Transfers

Famshmamaram! First I have to tell you where I am, when the bike sisters in our zone need/want rides places they call the Whetten/Mulliner express. So today we are emailing with them at the family history center in their church building. This cute old english speaking lady works here and she always brings little home made goodies and little chocolate milks for the missionaries who come to email here. Cute huh? 

A lot of changes are happening in the mission this transfer! ...Except me and Hermana Whetten, we are going to party here in Reseda/Africa together for another 6 weeks! I guess the inflow of new younger missionaries has not hit our mission yet because we have no hermanas coming in.

This week was just a week of, I don't even know, weird and funny and crazy. I think we might have set a record for losing the most progressing investigators in the random est ways in the fewest amount of days. One went to Jail, one completely avoided us, one is an old lady and is literally going crazy, every person that had a baptismal date was gone one by one until we now have no one with a baptismal date! Yes, we had a rough start to the week. But it was bearable because we also had the funniest things happen! 

We had a family home evening with a few families in the ward, investigators and recent converts. An hermana brought a dessert called 3 reyes magos, i think that is what it is called. It is something they do in Mexico to celebrate the 3 wisemen. It is a cake, bread thing that has 3 plastic dolls hidden in it somewhere and everyone gets to cut a piece wherever they want and whoever gets the dolls has to cook something for the next party. The first doll the person has to make tamales for everyone, the second has to bring this mexican hot chocolate stuff and the third person brings something else! Guess who got the first doll?! I thought they would let me off the hook and an hermana would make them or something, but NO, they were dead serious. They were all laughing so hard and saying the misionera has to make tamales! I just stood up there in front of everyone looking around at them like seriously you guys want me to make tamales for you. And they all just kept laughing and took pictures. The only person who offered to help me was our brand new investigator we had found that day and invited him to the activity, a 50 year old man, and I took him up on it! So project old man, white girl tamale extravaganza will commence shortly.

I also got proposed to this week! We were contacting people in the street, and this guy we were talking to kept telling us how pretty we were, and when I gave him a pamphlet and told him he had to read it for us to come back he asked me to marry him! uhhh...awkward moment. Then he made us wait in the street while he ran back to his apartment to get us a box of chocolates before we left. When we called and invited him to church he said he'd rather take us out to dinner....

Yesterday at church was one of the best because of Antonio. He wore a white shirt and tie (before he did not wear that), and brought a brief case, we asked him what he had in there and he said all of his church books. A.K.A. His Book of Mormon and all the pamphlets from the lessons. He was confirmed in sacrament meeting and interviewed by the bishop to get a calling! It was so cute to see how happy he was and see him walking around proud with his briefcase! When he talks,sometimes this is seriously what I hear, "Niiiurhiiiiummmoh ya estaiiiujaeeeuium ya bliiiiuulshk" really fast. And by the looks he gives me after I try to talk to him I think that is what he hears when I talk too, but somehow we have a friendship!

For new years eve we had dinner with this family from Peru, a girl for our YSA ward and her parents. They asked how I like the food and I said I like it but it doesn't seem like the spanish culture eats that much chocolate. For the next ten minutes this mom bore her testimony about chocolate! How much she loves it and how she used to not have that much sympathy for people that had addictions to things like alcohol or drugs, until one day. She realized whenever she got chocolate she would hide it so she wouldn't have to share it with her kids, and she thought to herself, that is a type of addiction! And how she has to not open chocolate because if she opens it she has to eat it ALL, but if she just doesn't open it then she can be ok. We had a bonding moment over chocolate and then she sent me home with a ton of the chocolate she had gotten for Christmas! 

Something I learned this week that just hit home to me with all the experiences of this week was about charity. There are so many things we don't take with us when we die. And life on Earth is so short. But charity is one of those things we will have in the next life. Our love for the people in our lives, and our ability to love other people is something that we take with us. We can pray to have more charity and we just need to enjoy and actually be with the people around us. I am so grateful for all the people I am meeting here and for the experiences I am having with them. I am also so grateful for all of you and your support! I love you all so much!!! 

Love love lovey love,

Hermana Mulliner

Adios 2012!

Hello Utah! 

First of all two thousand twelve, two thousand shmelve! This year has flown by! Can you believe December is already over? I got my mission call in the mail a year ago!  Second,Christmas was SO GREAT!!!! Talking to you gave me a big boost! I think we should do that every Tuesday! I really appreciate all your support you guys are the best! Honestly. The rest of Christmas was just a regular day. We weren't allowed to knock doors but we just visited some recent converts and families in the ward. We actually didn't visit as many people as we had planned because people kept wanting to feed us and my stomach was not keeping any food! All week it was a struggle, I don't know if I ate something bad or had a virus or something but I couldn't eat. But it provided some entertainment, this one really cute Mexican Hermana likes to feed all of us missionaries after our district meetings on Friday  her food is really good but really authentic and she expects us to eat TONS! The elders told us she would be really offended if we didn't come so they said they'd help out. Every time the hermana turned around one of the elders would slip something off my plate. It was pretty funny because there was trails of food all over the table! I would just have to take a bite of rice when she looked my direction. I am all good now, finally, because I have been dying to eat some of that chocolate I got for Christmas! 

Alright, I wish I could send the spirit of a baptism through email! Antonio's baptism was amazing. It was mostly amazing to me because we had been reviewing everything for his baptism and we realized that from the first lesson we had with him to his baptism was exactly a month! He was so prepared to hear the gospel. It was a special baptism because the hermano that he chose to baptize him is only a convert of 2 years and this was his first time baptizing someone. Both talks at the baptism were people who were also converted recently, and they didn't give a talk they just went up and bore testimony to him about how the gospel has changed their life. It was really amazing to be surrounded by these people who have changed their life to be baptized and then reach out and be there to support Antonio at his baptism! I can't express how cool it is to be a part of missionary work. I hope while everyone is making new years goals you set a goal about what you can do to be a part of missionary work. Whether that is helping convert yourself more or reaching out to someone else, but seriously you will see miracles when you do! 

One of my favorite miracles this week happened yesterday at church. Hermana Whetten had to give a talk in our reseda ward and I had to give a talk in the young single adult ward, they meet in the same building at the same time so we went on splits with the members. Every time I sat down to write the my talk it just wouldn't come. I had an idea of what I wanted to say and things I wanted to use, but I wanted to have it written out because I was really nervous about the spanish. But for some reason I felt like I shouldn't write it all out, it didn't feel right every time I tried. So, I went up to the pulpit with a Liahona, my Libro de Mormon and a paper with 5 bullet points on it....AH! I get nervous to give talks in english, this was in spanish and I didn't know exactly what I was going to say! It was the coolest thing! Well first of all, this boy in the ward had his parents in town from Mexico, they were quite a bit older, and they sat front and center and they were soo cute. They nodded their head and smiled at me the whole time. So I recommend that if you are nervous to give a talk have a cute old Mexican couple be front row. I went up there and started by bearing my testimony about missionary work because I was nervous and couldn't think of anything else. After that somehow I was able to talk for 15 minutes. Stories came to mind, a part of a talk I had read came to mind, and I was able to express them in Spanish  Which I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but usually that is really hard for me! The Holy Ghost really can help us know the things we should say in the moment we need them. I also learned that I only need to be willing to testify of things that I know, then the spirit will back me up and be there with the people I am speaking with. I don't know why I couldn't write my talk out but I am really grateful for that experience because my faith grew so much. 

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Hermana Mulliner

Feliz Navidad!

I honestly cannot believe it is Christmas! Jethro who is 5 and Elijah who is 7 gave Hna Whetten and I some christmas gifts yesterday when we were at their house for dinner. First of all we each got 7 coins, I got quarters and Hna Whetten got dimes and nickles...but we both got 7 of them.Then she got an apple and a broken jewelry box, I got some catadryl creme and a big eraser that I am supposed to give back to them next week when we come. Haha I don't know how they knew what we wanted!

 

This week was random and crazy! The temple...amazing. Afterwards, the hermana that drove us up there told us she was going to give us a tour of LA and Beverly Hills haha I don't think that was approved but it was an experience...6 white missionaries packed into a suburban with a Latina Hermana driving us around the ritzy hoods.

 

Basically the best thing that is going on in Reseda is Antonio Gutierrez! He is that investigator I told you about that we found my first week here...he is getting baptized next week! (He is the one that talks really fast and slurs so we don't exactly understand him half the time where we just point to the pamphlets haha.) It has been the funniest best experience teaching him. He is from Peru and he is just a cool guy. He was so prepared. He has kept EVERY SINGLE commitment we have given him. He reads the book of mormon every day, has come to chruch every week since we met him, and he even randomly had a tithing slip in his house before we taught him tithing because he saw them at church and wants to pay tithing. Latinos are not known for being on time, but he will text us 5 minutes before our appointment is supposed to start and ask where we are. It has been a miracle to see his progression. He didn't believe the Book of Mormon was true when we first met him, he asked us for evidence, he wanted to see the gold plates and wanted proof. He would tell us that we haven't convinced him yet. But it was so cool, at the beginning of every lesson we would ask him where he was in the book and if he has been praying about it etc. And one day we asked him where he was and he just said are you going to ask me if I believe it? Becuase I do. It was such a testimony builder to me becuase it was so simple.  He came to feel the Book of Mormon is true through reading a little bit every day and praying about it. That probably sounds like a really generic missionary thing, but it was so faith building to see it happen to someone! The spirit really can change people. He felt it was true and no longer needed physical evidence....seriously missionary work is the coolest.

 

A little miracle that happened this week was our exchanges. We were planned to go on exchanges and I was supposed to stay in our area and Hna Whetten was going to leave. But we got a call the day before saying they felt like they should switch it...so I got to go spend a day in North Hollywood wit Hna Marquez! That was a Christmas gift to me because they set up a lesson with Ban!

 

The weirdest thing I ate this week was a grasshopper :) 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!! 

Love Hermana Mulliner