Tuesday, December 10, 2013

December 10, 2013 - Redwood City

Once again I'm emailling on a Tuesday. This time it's because we were asked to be hostesses at the creche exhibit. Which was AWESOME. They did a complete makeover on one of the chapels in Palo Alto and had 350 nativity displays from 65 different countries. Such a cool experience. I wish I could send pictures of some of the creches but no photos were allowed. Anyway, here I am emailling on a Tuesday once again!
 
This last week was the end of the transfer and I was asked to train a new missionary which means sister bair got transferred. She is now in Livermore (where I started!) and I will meet my new companion on Thursday. There are only 3 sisters coming in this transfer and 2 of them are spanish. Although it was sad to only have one transfer with sister bair, I'm really excited to train again!
 
On Sunday I went to the despedidia for sister green and sister wallace...my first two companions are already going home! It honestly seems like just yesterday that I met my trainer sister green. It was good to hear their testimonies but sad to say goodbye.
 
This week we had an awesome miracle! A 17 year old girl (mayte) who was baptized (by my second companion sister wallace when she was here) last year has a non-memeber boyfriend named yaser. So mayte spent about a week in utah with an lds family to check out byu campus and decided that she wants to go on a mission. She has SUCH a strong testimony and is a huge example, especially to her boyfriend. He took the lessons with her last year but decided not to get baptized. Anyway, while she was gone we received a text from him asking if we could teach him again so that he could be baptized on dec 14th (this saturday!) At first we wondered if he was just joining because of his girlfriend but then we found out that he hadn't even talked to her about it. He remembered everything that he was taught last year from the previous missionaries and can interpret and understand scriptures extremely well. He said he knows he's ready this time. Once again, the lord is sending us so many prepared people!
 
Remember the arabic man we met at the restaurant? We promised him to bring a book of mormon in his language. The night that we had planned to bring it to him we "somehow" met a member (brother henry) in the stake who speaks arabic. I never would have even considered asking if any members spoke arabic! But the lord helped our paths cross so we asked him if he would come with us that evening to introduce the book of mormon to our arabic friend. We sat in silence while they talked about the book of mormon and restoration. At one point, brother henry smiled and then turned to us and said, "he (the arabic man) said that he know's it's a good book because it's about christ". I know we won't be able to teach him but I at least felt that we had done our part in giving him another witness of jesus christ and I just pray that he reads it.
 
Another investigator that we've been working with is enrique. we met him my very first week here. He is doing awesome! He came to church for the first time (he works on sundays) and everyone was so welcoming. Last week he told us that his son was going to have surgery in mexico to get a tumor in his stomach removed so we taught him about fasting and asked him if he would like to fast together. He had SOOO much faith. I could see it just burning in his eyes. When we went back to ask him how the surgery went he said it was a miracle. The tumor in his sons stomach was gone and all that the doctors could find were the remains of the tumor. He's progressing so quickly! He'd be baptized already if it weren't for his work on Sundays.
 
We've been reading the bom with him and when we read 1 ne 8, I drew a picture of lehi's dream. It wasn't a pretty picture or anything but after the lesson he pulled out his wallet, carefully folded it up and put it in his wallet. I asked him why he wanted to keep such a poorly drawn picture and then he pulled out another piece of paper. It was the plan of salvation that we had drawn during our second lesson with him. Also poorly drawn. He said that it doesn't matter what they look like but the meaning behind them.
 
Well Christmas is coming SOOOO soooon. Downtown redwood city turned into the northpole overnight. there's a huge tree decorated with lights that we can see right out our apartment window. The train tracks that run RIGHT by our apartment (that I used to hate because the loud train keeps me up all night) now are my favorite because there is a train that goes by at night that is decorated in chirstmas lights. We also had our ward chirstmas party this last weekend and almost every single one of our 15 investigators showed up! This is why Christmas is the best.
 
Espero que todo esta bien con ustedes y que estan disfrutando la epoca del nacimiento de nuestro salvador. Tenga buena semana!
Con amor, Hermana Billings

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