San Diego #32 2-16-09

Hola Querida Familia mìa:

So I realized I forgot to write a "real" letter last week... (SHE JUST SENT HOME A BUNCH OF BILLS) Sorry...but I'll do it now...So Sis. Howarth is gone. Another one bites the dust-It's always hard to send your companion home-especially when they don't want to go! Schallen and Hna. Howarth were definitely the hardest. But Schallen came back this weekend (again). It was fun to see her. We really had good experiences.

Anyways, enough reminising my comp. Now is Sister Urban. I'm still in Spring Valley-It was funny to see everyone's faces at transfers when Pres. said I wasn't trining. I almost started laughing.

Right now we only have 1 investigator w/a baptism date. His name is Sam. Really cool kid. He's 15-getting baptized Marth 1. His favorite topic in school is history. Sam is friends with the Rameriz Family, so they brng him to church and he wants to get baptized. So we are teaching him. That simple...He's trying to get his family to come to church with him!

Leticia is doing great. In church yesterday, they talked about missionary work and she loved it! We have been trying to get her to do missionary wrok for the past while but she says no-in church yesterday with out her realizing it, she went up and started fellowshipping an investigator!! If Sis. Howarth was still here we would have cheered! But she's not, so I rejoice in my heart. So Leti is doing great.

Robert...Well he's super excited to go do baptisms for the dead this weekend...in the temple! We are working with Leti too. Robert always tries to stump me with his "Bible Questions" which isn't hard since I'm not studying the bible right now-so now he's going to write Pres. Donaldson (who has studied the bible in HEBREW) and try to stump him. But he is doing great on his soccer team. Reading the Book of Mormon and Bible every day.

The Gonzalez Family: Ruben got the Priesthood yesterday! He is stoked about family history and their family are going to the temple this friday to do baptisms. Melissa is great most of the time. She calls me 'Dude' or 'Hna. Bakery' or 'Mana'. Findencia is always running around with the other young women or the ward. Teresita-well, I taught her thumb wars, so she's pretty good now. Let's me win every once in a while :).

We are teaching Ruben Contreras (Martha-Member). We go study the Book of Mormon with him, and we "sneek vegetables into his rice" by teaching him priciples that are in each chapter we are studying. It's pretty fun and challenging. Like when we studied 1 Nefi(STACIE'S SPELLING) 2 & 3. We taught obedience 10 Commandments. Wow, follow the prophet and 1 Nefi 1 we even taught parts of Lesson 1 with the Restoration. He's very very slowly progressing. But it is good practice.

The rest of our time is pretty much filled with tracting, jumping out of the car and chasing after people as they run away-to see if they want the hear a message about their Savior. Parking lot contacting as soon as it warms up. Park contacting! We're getting a lot of refferals for the English missionaries...they love it when we go tracting. We did knock a street and a lady said yes-she wants us to come back on saturday at 1:00 to teach her family! Her name is Rocio. That is a phrase that every missionary wants to hear!

Oh, ther is a cool old lady named Aurora Laurean that is blind and in a wheel chair-but super active member of the Barrio 20 in San Diego that we go read with every week. I'll send pictures. Anyway, she lives by herself pretty much-in a side apartment by her son's house. We go read to her, it's fun.

Yesterday, Maria Eva Ballow's Grandkids got baptized! She was IN-active an after Schallen left I didn't know any members, so we went down the ward list, found her, and at first she wasn't nice to us at all, but we kept trying and she reactivated into the english ward -so that she could take her grandkids-the elders found them at the English ward and taught them without knowing that we were working with them until we all showed up at an appointment one day. The whole spirit has change in their home. Jaqueline, their mom, likes us now! She's being reactivated by the elders now too! It's amazing to see how the Gospel not only blesses families, but changes them completly. There really is a huge difference in them, and it's not something that can be faked either.

Last week I was so sick, I completly lost my voice for 3 days...Lemme tell ya-that makes missionary work tricky...but members loaded me up with all kinds of sick tasting tea and I feel better and my voice is back. I took pictures of that too.

That's crazy about Becky and Calvin getting another kid. Send pictures.

Anyway...I guess that's pretty much it.

-Hna Baker