September 1, 2014 Hernandez Family Baptisms

Hey everyone!

So, does anyone else think it is ridiculous that four weeks has already gone by!? I can´t believe that I have already been in Mexico for a month and that I am like two months in to my mission already! The time seriously flies by so quickly! Alright well, this week was really good and a little crazy and I hope that I can write all of it, or at least a lot of it, so you can kind of see whats going on down here :)

So...We had three baptisms this week! (Woot woot!) It was super awesome! The familia Hernandez got baptized (a mom and two of her kids) and they are so amazing. They were definitely prepared by the Lord because Hermana Kraczek and I looked at their paper in our area book and we found out that they basically got baptized a month after being found by the missionaries and taking discussions so that is pretty awesome! At the baptism, Hermana Kraczek and I sang Teach me to walk in the light while the Elders played guitar and kind of sang as well so that was a really fun experience! Well, Elder Toro sang but Elder Thomas...not so much haha but that´s ok :) He said he doesn´t sing well or whatever but we don´t believe him. Oh and also, Ishmael, one of our baptisms, bore his testimony after he was baptized and it was a really great testimony.

I just think it is so awesome that they have so much faith and that they desire to follow in the Savior´s footsteps. It was so neat to be a part of that and to feel their strength and faith. It is so amazing to be a missionary and to help others find the truth that they knew before their time on earth. It feels so great to help others to come unto Christ and to share this amazing and beautiful gospel with them.

For the First 12 Weeks study that we do as companions for my first 12 weeks, as the manual implies, we went and did the family history lesson online and holy cow! That thing is so awesome! I felt the Spirit so powerfully when I was doing that and watching the videos! It was absolutely amazing and I realized how important family history really is and it also made me want to be more heavily involved in my family history work, especially since there is a whole Korean line that I can look for! I will be doing more of that when I get home for sure! (if you all save some work for me at home since I know you are all doing more with indexing and family search and all that now, which is super awesome!) :)

Haha oh yeah so this is kind of crazy...so basically, we have two more baptisms this week on Saturday! What!? Yeah crazy, I know. The Lord is so good to us because we really could work a lot harder and do so much more than we do since there is always room to improve and all that, but He just blesses us with more people that want to be baptized so it is crazy! But we are super excited that they are making their way on the path of discipleship and that they desire to follow their Savior Jesus Christ. It is so great that they are willing to take that first step through the door to eternal life and exaltation. But yeah this is all super crazy and Hermana Kraczek and I are so excited!

We went and visited one of our investigators, Victor Cruz, to see how he was doing and to share a message with him. He is so amaing because he really has so much faith! He really wants to follow the Savior and do the right things and do the will of the Lord so that is super awesome! But, I feel so bad because his ¨esposa¨ isn´t very nice to him and so the Spirit leaves really fast when she talks sometimes and it is hard. We really want to help him so that he can feel good about himself and feel the way that Heavenly Father wants him to feel because he is so loved by our Heavenly Father and he has so much potential and we just want to help him see this and realize this. He knows a lot about the Bible and we gave him a Book of Mormon the other day and so hopefully he will start reading that and fall in love with it! He´s really great and came to the baptisms we had on Saturday and he sat with some other elderly men and asked them questions so yeah, he´s basically golden! We really want him to come to church!!

Hermana Kraczek and I also went into a cake shop to see how much their cakes were one day and we were talking to this lady who makes the cakes with her mom and she is the cutest person ever! She is so happy and kind and we were just talking to her and having a great time and we told her that we are missionaries and we told her our purpose and a little about our beliefs and stuff and then we gave her a Book of Mormon and she totally started to read it and it was so awesome because she accepted it really easily and then when we saw her Book of Mormon like the next week or something, we were really excited because she had marked it up a little with questions that she had and stuff. It was so cool! She is super super cute and we love her! And we are getting her a Boo of Mormon in English because she wansts to keep practicing her English and she wants us to all read the Book of Mormon together! I am super pumped! It´s so great!

I am loving the mission and I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve and to be here with these people in this area. There is a lot of work to do and I love it when we talk to people and they are so ready and open to our message! I love my companion and I learn so much from her and we laugh and are happy all the days and it is just so great! As you could hear from the recording I sent you last week, we are just a little bit crazy...we laugh all the time!! We almost pee our pants (ehem...Heather... ;) ) it´s super fantastic!

Oh yes, so this dog that belongs to a less active member that we visit has been following us around for like four days now so we basically have an adopted pet even though we aren´t allowed to have pets and we haven´t even fed her or anything! She is really cute except she has polgas, or fleas, so that isn´t very cute. She even jumps through our gate and sleeps on our tiny little ¨porch¨like every night and she cries for us because she wants to come in but she isn´t alloesd. (and we don´t really want fleas so...we just have to keep her outside). She is actually like sleeping by my feet under the computer desk right now haha. We took a picture with her today but just ignore my appearance. I had a super crazy bun and no make up on because we were just doing our laundry and cleaning and all that fun stuff all morning so I didn´t really get ready but whatever, it´s still a great picture :)

Hermana Kraczek and I are tired of getting fat so we are going to buy a bunch of veggies today and eat them whenever we are hungry instead of eating fruit and other sweet things... We can´t really help it if the members feed us lots of meat and fruit and sweet stuff but we are going to try and be ¨vegetarians¨when we can help it ;)

Ok so in case you wanted to know what I am studying in the Book of Mormon, I just started over the other day, so I am in First Nephi :) But, something that is super cool is oracion (prayer) because sometimes Heavenly Father gives you your answer like right after you ask for it and it is super cool! I really have been focusing on ¨first seek ye to obtain my word¨ because it is important to know the words of God before we can teach them to people right? So yeah I just prayed and asked Heavenly Father to help me gain a greater love for the Book of Mormon since I know it is so important to obtain the word first and then I decided that I would read the Book of Mormon from the beginning again for my personal study. And guess what happened? The Lord totally answered my prayer because I got a ton more out of the first few chapters of First Nephi than I ever had before! I actually marked a bunch of scriptures, wrote lots of notes and had the Spirit open new concepts to my mind! It was so insane how quickly I had my answer and how much more enjoyable those first chapters were! I was blown away by the tender mercies and love of God. He is so amazing and I just thought that was so cool.

I officially have missionary legs because they are really ugly and mosquitos eat them all the days but it´s totally fine :) and my feet are super gorgeous ;) I have white toes and a white band across the tops of my feet and it´s super awesome ;)

I have a lot of pictures to send this week! And I don´t have a recording because the one that I have is really long and it was more like a journal entry with me and Hermana Kraczek talking and being cray as per usual but we can make some more for next week if you want :) I love you all so much and I am so grateful for your letters and your support! Being out here is so awesome! Cody, you are going to love it! It is such a blast and you feel the Spirit all the time and you grow everyday and you just learn so much! It is incredible! I can´t wait to hear from you when you get to go out and serve and experience all these amazing things for yourself! My Spanish is coming along slowly and it is really hard but it is also really fun at the same time and I am really grateful that I get to learn this language. I am also really grateful for the gift of tongues. It is totally real! There is no way I could know this much spanish after one month without the help of the Lord. No way. Next time maybe I will try to say things to you all in Spanish or something :) But it probably won´t all be totally correct... alright well I love you all a ton and I will write more next week! :)

Love always,

Hermana Walker :)