Familia y amigos!
Buenos Tardes! Decidí que quiero escribir en español...chiste!
Well the end of the transfer has come upon us. I really thought that I wasn't going to have to move, but I received the call on Saturday night. Yep I'm being transferred. (sniff) It is going to be so hard to leave El Paso...wait false! I am being transferred, but I am still staying in El Paso. I am starting to think that I might spend my entire mission down here in one city and never actually serve in Albuquerque! So Robert you might have to make me another plaque and put The Texas Flag and Texas instead of New Mexico flag and New Mexico.
This is the worst part about missionary work. Making friendships and loving people more than I would have thought possible and then having to leave, before you feel like you have finished everything. We have seen a lot of miracles this week. We have 8 people with baptismal dates right now. It is such a blessing to see people learn about the gospel and begin to change their lives one step at a time. We are teaching so many amazing people right now and it has been very hard for me to say good-bye. All of these people are my family down here and I want to keep helping them. But I know that the Lord needs me in another area right now and I know that this transfer is inspired. It's just the waiting in between part that I really don't like.
So last week we went to the Zoo with all of the zone sisters and it was a lot of fun. It was the greenest thing I have seen down here! I have included a few pictures. One of the cutest things that happened was we were in the bathroom washing our hands and this little girl walked in. She looked at us and then said "Are you a mormon?" I said "Why yes I am. Are you a mormon?" She replied "Yep!" She was really cute. When we went to the sheep it smelled really bad and I turned to hermana Mitchell and said "We might smell a little bad after bike week, but at least we don't smell that bad!"
So this Saturday the Elders in our ward had a baptism. Her name is Eva and she is a miracle story. A brief version of the story: Eva has a brother who has been a member of the church for over 30 years and has spent the last 30 years trying to get to her learn about the church. Eva always said no. Then about 2 months ago she was in a bank and started talking to some people in line. She mentioned how she needed a TV and they said they had one if she would like it. That started a friendship. They are members in our ward and they asked Eva if she would like to learn about the Church and she said yes. The Elders started teaching her and she accepted everything. She didn't tell her brother that she was taking the missionary lessons until a week ago. She finally had to call because she wanted him to baptize her. When she told him, he didn't believe her at first, but the missionaries talked to him and assured him that she was indeed going to baptized. It was such a sweet experience to watch Eva being baptized by her brother, who no doubt has uttered many prayers in behalf of his sister. Then to take it even farther. We were at her house having lunch this week and she was telling us about her family and she mentioned the name Imelda as her daughter. I was like hmmm we are teaching an Imelda. All of the sudden her granddaughter walks out of the back room and I think my mouth probably dropped open because it is the daughter of one of our investigators! About 2 months ago we were going through our big area book pulling out some names of people we would like to contact. We came across this one who had an uncle who worked in the temple in Juarez, so we decided to try and visit them. They let us in and we taught them about the restoration and about the Book of Mormon and they were interested. This past month we've only had really short visits with them because they are super busy with work, but it was a miracle that two different sets of missionaries in the same ward started teaching two members of the same family at roughly the same time without even knowing it. I hope that Eva can now be a great example to her daughter and her family. The Lord's hand is in this work and there is no way to deny it.
So you may remember that I wrote about the amazing lesson we had the other day with princess's owner. Well she is absolutely amazing and I love her to death. I could spend hours talking about the gospel with her! She is just soaking it in and you can see her desire to learn. We were texting earlier in the week and her co-workers said "you're not going to the movie with us because of the mormons?!" Apparently she talks about us to them, so I sent her a text and then told her to tell her coworkers hi from the missionaries. She got a kick out of that! She has been talking about the church so much that her roommate and our friend too said "we are taking so much about them that I am dreaming about mormons!" We had a good chuckle about that one. The other funny thing that happened during one of our lessons is we started teaching her the word of wisdom and we named the things that we don't put into our bodies. She was talking to Hna Mitchell and then jokingly Hermana Mitchell started saying and we don't eat pork, beef, chicken, fish and asparagus. I looked up when she started listing those things and when she said asparagus there was a slight flash of worry - maybe horror - across her face! Quickly I jumped in and said she was just joking and we all laughed afterwards, but she was so cute when she said "I was doing ok at first because I am working towards being a vegetarian, but asparagus!" It was also funny because all of the sudden green tea didn't seem so hard to give up anymore. I guess we learned our lesson, not to joke about asparagus anymore! It has been such a blessing and privilege to teach her. She came to the baptism on Saturday and has set her own baptismal date for August! She told us this story of how she heard something on a youtube video that confused her and she really wanted to ask us about it, but it was like 1 in the morning. So she went to mormon.org and she sent an email to the ask a mormon page. She said they responded in 2 hours and answered her question perfectly. She wanted to go back to the youtube video and say you're wrong, see this is what the scripture says... So I guess we now know that if you ever have a question apparently people will even answer in the middle of the night!
Words can't describe what a miracle this has been for me. I have felt the spirit so strongly and I know without a doubt that El Paso Texas is where I am meant to be right now. I will forever be grateful and blessed for serving a mission. I look forward to telling you next week where I'll be!
Con Amor,
Hermana Klaus
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