Valencia - Week Fifteen

HIIII FAMMILLY!!

I really loved reading your emails this week. I mean I love them every week. But they were real good this week.

Also dad and I are twins! We both spoke in church on Sunday. How tender. PS. if you ever get nervous about speaking in church again.. just remember, at least it's in your native language! Haha. I think it went well though. I really love speaking in church so it was fun. It was hard to prepare though cuz I didn't have much time. I used all my free time to work on it (and by free time I mean sleep time and lunch time... missionaries don't have free time haha). Maybe I'll send it to you eventually. It's handwritten, and in Spanish.. but maybe I'll copy it and someone can translate it for you. I need it here just in case I gotta speak again. I talked about how the Atonement is the reason we do missionary work. It was fun to write.

Anyway, it was a GREAT week. First off, Billy, our Cameroon friend, came to church! He knew some of the members too! He really liked it. So keep praying for him that he can be baptized on the 6th. We taught him the word of wisdom this week and he said he drinks sometimes, but told us he was willing to drop it if God commanded it. He has really great faith.

Also were teaching this Spaniard couple, Juan and Lolin. We ate with them yesterday, they are super sweet, Juan actually isn't interested, but he loves having us over. Lolin is in 2 Nephi 9! She's really incredible. We asked if she was praying to know if it was true and explained to her how she would recieve her answer. She's really great. She will be baptized one day.

Wanna hear a funny story? So when we were talking with Juan while we were at their house, all of a sudden he goes okay, I gotta go to the service. (and I'm thinking he's going to his catholic church service because he's done that before while we have been at their house) but I wanted to make sure we shared something with him before he left, so I was like wait! Can we share something before you go? And he was like, no you can share it with me after, I have to go right now, and I was like please? We have to go soon too, it'll just be really quick, 5 minutes, no more, and he was like no, I'll be right back, I have to go right now.. and I was like okay, how long will you be gone? (just thinking in my head, I guess we can wait till he gets back) and he goes I'll just be 10 minutes, maximum, and I said okay... so he leaves,.... and then wallks in the bathroom. And right then it clicked haha. He said service but he was talking about the bathroom... Hermana Vance and I about DIED laughing. It was so funny. I totally thought he meant church service because all he said was the word service.. gah. funny. But you probably had to be there to get it haha. But we were dyinggggg of laughter.

Anyway back to serious.. so a miracle this week was that a less active lady we are working with came to church! Her name is Odalia. She brought her whole family too (who aren't members). We are going to her house on Tuesday to eat, so hopefully we can start seeing them more regularly.

Yesterday we had a little miracle. We were teaching one of our African friends, and he brought another friend named Stanley. Well Stanley was very... fierce haha. SUPER sassy in our lesson. But at the end, I invited him to be baptized. I asked if God told him that this church was His church, if he would be baptized. He said absolutely! Unfortunately, he's headed back to Nigeria on Tuesday for a few months, so we won't see him for a little while. We were super bummed about that, because he will make a great member. Later that night he called us and told us he was explaining to a friend about our church and who we are, and the friend told him he had always seen missionaries but had never talked to them and was wondering if he could meet with us. YAY! So that's sweet. Miracles happen all the time. God always is putting prepared people in our path.

I love being a missionary because it has helped me to see how much God is really involved in every detail of our lives. He gives us miracles every single day. It's incredible to see how the gospel changes lives and how much joy it really brings to the people we teach. The mission is really rewarding.

Anyway, that's all for the week, short and sweet. LOVE YOUUUUU!!!

Love Hermana Reid