Surprises

Hola familia,

We had a surprise baptism this past week! We dropped our investigator, A, a few weeks ago because he was going in circles with his questions and just kept having more questions and ultimately had to resolve them on his own because we had taught everything and emphasized reading and praying about the Book of Mormon just about every time we met with him. On Wednesday, he texted us and said he was ready for the interview, so we rushed over to the church building, had the interview, and started planning a Saturday baptism. It was great!! My friend A from Peru is now a member of the Church. :)

Sister Mason (the other companionship in Manteca) is training a sister from Peru, Hermana Estrada! Have I told you we have members from all over Central and South America? Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Domincan Republic, Argentina, Mexico... I love it. Hermana Estrada is learning English so it's been quite the reversal--we're used to people coming here knowing just a little Spanish.

I forgot to mention last week that President Martinez took our zone out to lunch because we surpassed the number of monthly baptisms in the Manteca Zone in January. The zone leaders texted everyone asking for lunch ideas and all I could think about was Red Robin because we passed it once and it's been so long since I've been there. Well, obviously I was just throwing my idea out there and knew it probably wouldn't be chosen over Chipotle or a tacqueria or something, but since we had the most baptisms (6 out of the 13), my idea was chosen. Oh no! So we went to Red Robin and it was so expensive but ohh so good--I felt bad! Oops.

We have a couple of progressing investigators right now but are having luck with only one coming to church! The one who is coming to church was introduced to the church through a friend at work who was just baptized last year--those are the best missionaries. Our investigator is E and she is so sincere and wants to know that these things are true--I love it when we assign a passage in the Book of Mormon and they read what we've left and beyond. Hopefully we'll see her baptized in March! That's about it on the investigator updates, though.

My recent convert R blessed the sacrament on Sunday and gave the talk on the Holy Ghost in the baptism on Saturday. That was really exciting!

I love you all,

kates

I hit my nine months on Saturday! My nine-month birthday present was a baptism--not bad. :)