Letter 3 from Sister Sarah

Hey Family Type Peoples!

I’m now battered and bruised…well just my arms and parts of my hands… it was a zone p-day today so it was the first time I’d played volleyball since the MTC and before that I’d only played it really in high school. It was fun. I laughed a lot because of the elders reactions to things and that they came up with mascots for each of the teams. The first was the wombats. Then my team decided they would be the unicorns and then “my little Pony.” We kicked some wombat behinds J It was hilarious. I was definitely not the reason we won, but I did nit the ball several times. Hence the battered and bruised.

Anyways the most exciting thing is we have my first convert baptism coming up! We taught him for the first time after he got married (The Friday I arrived). On Thursday the 3rd , then Wednesday the 9th we asked how his reading and praying has been going. He grinned and said ‘good’ (now some background, he is VERY shy and had just come from Fiji to get married.) Sister Halladay and I both had the feeling he got an answer to his prayer, but we didn’t want to ask if he wanted to be baptized at that moment. We both wanted to be sure he understood and our bishop asked us not to pressure him into baptism. Late in the lesson Sister Halladay felt impressed to invite him. He had kept bringing up baptism himself, like he said the reading we had given him was all about baptism which there is some mention of baptism, but it’s not all about it. He’s excited. That’s second lesson he talked a whole lot more and opened up quite a bit for him. He accepted the invitation and is getting baptized on Friday, the 18th. Pretty fast, but he has a huge support from his new wife and her family, they ‘re all members. His name is Rajendra (pronounced RahJen) Sammi and his wife is Keshni Gaundar Sammi.

Something else that’s exciting is that we started teaching a family today. We found them in our ‘former investigator’ area and when to see them on Saturday before the ward Christmas Dinner. We invited them to the dinner, but they weren’t able to come because their car broke down, but we met with them this morning at 10 and both Misty (wife) and Robert (husband) were soaking it in when they were being side tracked by their 4-year-old son Dante. They’re both very good to each other and to their son. They treat each other and their son with respect and have come a long way already. They used to use a lot of things, but then Dante came around they stopped. They were both listening intently and liking what they heard. We explained that we’re family oriented as a church and they loved that. We hope the best for them and are excited to see them progressing even farther then they have already.

Wendy Tinker is a recent convert who got baptized just before I arrived. They day of her confirmation she was called as a ward missionary. She went out of town and came back and stared getting right to work. She ahs several friends that she’s invited to 2 different dinners that Sister Halladay and I were also invited to. Two of those friends – a mother and a daughter- now want to learn more for themselves, so both we and sister Tinker are excited.

In this (and probably other) missions we have what we call standards of excellence, which is the mission presidents’ vision of what each companionship of missionaries could feasibly could find, teach etc for each week. Well last night (Sunday Dec 13) we needed to find one new person to teach (investigator) and one person to ‘put on date’ for baptism, so they had a goal to work towards. Well, we’d already done everything we had planned, there was no one outside that we could talk to and were at a loss. We pulled off to the side of the road and prayed. We waited a minute, listening and praying in our hearts (sis Halladay offered the verbal prayer and paused before saying “amen’ and during the pause I gave my own silent prayer that sister Hoalladay would be directed to where we needed to got) then looked at each other. Sister Halladay asked me what I thought, I told her that I felt we needed to go back the way we’d come (we had pulled into a side street) and she feel impressed that we should go to some apartments just down the road. So we turned around and got off the side street and back on the road we had been before. We got to the apartments and started knocking on doors. Most of the people were polite, but not interested. Some accused us of soliciting, I girl – Cassie – was interested, but she was going off to school soon.

We almost skipped the middle section, but I pointed it out to sister Halladay and we knocked on those doors making so we started walking to out car just in time to meet Antonio.

Just before we exited the apartment parking , Sis. Hallsaday said “I guess it was for Cassie’ then a man came around the corner and walking his huge dog (Doberman I think). Sister Halladay and I stopped to talk to him. He mentioned he was having a hard time and Sister Halladay said something to the effect of :if you give Jesus the time first, life will get easier.” He perked up and she said, basically “we’re holding a baptismal service on Dec 31st, will you prepare yourself to be baptized on that day?” he said he would, we got his name, number and address and will be teaching him on Wednesday J God loves giving us miracles at the last second.

Anyway, LOVE you all! Be good! And let Santa think you deserve coal this year

<3 Sis. Sarah Durtschi