Happy Thanksgiving

November 26, 2012

Hola mi familia!

How is everyone doing? It sounds like y'all had a fun/quiet Thanksgiving, but it was sure nice of you to invite the Ruiz De Castilla family over. We need more people like you here in Texas to do the same for the less actives in our ward. But we did have a nice couple here that invited Gona and Sirvan over to dinner with a few young couples from the ward so that was really nice of them! Especially since this was their very first Thanksgiving and they didn't even really know what it was. We stopped by to visit them in the afternoon with all of the couples and they seemed to be having a fun time. :) They were also invited to the Thanksgiving Turkey bowl so Sirvan played football with the guys and Gona walked around the park with us and a few ladies from the ward. They really love this ward! When we went over to visit them last night Sirvan said his brother called them yesterday and they told him about church. His brother said he had been going to church in France for 6 months and he said the people in this church are soooo  nice! He was able to tell Gona and Sirvan a lot about the church. (It was probably really good for him to tell them all he knows since they can understand better in Persian.... I just hope it was all correct!) But they came to church again yesterday and LOVED IT! :)

Anyways.... There's my first story of the email. haha

So Grandpa and Grandma aren't doing to well? I hope I can see them when I get home. I pray for them! I'm really glad you made it down and back safely. I bet the roads were awful with the snow. Did anyone else go down for Thanksgiving or was it just you guys?

My Thanksgiving was fun, Iike I said we went to the park in the morning with Gona and Sirvan and then around 10:30 we went to Noo's house to help her start preparing Thanksgiving. When we got there she already had it all done! So Sister Moreno made her spanish dish-- Tortillas de Patatas. I made some salsa... and then we ate! Noo let Daniel join us for dinner since he didn't want to be around his family because they would all be drinking and he knew it'd be too big of a temptation. He really enjoyed being with us I think! I'll have to send pictures next week! Noo asked me to say the prayer on Thanksgiving and I got kind of emotional cause I missed y'all! Thanksgiving will be fun next year with everyone. :)

After Noo's house we went and visited lots of people! And yes.... we got fed pie at every house........ I hate food now.

But it was good because we saw all of our investigators, and most of the less actives we've been working with! :) Everyone seemed to be doing well except the Vermilyeas. They are really struggling. People in their complex have threatened to call CPS on them since they have 4 kids, 2 dogs, and 1 cat in a one bedroom apartment. It's not a good situation and it has not been good on their progress in the gospel. Please pray for them if you will.

Last week our zone went to the Clayton Library here in Houston. It's one of the largest Geneology libraries in the USA. We learned a lot about family history work and it was cool cause the lady that taught us wasn't a member of the church! So she got her feel of missionaries! haha They let us do some research on our families and get our family search website set up so we could check out our family tree. It got me excited to start my family history work when I get home.

I'll try to update y'all on everyone.....

Daniel passed his baptismal interview on Saturday! He is getting baptized this Friday night!!!!! We are so excited for him. I don't think I've taught anyone this prepared for the gospel my whole mission. It's been amazing to see his progress. But funny/awful story that happened on our last lesson we were teaching last week. So usually the last lessons ends up being obey and honor the law cause it's like a "oh and by the way when you become a member we expect you to be a good citizen." Ya know? So it's not supposed to be a long or a hard lesson. But we learned our lesson to NEVER use to 12th article of faith right after elections....

Daniel is a die hard American. He hates Obama and thinks he is not an American. end of the story.

So when we teach about Respecting our presidents, kings, rulers, etc. He starts getting very agitated and defensive and says. I will never Honor Obama, and if that's what y'all are asking me to do to be a member I can't do it.

Oh my gosh I was freaking out in my head like, you've got to be kidding! He accepted the word of wisdom, tithing, prophets, everything! And then this came up. haha I explained that all this meant is that we need to be good citizens and obey the law. After trying to patch up everything he calmed down. The member with us, Sister Byrne, tried her best to explain things too but man. It was scary for a second! We had a good laugh in the car afterward because seriously... that is supposed to be the easiest and quickest lesson! Luckily he said he would obey and honor the law. :)

Paula is also doing great! She came to church on Sunday too. We have had the most investigators at church this transfer than I ever have had on my mission. It's so great. :) Paula came with us to a baptism on Saturday and she loved it. She was so excited for him, and we did a short lesson afterward and in her prayer at the end she said that she couldn't wait to become a member of this great family! Her baptism is the week after Daniels. Pray for her if you will too! She is so prepared for the gospel in her life, and it's going to help her life and the situation she is in so much right now. :)

Funny story! Haha so we met a lady this week named Patricia. She was very nice and she let us in right away. During our first lesson she was saying a few things that were crazy and I didn't know if she was serious or not, but we were kinda in a hurry so we told her we'd come back the next day to bring her a Book of Mormon. When we came back the next day she told Sister Moreno that she couldn't understand her, so I ended up teaching the whole lesson by myself.... which is never good! But as we were talking about the Spirit she turns to me and said, "ya know? When I feel the spirit I usually have bad gas. I think That's Gods way of telling me something." I couldn't believe it! I started laughing cause I thought she was kidding.... nope! She was dead serious! We left soon after cause we think she may be a little on the crazy side. But it really made me laugh. Now we have a joke whenever we smell something bad... someone must be feeling the spirit! ;) There are people I've met on my mission that I'll never forget.... She's one of them I think!

It was weird though cause as she was talking I knew she wasn't completely with it. I know that she is still a daughter of God and I didn't want to take away her chance to learn about the gospel. I kept feeling to extend a baptismal date (we are supposed to in every first sit down lesson... to check for their intent) but I kept saying to myself why would we do that? She can't really understand. But I did it anyways, and she told us she'd never be baptized. It made me feel better about not coming back cause she wasn't in it for the right reasons. The Spirit guides!

Yesterday I was thinking a lot about the word Choice and Choose. We all have our agency to choose. We know good from bad, and we have the spirit of discernment. I think one of the hardest things about being a missionary is seeing the people you've come to love and serve choose ways other than they should. I know that it's Gods plan to give us agency but it's so hard to watch people choose wrong. I told Sister Moreno that and I said, " I wish we could make people choose the right!" and she told me That is Satans plan to force. It made me realize how much more it must hurt our Heavenly Father to watch us when we do wrong. He knows that when we obey we will be happy, when we don't obey we put ourselves in more misery. I just hope these people here will figure out where and when true happiness comes. 

I love you guys so much and I hope y'alls week goes great! Let me know if I can do anything for you!

Sister Avery