Week 13: Heavenly Father is mindful of us

Hello Everyone!

Happy Halloween from Hermanas McMinn and Ortiz!

So I have a new companion this week!  Her name is Hermana ortiz.  She is from El Paso Texas and has been out 14 months.  She already knew Spanish before the mission so it has been fun learning a ton more from her.  She is absolutely amazing.  She is exactly the kind of person that I want to be when I am getting to the end of my mission.  She just has so much faith and knows exactly what to say to people and follows the Spirit so well.  I am so excited to keep learning from her.

As we lose ourselves in the service of others we discover our own lives and our own happiness.

~President Dieter F. Uchtdorf

So this week we have really been working on finding more solid people to teach.  At this point we don't have many that are completely set on getting baptized like Ignacio and Georgina were.  We are working on really following the Spirit and having a lot of meaningful conversations with others.  This week we have also had a lot of rejection. A lot more than usual and more than Sister Ortiz was used to.  After about the 5th rejection one night. We decided to talk about the tender mercies that we had seen that day and after we talked about them I said that the next person we were going to talk to was going to say yes! and I was just hoping and having faith that it would happen.  Then a few seconds later we heard someone yell Joseph Smith? and we were so confused. At first I was a little nervous because I wasn't really ready for someone to fight with us about Joseph Smith again!  But we went over to talk to him and turns out that he was a former investigator who had been lost during transfers a few months ago!  We ended up teaching the Restoration right then on the street and he knew that it was true. He had this huge smile on his face when we told him about the first vision.  He wanted to read the Book of Mormon and he told us that he wanted to be baptized!  It was such a cool experience.  I realized that when we work hard even after a lot of rejection the Lord is still putting people in our path who are ready for the Gospel.  There are so many people here  in Los Angeles who are ready for the gospel and I am so excited to find them and help them to come follow Christ more. 

 It really helped to build my testimony especially of faith.  Heavenly Father is always mindful of us.  He knows exactly how we are feeling and what we need at that moment.  As long as we have the faith to ask and to know He will answer.  Another thing that I have learned this week is that faith leads to action.  We can't just say that we have faith in Jesus Christ.  We must show that faith as well.  This is done by trying to come closer to Him through scripture study, prayer, repentence, going to church, serving others, etc.  

It is so much fun here in Gardena California.  I love serving a mission and serving others.  Oh and another cool thing... we received a referral the other day and his name is Angel Moroni!! His grandma named him and she is member so I have the feeling there is a lot of potential there haha :)  We are meeting with him this week so I will let you know!

Have a great week :)

Love,

Hermana McMinn