All Girls Sports Day and a trip to Burma

All the sisters in the mission got together for a Sports P-day.  They played volleyball.

Here they all are!

Linnea's letter this week mentioned a free trip to Burma.  That got my attention.  Here is how she explained it...

 

So this week we have been trying to find the hispanics in the area...we knocked on plenty of doors but found not a single hispanic who wasn't already a member. We did however take a free trip to Burma. You may or may not know that Salt Lake is FULL of refugees. In Rose Park the refugees were all from Sudan. Here all the refugees are from Burma and a few from Nepal. Super nice people. We knocked this indoor apartment complex(like where the doors are inside a hallway) which was 75% Burmese. When you walk into these apartments you get an overwhelming smell of, as my companion describes it, crab legs, jasmine rice and fish sauce. No joke, that is the perfect description. When you walk in it hits you HARD...sometimes it takes your breath away. Because of these 2 days in these apartments we like to say we took a quick little trip to Burma. That being said, let me talk about the 3 baptisms.

    Baptism #1: We went to the baptism of a little boy in the Lucero branch named Matthew. His parents are active members and wanted us to come over a couple times before his baptism so we could talk to him about what baptism is and what not. Super smart cute little boy. Baptism went off without a hitch. Lots of member from the branch there, it was great.

    Baptism #2: This was the baptism of Kaylene. She was the sister referral we received the first day we got into the area and she invited herself to be baptized and put herself on date. She has been coming to church for like 2 years but seriously investigating the church for a couple months. Her mom is inactive and her dad Jehovah's Witness. She attends the U and is so great. Her baptism was PACKED. Over 50 people were there and her RM friend baptized her. It was cute, her dad even bought her a brand new triple(even though she thought he was against the baptism). Another great baptism.

    Baptism #3: This was a baptism of the English elders in our district. His name was Andrew. He came to SL quite some time ago and got into hardcore partying...like super hardcore. He was living with his inactive girlfriend who was also partying hard with him. The elders received the girlfriends name to go visit and thats how they found him. After teaching him a few times Andrew decided to flush all his vices down the toilet...literally. He and his girlfriend got married and he was baptized in the evening on  Saturday with many friends and ward members in attendance. He was so emotional and so happy to be baptized to know that all his sins were washed away. In the middle of a talk he just got up and gave the speaker a hug. He also bore his testimony and it was one of the greatest and most powerful testimonies I've heard. It was so great.

     The reason I mentioned these 3 baptisms was because as I had a chance to be at all 3 baptisms in one single day it really made me look at the different circumstances of these people and how one single thing united them...the gospel of Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter where we are or where weve been, this gospel is for everyone. It was a motivator for me and its great that we have the chance to share it with others whether we be full time missionaries or not.

General Conference April 2012

Linnea is standing next to her companion and the new visa waiter is on the left.

Not sure how I feel about Linnea's earmuffs/hat.

Let's just start off by saying that conference was great. We were down there all  day both Saturday and Sunday...well until the sessions ended. Since we live super close to the temple we were able to drive ourselves down there. We only were able to get two tickets for all 5 sessions and we were giving them to this investigator William. So we were bummed we weren't going to be able to get inside but as we were walking to conference on Saturday morning we met a Samoan couple who asked us if we had tickets...we said we did for the Saturday pm session but we were giving them to an investigator and he pulled out some plaza tickets and gave them to us. So basically for the Saturday morning session we sat right in front of the pulpit..it was legit. Conference was so great! So many good talks and so many of our investigators were able to watch and said they loved it! Success. When we didn't have tickets we watched in the North Visitors Center or the Tabernacle. It's a different experience than watching at home...its really cool and you can pay so much more attention.

 Oh, I did see Brandon when we went to take some investigators to Temple Square. That was crazy. Glad you were able to see the picture. And I also saw Phyllis and all the Livingstons...minus Alan and Carter. It was crazy. We were in the food court of the new mall after the Saturday sessions with Hermana Lomigas cousin and I saw them walking across the way. It was great to see some familiar faces!