Monday, April 1, 2013

Week 23 - April 1!

Hola Familia,

Glad to hear everyone is doing so well.  So happy that Kristi is having another boy!  Logan will like having a little playmate to run around in the dirt and wrestle.  I am doing well and we have had a busy week.  This week we have found 8 new investigators.  We normally average one or two a week, but we've been talking to everyone and we have all these great people we are starting to teach now.  I love that I can walk up to anyone and just start talking to them and then tie something that they say right into the gospel.  When people talk about El Paso they always first say how "feo" it is, but then they always follow up with how nice the people are here.  It's true the people are really nice here, so that makes going out and talking to people a lot easier.  We still have a lot of work to do, but we are excited for this coming month.  We are also really excited for this coming general conference.  What a blessing it will be to listen to a living prophet!  I hope everyone takes the time to make conference a priority.

One really neat experience this week occurred as we were teaching one of our new investigators about the restoration.  When we got to the first vision, I recited Joseph Smith's experience in his own words.  Afterwards we asked how she felt and she said she had goose bumps and then she started to cry.  We testified that what she was feeling was the spirit.   We read in the scriptures about the fruits of the spirit and there is such a sweet feeling of peace when the first vision is shared.  It was a blessing to be able to be in a lesson when the spirit was being the teacher, not us.  Being a missionary is the greatest!

Oh and Happy Easter!!  I know that people know me too well when I get multiple yummy packages this week filled with all of my favorite things!  I'm going to be set for candy for a while!  Luckily most chocolate doesn't have gluten, so Hermana Biancardi and I have been munching on cadbury eggs while we drive.  I think I might need to pray that the Lord sends me to a bike area next with all the yummy food we eat as missionaries.  There are several Spanish sister bike areas now, so it could be in a my future.  I think I might die if I am in a bike area in El Paso in the summer...  Sometimes it's hard getting out of the nice air conditioned car now and it's only in the 80's!  At least my fellow Northwesterner understands me, so we both brave the heat together.  Speaking of heat our ward had a picnic so we were outside all morning Saturday and we ended up getting sunburned.  All the ward members kept pointing out our red faces and letting us know we got burned!

On Easter Sunday we went to church and it was nice, but then afterwards we had no set appointments and there was nobody home.  Everyone was at Easter Sunday Mass.  We had dinner with a family in the ward - they have been really wonderful about not feeding us wheat.  We had this really yummy sweet salsa chicken for dinner last night.  Then we had sweetened apples and condensed milk for dessert.  It was really yummy and we were very hungry!

But the true meaning of Easter is wonderful.  It has been an extra blessing being able to talk to people about the Savior and bear my testimony that he lives.  That's why we celebrate Easter.  We celebrate his resurrection and that through him we can all have the chance to be resurrected and live with our Father in Heaven again.  We had a special training on Friday where President Miller came and he showed us two videos.  The first video was about the El Paso high school basketball teams and the act of service of one of the players.  Have you seen it?  If not it is Coronado and Franklin high schools, which are both in my area.  It's a really nice video about sportsmanship.  The second video he showed was on the Savior's atonement.  It was a talk Elder Holland gave to mission Presidents.  In it he says "Why do they think missionary work would be easy when salvation never was easy or cheap"  It talked about when things are hard to always remember who we are standing shoulder to shoulder with.  We need to stand tall and remember that we are standing with the Savior because this is his work.  He has called each missionary through a living prophet to share his restored gospel.  This Easter I am so grateful for this knowledge.  I know that my redeemer lives!

Con Amor,
Hermana Klaus

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