Week 8: This is why I am serving a mission....

We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.

Elder Richard G. Scott

Fruit shack and amazing hair! 

Hola everyone!!

So this week was an awesome week.. but when is it not an awesome week! I am a missionary! :)  But we had a pretty successful week and talked to tons of people and I love California so much!

So our mission has a goal to have 20 meaningful conversations with people everyday and some days it is a huge challenge but other days it is so much fun just to talk to different people and hear all of their stories.  We have met someone from almost all of the countries of South America.  It is super cool.  But it is also cool that we are talking to so many people because we have gotten a lot of potential investigators and also I can practice my Spanish a little bit.  Before a mission I would never go up and talk to someone random and especially about the gospel but it is cool to see myself changing already and I love talking to people about Christ and about everything that He has done for us!

My week basically just consists of walking around, getting our 20 conversations and then teaching lessons everyday.  The weather here is so nice.  Some days it is really hot and it is so humid here but never unbearably hot here.  I have the best mission!   But on Saturday we had the awesome oppurtunity to go the Los Angeles temple visitors center with some of our investigators, Ignacio and Georgina with their 3 kids.  It was such a cool experience and this family is so ready to be baptized.  They read their scriptures together, say prayers and can already see the blessings of the gospel in their lives.  At the Visitors Center we talked all about the Plan of Salvation and about eternal marriage and when we talked about how families can be together forever Ignacio stopped us and said... that is exactly what I want!! He is so awesome and we have a baptism date for them on October 18 but we will see because they are not married and Ignacio doesnt have the right paper work to be married.  It is taking a lot of faith and realizing that it is all on the Lord's timing.

This Sunday we had a baptism!! Rosendo got baptized and it was the coolest experience here on a mission even though I didnt teach him any of the lessons.  I had one of those moments where I thought, "This is why I am on a mission."  He is such an awesome example for me because he has such strong faith in his Savior Jesus Christ. He knows that no matter what he is going through or how he feels he can turn to Christ and receive the help that he needs.  And I know that this is true and I have had to do that a lot on my mission so far and I know there will be alot more of that to come especially with Spanish because I barely understand what people are saying to me alot of the time but what I can say is that I know that Christ lives and that no matter what we can turn to Him and recieve the help that we need! I love my Savior very much :)

I love you all so very much and hope you have a great week! Thank you for all the prayers!

Love,

Hermana McMinn

Just a little more from a letter to mom:

I think that I have adjusted to the life of a missionary pretty well.  Still weird but I love it.  It is actually super nice not having music all the time, or a phone to distract you and time to just read your scriptures.  It was weird today because we went to the mall and it was a completely different atmosphere than what I am used to. 

Soo... I live in Torrence but our area is mainly Gardena.  Our apartment has ants, termites, and possibly a mouse but it is fine! haha :)  We are usually at our house doing studying until about 1 and then after that we leave and go to lessons.  We never really just knock on doors because there are so many people out and we have so many people to talk to.  We are kind of in a slump with progressing investigators which is kind of a bummer but we are working on it and having patience. 

God didn't design us to be sad. He created us to have joy!

President Deiter Uchtdorf

I love that quote!  I think that is a really hard thing to do.. always being happy and I have realized here on the mission that when we arent happy and when we are negative it drives the spirit away and we are told if we dont have the spirit we shall not teach so I have focused more on being positive and my mission president is really big on having faith filled thoughts and I love that because he has changed little sayings like, "we dropped an investigator" to "we turned them over to the Lord for a little bit."  It helps to stay positive in those rough moments.