SO MANY CHRISTMAS MIRACLES!!! : (Week 58)

Feliz Navidad y prospero ano!! :)

I hope you all had a great Christmas!  I sure did!  I loved talking to my family!  They are all doing great, and it was fun getting caught up with their life. I am grateful though that they didn't talk too much about me going home.  I look forward to it, but I don't want to go YET. haha :)  I have a lot of work still to do! :)  I found out that one of my other classmates is getting engaged and one of them is pregnant! It is exciting but at the same time it is weird because they are so young!  But I am so happy for them! :)  I also got a new dog! haha She is really cute.  Her name is Snowball!

So this past week has been full of miracles!  I don't know where to begin!!!! I guess I will just take it day by day! :)

MONDAY: As a zone on Monday, we went down to Balboa Island and went caroling!  It was really fun!  It was barely sprinkling and there were A LOT of people!  I was asked to conduct the music, and I really don't know how to do it, but I had barely learned how a few weeks before, so that was a blessing.  I messed up a few times, but no one was really paying attention anyways!  I finally got the hang of it pretty quick! :)  A lot of people would stop to listen and a lot of them even took pictures or recorded us singing from their phones!  Some people even cried because they felt the Spirit!  It was a lot of fun!  We decided that we would do it again, but on Christmas Eve! :)

TUESDAY: There is a RC/LA member in our ward who is very sick and has a hard time coming to church.  We went by to visit her for a little bit, and helped her out by rearranging her room.  She is a very beautiful artist, and she paints on stones.  Her work is AMAZING! Anyways, we had the Westpark Elders come and help us move some stuff.  We are planning on going over again and helpingher because she still has A LOT of stuff.  We had a window later that day and it was really fun because it was raining! :)  We talked to a lot of people and we handed out 7 Book of Mormons.  We talked to two guys who seemed interested in learning more. :)  Their names are Birzhan (Russian?) and Akira (Japanese).  We gave their info to Elder Summers since he speaks Japanese. :)  Hope that goes well! :)

WEDNESDAY: We had District meeting and we talked a lot about contacting.  I love trainings on contacting, because it something we can always improve on! :)  After District meeting Hna. Garcia and I went on a little mini exchange to go teach an investigator that the College Park elders have been *trying* to teach.  (They can't speak Spanish, but bless their hearts for their efforts! :)) She is from Mexico.  Her name is Ruby.  She has been investigatoing for a long while.  Elder Weiler originally started teaching her in Spanish, then Elder Fuell, and now us!  We called the Anaheim Spanish elders to see why we are the ones teaching them, and not them, because technically we shouldn't be the ones teaching them!  But they informed us that she doesn't want to be in a Spanish ward, she wants to be in an English ward for her kids.  So we are just going to continue helping the elders with the lessons.  :)  it was a good lesson, but she had a hard time understanding a lot of what we shared.  We are going to have to teach point by point with her for her to understand more.  After teaching Ruby, Hna. Garcia and I went to another investigator lesson and we met Gamal.  He is Persian.  He is really nice, and his English is really good!  He is being prepared to be baptized by the end of January.  We taught him the 10 commandments and he understood it really well!  He shared with us his conversion story to Christianity, and told us he read the Bible 5 times in 3 months!  WHATTTT?!  That is true dedication my friend! :)  Later that night we had our first lesson with our new investigators Guiti and Helena! :)  We stopped by and they were so kind to us!  They had a bunch of Persian sweets and pastries for us too. We talked a little bit and got to know them a little bit better.  We taught them the first point in Preach My Gospel, (God Our Loving Heavenly Father) and had a great discussion.  Helena asks A LOT of questions.  She was asking questions about the Atonement, the Plan, Joseph Smith, everything.  We promised her that we would answer her questions very soon, but we would have to take it step by step.  Guiti's other daughter was there too, and she seemed really interested.  She seemed really open to the things we taught.  Guiti asked us how they could become members and Sister Jensen and I looked at each other and smiled.  sister Jensen explained what baptism is and extended the invitation for them to get baptized if they found that what we taught was true!...
THEY SAID YES!!!!  :D
WOOHOO! :D
We talked a little bit more and had a great night!  They are so solid!  They are AMAZING! :)

THURSDAY: CHRISTMAS EVE!!!! :) Christmas Eve was so much fun! :)  We went caroling again as a zone and we did it for a few hours!  A lot of people were out and about and so many people asked us to sing for them!  There was this one lady named Carol who was sitting on a bench with her dog all alone and we stopped and asked her if she wanted us to sing to her.  She requested Silent Night and we sang it to her and it was as if the Heavens opened up and the Angels were singing!  She began to cry!  It was awesome! :)  There was this one guy who was standing next to me as I was conducting and his family was requesting so many great songs!  After we sang them, he shook my hand and placed $40 in my hand!  I tried to give it back, but he refused!  I was so surprised!!! I am going to donate it as a fast offering since we cannot pay tithing.  But it was really awesome! :)  Later that night we spent it with the Armstrongs! We love the Armstrongs! :)  Brother Armstrong is our WML, and we just adore their family!  We had a lot of fun and we had such great food!  I was SO full!  Then the whole family opened presents and it was really fun to see all the kids get all excited about that. :)  sister Armstrong gave us a beautiful gift!  Both Sister Jensen and I got a necklace with a little charm that is in the shape of California.  It is so beautiful!  We absolutely love them! :)  After everyone opened their gifts, I asked if I could share a family tradition that we do for Christmas Eve with their family, and they were kind enough to let me do it.  In the Duncan family, my grandpa always reads the book, "The Littlest Angel"  which is one of my FAVORITE stories.  I always cry when I read it because it is just SO good.  Brother Blume (Sister Armstrong's brother) read the story and everyone sat down and listened.  I couldn't help but cry again because it brought back wonderful memories of being with my family for the holidays.  Plus, it is just such a great book! :)  It was a great Christmas Eve, and we had a lot of fun! :)

FRIDAY: CHRISTMASSSS!!!!!! :D :)  We went over the Armstrong's again for breakfast and to Skype our families.  We had French toast!  I LOVE FRENCH TOAST! ;D Skyping with my family was so much funa nd I really enjoyed it.  I love them so much! :)  After Skyping and taking care of all of that fun stuff, we went back home and got ready for the rest of the day and then headed off to our dinner.  We had dinner with the Giolas family and it was really good. :) Then we went to the Stake Center for a fun little Zone activity. :)

SATURDAY: My mom's birthday!  Happy birthday mom! :)  Yay!  We had a window, and it was quite successful, literally as we were about to leave we contacted a guy at a bus stop and started talking to him.  He seems interested!  We gave him our info and we hope to start teaching him soon!:) 

SUNDAY: THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!! Guiti and Helena came to church again and it was amazing like last time!  She just gobbled it up!  After church, Guiti told me that we remind her of her oldest daughter, and she asked if she could be like our mom!  AWWWWWWW!!! MI CORAZON! X'D  Later that night we stopped by their house to "drop off a Christmas present"  *Wink wink* We ended up teaching them the Restoration.  It was an AMAZING lesson.  I wish I could tell you all that happened, but I don't have a lot of time left! :(  But anyways, long story short, we invited them to be baptized on January 31, and they accepted! :D YAYYYYY!  They are getting baptized! :)  We are so so so happy, and they are so so so  excited! :)

Yay miracles!  I love this work! :)

Hope you all have a very safe week and happy new year! :)

Con mucho amor,
Hna. Rachel Duncan

MITT ROMNEY YOU ARE MY HERO!!!!! :D (Week 55)

This week has been so awesome! :D

So many great things to talk about, but so little time!!!

So... We picked up a new investigator!  He has been investigating the church since 2009.  His name is Bob.  He first found the church through a member who got him to take the lessons.  He is nice and he let us come over last Friday and we shared with him the new Christmas video and the one from last year.  He really liked both of them and he liked the message.  Brother Armstrong, our new Ward Missionary Leader came with us and he shared some great insights with Bob.  The Spirit was there, but I knew that it could have been better if Bob was a liiiiiiiittle more open to it.  We did a good job teaching him though!  It was great!  We talked a little bit about faith and we invited him to act upon his faith by going to church.  He said he would go but he didn't come due to some miscommunication on our part, so we take the blame on that one, but next week he will come! :) 

About a week ago we received a HQ referral and we have been trying to contact the person EVERY DAY up until yesterday.  We had no luck!  Friday while we were planning we were like, "Okay.  This is the LAST time we are going to try contacting him."  Sure enough we called him and he answered!  We asked him if he was interested in learning more and he said yes!  We asked him when we could stop by and he asked up to come the next day!  We weren't able to, but we set an appointment for Sunday. (Yesterday)  Brother Armstrong joined us again for this lesson.  The person we were referred to teach was Sam.  he is Persian and he is from Iran.  He welcomed us right in and he was really nice!  We asked him why he wanted to learm more and he told us he works with someone who is Mormon and recommended that he check out Mormon.org.  We asked him what brought him up to this point and what interested him and this was his reply:

"I WILL GO!  I WILL DOOOOOOO THE THINGS THE LORD COMMANDS!" (Ha, I'm just kidding, Just the way I phrased that reminded me of the song. :))

Anyways!

This is what he said:

"I am very interested in knowing what makes Mitt Romney HIM.  He is just so successful and I want to be just like him.  He is different from everyone..."
Okay! :D

Can we all just take a moment of silence for Mitt Romney?  For being an example enough to possibly convert someone?

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Thank you.

We continued asking him questions and we started teaching him the Restoration.  The Spirit was SO strong.  It had been the first time I taught the Restoration since I came into English work.  (Don't worry, we will change that!)  We taught so powerfully as a companionship that I was just so amazed!  Brother Armstrong was such great help too! :)  We invited him in the end to pray to know if what we taught was true.  he didn't know how to pray (like us)  and so we taught him how to pray.  he prayed and immediately the Spirit filled the room!  It was so awesome! :)  We asked him how he felt and he said he has a very positive experience and he couldn't wait to learn more once he got to Seattle...
"Wait what?  Seattle?  Excuse me?"
"I'm moving in two weeks to go to Seattle for my new job."
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

COOL! :D

he told us that he really found the church to be really interesting and he couldn't wait to continue his investigation in Seattle.  we are really excited for him and for the missionaries in Seattle!  They will be blessed immensely for their efforts! :)  But we are really grateful that we got to plant that seed for him!  It was an awesome experience! :)

As you already know, I accidently deleted my email last week, so I never got to finish telling you about all the stuff we did.  But I will just briefly do that now! :)  Last Sunday the new Christmas video came out !  We absolutely love the new video: #ASaviorIsBorn

 (CHECK IT OUT!!!! https://www.mormon.org/christmas)We wanted to utilize this video as much as possible in our finding efforts.  We shared the video during third hour and invited the members to come out with us to share it with others.  We didn't really have anyone volunteer to help us, but we did get wonderful support from our new WML.  He came out with us on Thursday evening and tracted with us to test this new method of finding people.  What we did was this:
The typical solution to contacting someone is obviously giving them a card.  That is also known as 'card-tacting'.  It is not really affective at all.  yes, we give them a card, but it really isn't helping us to know them and vice versa.  Plus, majority of the time they only take the card to be nice and then they throw it away.  So!  This is where our awesome idea comes in! :)  Rather than asking them to give them a card, we asked them if they wanted to watch a new trending video!  Brother Armstrong was kind enough to let us use his iPad and we went tracting!  Almost every other door someone was home!  We simply introduced ourselves and we asked them if we could show them the video.  Almost everyone said yes! We showed them the 2 minute video and we just stood there and let the Spirit take over. Then we asked them how they felt.  In result, everyone LOVED the video.  They were engaged, and they were really receptive.  Because of this awesome experience we had, we now have 2 individuals and 2 potential families to teach. :)  I love doing missionary work the right way! :)

This week has been wonderful, and Sister Jensen and I are ON. FIRE. :)

I love this ward and I love serving here.  I feel like I am home away from home!  I just want to work, work, work all day long!  :) 

I hope you all have a great week everyone, and know that I love you all oh so very much! :)

Con todo mi amor,
Hna. Rachel Duncan