hopefully in the coming week we pick up new investigators so we can start teaching again in this last week of my first transfer in the field!

Friday night we meet with a less active that we have been trying to see since I got to Santa Rosa named Irma! She let us come in and share the Easter video with her and her parents. And guess what!! I understood pretty much the whole lesson AND I was having a conversation with them! They told me my Spanish was really good and I think I shed a tear. They may have said it just to be nice but I'm taking the compliment anyway. I can't wait to get to know more Spanish so I can just talk to people more and more!

On Saturday we were trying to find potentials and found a women named Debra! She was standing out side talking to her neighbor and recognized us as missionaries. It was quiet shocked actually when she asked us if we were with the Latter Day Saints. I guess her grandma has elders come over every week and teach her! Anyway we found her randomly and she was definitely prepared and set by the Lord! We were able to show her the Easter video and talk about resurrection! The spirit was super strong and I think she felt it to but didn't recognize what it was! She asked to come back again as soon as we could! So hopefully we can go back and start talking about jesu cristo y su mensaje!

The Ninas

Sunday was an adventure when Hermana Burton and I locked ALL of our things in one of the church buildings... We walked around forever trying to find a phone to call the elders or other hermanas with. We ended up going to another church building and using that phone to call people.  The elders so kindly brought us our things. It was a very fun 4 hours and having no idea what to do without our things. But it was fun to walk around for a bit! The weather here is pretty nice and the wind was blowing so counting my blessings it wasn't raining!

This Saturday was also the general women's broadcast! And man was it just amazing!! I loved it so so much! Each of the speakers talked about serving and being gods hands and standing up and speaking out! One of my favorite scriptures was mentioned! The one about how one who loses their life for Christ’s sake actually finds it! They talked about how when you are serving you are NEVER alone and the Lord is on your right and left hand and has angels round about you. Ahh our General Authorities and our Prophet are truly inspired and have such an amazing spirit and are hastening this work forward more and more! I'm so so excited for general conference this upcoming weekend and the opportunity we get to hear from all the different special witnesses of Christ! Think of the questions you would like answered and pray that they will this conference! I testify that this church is true with all my heart and that Thomas s. Monson is a prophet called of God. I love this church and gospel SO much and hope all of you are doing fantastic!! I love all your emails so much! Tenga una buena semana!!

Con amor,

Hermana Foster

Everyone has these birds for pets 

The sisters in my district 

Week 11 - Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa

Hola Todos!

This week has been fun, a little bit slow on the lesson side but still good! To start it off on Monday we went to teach a new potential investigator named Kim. And she speaks.... ENGLISH.... Technically we shouldn't be teaching her but because she is a single sister it is easier for us to meet with her than the English Elders in our area, entonces we get to teach her!

Selfie

She is great! She has studied many religions and is looking into others and doesn't know much about our church and wants to know more! She took in the first lesson really well and committed to read and pray and asked us to teach her more! The sad part is she texted us later saying she has been reading and praying and wants to hold off on more lessons until she feels ready so she will text us when she does feel ready. I really hope that she texts soon and we can teach her more. I already have love for her and want her to feel of the spirit and of gods love for her, so I hope that can happen for her. But a cool experience that came out of this was that I got to teach the first vision or Joseph's smith vision of Christ and God in English and this was my first time not doing it in Spanish.

Now I didn't expect it but teaching this in Spanish and English are very different! It's probably because I don't understand it fully in Spanish yet but sharing that in English was SO powerful and the spirit was strong! I absolutely love teaching the first vision reading Joseph's Smith’s own words just instantly brings the spirit and I love it, so powerful! But now I'm going to work at it till I feel that much power in Spanish because Spanish rocks when I can say and understand things. Slowly but surely I'm learning! Paso y paso.

Our investigator family also canceled on us again this week and said they would text us when they had time to meet again. It was super sad when they canceled, their lessons had been going really really well and the kids were awesome. I'm not sure what happened or if they truly are just very busy but hopefully they will let us come back, I have such a love for them! But it's ok because maybe we were just there to plant a seed and later on will be the time for it to grow!

We also did service again this week at meals on wheels and I cut pineapples for an hour and a half and then slabs of meat for forty five minutes. You may not think it but that my friends was a pretty good arm workout, you should try it some day. Then the next day we got asked to go again and I cut onions... Yes onions and it is probably something I NEVER want to do again, I might just never cook with them.

There were 5 of us assigned to that job and we all were crying, tears streaming down our faces. It was truly a bonding experience. And last but not least for service this week we helped someone move in and then we had a thing at church and vacuumed cars and cleaned Windows! It was a pretty fun time!

This week we picked up a new investigator named Perla! We also ended up teaching her son and his two friends during the lesson because they walked in half way through. And guess who one of her sons friends is. None other than our 13 year old investigator Sebastian. They asked A TON of questions about the plan of salvation and asked us to come back again today. It was super exciting and they are just awesome! And it was also cool to watch Sebastian, he got super excited when he could answer things for them, it was cute.

Study Desk

During my studies this week I read a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland titled "Safety for the Soul" es muy poderoso (powerfull) I think it's my favorite talk for the moment so if you ever have a free chance this week and feel the desire to read some words of a lovely Apostle that's definitely a talk worth reading! I also gain more of a testimony for the Book of Mormon as I read it each week. It truly is the word of God and a testament of Christ and I love it with all my heart and KNOW that it is true! I've also seen this week how the Lord blesses us each day individually. And with each new person I meet I feel more and more of the love Heavenly Father has for each of us! Jesucristo es nuestras Salvador y fue resucitado en la pascua. Èl aman usteds mucho y es su proteccion y fuerza! Yo sè que su evangelio y mensaje es verdad!

 

This is the craziest and cutest friend I have made so far on my mission.  His name is Angelito.

Anyway love you all so much! I love reading all your emails!

Con mucho amor

Hermana Foster

Spanish word of the week:

-disunfortunadamente: unfortunately

Yea try saying that 10 times fast

Week 10 - Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa

Hola todas!

Esta semana fue loco pero muy divertido y espirtual! First off if you haven't seen the new Easter initiative video from the church you must go watch it right now! I believe it came out to the public yesterday and it is such an awesome video! I feel the spirit so much every time I watch it! Hallelujah!

Also fun fact of the week it is totally normal for turkeys to roam the streets here. So this week I have seen a large amount of turkeys...

This week has been full and busy but awesome! I got to sit in our recent converts garage while eating home made tres leche ice cream because his family needed to finish dinner.  The ice cream was probably one of the greatest things I've ever tasted.

I have definitely not in any way shape or form come to terms with seafood! We had seafood pasta and the shrimp in it was fine BUT seeing a small squid chilling on your plate doesn't make one jump for joy. I thought it was a mushroom and then I poked it and it’s LEGS popped out.  I took the squid and put it on Elder Alcivars plate when he wasn’t looking.

I've gotten to sing for people on multiple occasions and have felt the spirit tons. One of my favorite hymns is Come Come Ye Saints.  It has such power to it!

Here is my campion Hermana Burton and I singing I Need The Every Hour.  Hopefully she doesn't mind this being posted,

I also can't believe that this is the beginning of week 5 in the field! Crazy stuff!

On Wednesday we went tracting and we found two people to teach out of it! One guy named Christian watched a video about Christ with us and got our number and said he wants us to come back to teach him more after he talks to his mom! So that was super exciting we also found a family in the same neighborhood that said we could come back. AND I got my first door slammed in my face! Yay! It was an experience. Anyway things are going well and Spanish is mas o menos. It's coming along. I can understand more than I can speak now but I for sure can't understand everything.

Something that I do love and think is so amazing is the love I have for these people. I don't understand what they say but I can feel the love that God has for them as I talk and teach them and I gain so much love from them. I can't wait until I can completely understand them and talk to them and get to know them, and I can't wait to feel the increase in love I have for them when I can communicate more! But for now it is amazing to see the Lord helping me in so many things….constantly!

Our investigators that seem super interested, Yuri y Osbaldo, haven't been able to meet with us in two weeks. We keep having to reschedule lessons so if you could keep them in your prayer that would be brilliant! Pray that we can meet with them and that they can feel the spirit! They are such a cute family that I have so much love for so I hope we can continue with them!

Also this week we had an opportunity to do service! We got to help work a garage sale type thing. But a garage sale times 1000 just for baby stuff. The whole community donates things and then this company prices them all and sets them out in this huge building and then it's open to the community. I've never seen so many babies in one place.  Like children everywhere. It was awesome I talked to so many children that I could understand because either they were speaking English or talked Spanish really slow. Basically it was a great day. The company just told us different places to help clean during it all so it looked kind of organized.

On Saturday went to a park and planted trees! In the rain!!! Yep it's still raining it's been a solid two weeks now pero esta bien it made things quiet fun and muddy.

We also found a new investigator this week named Aurora! She is super cool and knows a ton about different Church's and was super excited and happy when she found out we were teaching about Jesus and believed the same things she believes! We taught her the restoration and it took us probably a good hour because she had so much to say about it. She also said yes to baptism if she finds its all true so hopefully we can set a date with her next week.  After the lesson she was so happy she asked us to come back and then she wanted to say a prayer for us!

Sebastian is doing good as well, we had to push his baptismal date back to April 1st because we need to teach him a couple more things before his baptism, but he is pumped to be baptized!

It's definitely rumored that David A. Bednar will be speaking in my mission in April.  So no big deal….I'll just get to shake hands with an apostle but it's fine I'm not freaking out. :)

For the spiritual thought of the day I'm going to send a shout out to the moms! I have been reading in alma this week (chapter 56) about the two thousand stripling warriors who fought for their families freedom! It talks about how the young men had never fought before but didn't fear the battle or death because they knew if they had faith in the Lord they would be delivered from their enemies or they would die in peace knowing they would be going to live with their Father in Heaven.  And they knew these things because their mothers had taught them so.  So yay for moms and of course for dads also! Hope everyone is doing good!

Love y'all!

Con Mucho amor

Hermana Foster

Beary Bear  from Brooke and Brinlee and a note from Este.

Week 9 - Bennett Valley, Santa Rosa

Hola hola,

2 month mark!

So another week has come and gone already which is super crazy. This week has been pretty good I was able to meet and teach a women who is a less active that we have been trying to contact since I got here.  She asked us to come and visit with her when she randomly showed up to church on Sunday. 

Did I mention it has rained all week?

A random number called us and asked us to come teach them about Jesus and it's really rainy. Now it's not as bad as Texas but it can sure rain here and it loves to do so just when we need to be walking around outside.  Therefore this week a blessing has been umbrellas that keep the top half of you dry. All in all a pretty good week.

We have a recent convert named Angel that we teach every week, he is 16 and super awesome. This week he was having a rough time with some things and the young men's president came and gave him a blessing and it was a really powerful blessing (mostly for the others in the room because the blessing was in Spanish).  Even with not understanding everything after the blessing there was a distinct difference in Angel and that was something super cool to see! The priesthood is so powerful, so great, and I am for sure so grateful for it. Prays for him if you get a chance that he can continually feel the spirit.  He can't come to church that often because his dad insists he help him work on Sunday's so him having the spirit is important right now! 

We also continue to teach Mina and Mario who are also recent converts and they are just the best and have a such a great spirit about them.  In their lesson this week we watched two bible videos "to this end I was born" and "my kingdom is not of this world".   They are videos about Christ's life and I loved them so I figured I'd share and you guys can watch if you have an extra minute in your day. (You can find them on lds.org)

Our 13 year old investigator Sebastian is also doing great and we have a baptism set for the 19th this month and I'm super excited for him!  He's the sweetest and is pumped to get baptized and it's awesome to see!

Anyway things are pretty good so far, it's rained all week.  

• We've gone to houses to see some members only to find that the members moved out of that house like five years ago
• I'm slowly very slowly trying to come to terms with killing bugs
• Just teaching teaching teaching

Spanish is frustrating but I can understand more than I could at the start for sure! I can't wait to be able to talk and get to know people for real here. I love everyone so much but I can't exactly tell them yet, but esta bien it will come when it is supposed to!

Anyway thanks for all your emails and I love you guys! Remember that you can talk to our Heavenly Father about anything and everything at anytime anywhere and that's an amazing thing to take advantage of.

More to come later. Love y'all!

Con amor

Hermana foster