There's so much I want to share but so little time! The work is AWESOME! Let me just preface by saying that we found 12 new investigators this week!!!! We told the Lord that we would talk to every single person we met and invite more people to baptism, thus showing our faith in action- and in return we asked Him to bless us with success. He has blessed us so much, although it's often not been in the ways we expected or asked. Everything happens in the Lord's time and all we can do is do everything we can to not just ask, but act- and then trust in Him to do His part, even if it's not in the time frame or way we want.
We are teaching a family and it was so awesome to teach them about the Restoration of the Lord's church on the Earth! We also found another family just last night and I'm so excited to teach them more. My Spanish gets better and better each day and I am able to understand a lot more. We take turns in the lessons so I do get to teach and testify a lot and I love it!
So many funny things happen when there's a language barrier. One example is we had one of our investigator's share a dream she had with us. Her husband died a few months ago in a car accident (she's like 27) and she had shared dreams about him before with us so I assumed that this is what she was saying. However, she shared a dream about a guy friend confessing his love for her and asked us what we thought it meant. I told her it was a blessing from Heavenly Father because I thought she was sharing a dream about her husband. Luckily, my companion is getting pretty good at smoothing over my mistakes. Oh the joys of learning Spanish...
Another funny story, I had my hand kissed by a drunk man while we were STOing, who I didn't even know was drunk since I didn't know the word for beer. I just thought he was an animated person. We meet some pretty interesting characters, but don't worry mom we are VERY safe and are especially cautious. We don't really walk on the streets after dark.
Here's another story for you- we found this woman in Ojai- another little city North of Ventura (our area is pretty big for only two spanish missionaries). We had knocked on the door looking for a man named Jesus who we had an old teaching record for. So at the beginning of the lesson my companion kept asking if Jesus was there and if she could invite him to come in too. She kept responding "Claro, Si Si" (Of course, yes yes) but looked at us progressively weirder and weirder each time she said it again. Finally my companion asked her if her husband's name was Jesus and she said "No!" The whole time she thought we were talking about inviting Jesucristo and was Jesucristo there, etc. etc. We had a good laugh with her about that one. We're gonna see her again tonight. We also found two other investigators in Ojai and they are awesome! THe Spirit was so strong in their lesson and I'm so excited to see them again tonight.
The branch is wonderful and the members are great! We're really trying to build it up and we visited some less active families this week. They all came to church on Sunday along with one of our investigators! It was so great! The mom of one of the families said the closing prayer in Sacrament meeting and specifically thanked the "misionaras" for coming by and helping them to come back to church. It was so touching and made our week.
Zone conference was awesome, my companion is the best, and Ventura is beautiful!
Guess what!!!???? Elder Bednar is coming this Saturday to our mission!!!!!!!! I'm sooooooooooooooo excited!!!!!! I can't wait until Saturday! Missionary work is amazing! I love you all sooooooooooo much!
Have a great week!
Con mucho amor,
Hermana Hatch
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