Week 51: Once upon a time...

Querida Familia y Amigos,

Our Pday Soccer Hooligans

          Wow. All I can say is WOW!  Where to start? Okay, let's start with some of the happiest moments of my life. This is how the story goes...

          Once upon a time (as in 3 weeks ago) our Zone Leaders called and told us to meet a Mexican family at their Ward Mission Leader's house. We anxiously waited for the family to arrive, but like most Hispanics, they were late. So we went and knocked some more doors in the surrounding neighborhood for awhile. When we went back to the house we met the family that would change our lives. La Familia Chavez just came from Mexico a month ago. The dad is Christian, the mom is Evelyne, 8 year old boy Gael and the cutest little 2 year old Renata.  And they are perfect! Truly angels.  We have had daily contact with this family: teaching them, playing volleyball and futbol (soccer) with them, eating excessive amounts of fruit with them.  And I have fallen in love with them.  We all have. They chose the 27 of June to be their baptismal date. 

         But then came along the Big Bad Wolf.  It's name is.... coffee!!!!  But atlas, they have battled fiercely against the temptations for the past two weeks and all is well in the land.  Yesterday at church, we took them aside with our Branch Mission Leader to go over the baptismal interview questions.  Little did we know that the wolf was only half the battle.  We had indeed found ourselves a dragon. Evelyn fully knows that all of it is true, but Christian expressed his doubts in Joseph Smith.  For a moment, it seemed like the fire from the dragon would consume everything that had been prayed over and diligently put into place. Christian broke down and told us how hard and how dark the world had become around him. We sat silently, not knowing what to do.  I have never prayed so hard in my heart to know how I could help him. Then Hermano Martinez (BML) pulled out a scripture like a sword and pierced Christian's heart.  He read about Joseph Smith's account in Joseph Smith History. Satan had surrounded Joseph in darkness, so much that his flesh was going to be consumed, but that's when he saw a pillar of light.  In reality, God the Father and His son Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith and answered his question.  We knelt down in prayer. My companion prayed first to ask God to give Christian an answer. Then Christian gave one of the most beautiful and heartfelt prayers I have ever heard.  It was simple, yet so sincere.  Through his tears, he asked our Father in Heaven if the gospel is true and if this is where his family needed to be. There was silence afterwards. Then Christian told us about the peace that he felt.  Hermano Martinez gave him a loving hug. The dragon was slain. 

          Later that day we took the family to their future castle...the temple. They had found the place where their family will be sealed together for time and all eternity in a year's time. There was so much indescribable peace, so much joy. I couldn't help but shed a few tears myself:)

The Chavez Family

I know that the temple is where Christ walks on Earth. Our Lord and Savior visits His house and He blesses His people there. I know that Christian received his answer that day and I know that he and his family will soon reach their happily ever after. Stay tuned for next week....

          In all reality though, this is real life. This is my mission. This is the plan of Salvation in action. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ and all He stands for and all I strive to be. I know that dreams to come true if we are true to Him. 

Con Amor,

Hermana Stoddard

Week 50: Milkshakes!

Querida Familia y Amigos,

          Hello from Bellevue! or as we like to call it "Mini India."  Like the rest of Seattle, there are so many different cultures and religions here.  Here in Bellevue there are a lot less Muslim and a lot more Hindus. It smells like Indian food all the time!  We are like blood hounds though, we can smell the difference between Hispanic, Hindu, Chinese, Korean, and Middle Eastern/Northern African homes.  It's really a cool trait we have developed:)

          Wow, its just been incredible. Incredibly busy.  And it's great. I have gone on exchanges with other Sister missionaries this week back to Seahurst and I even went on an exchange with my old companion, Hermana Wrubell.  It made me think back to the good old times when I was just starting out my mission. 

          So something great that happened this week is we put the Chavez family on date to be baptized on June 27. We celebrated by buying ourselves large milkshakes. It was so great in the moment and a lot of regrets later that night! haha

Hermanas Christiansen and Stoddard

I absolutely love that family so incredible much!!! They are the cutest! I will try to send a picture soon. Also, I don't know if I told you already but we play volleyball and soccer with the Spanish branch weekly. We had so many investigators at both events and it was way too much fun! Well, we don't have much of a Pday now-a-days so I have to go, but I love all of you! Keep reading your scriptures and praying to find truth. This is the Church of Jesus Christ and He is our Savior.

Con Amor,

Hermana Stoddard

The Threesome
Open Your Mouth and Eat Kimchi
(I don't know????)

Week 49: I Love People! I love Heavenly Father!!!

Dear Family,

          I am having too much fun right now!  I think everything I learned about Seattle before my mission were lies.  It is so gorgeous and the sun shines all the time. I especially love it during these summer months because the sun is in the sky when we go walking/running in the morning and it is still out when we go in around 9:30.  It's so great!  But it is a little on the hot/humid side right now.

          I live in Bellevue. It's the closest I am going to get to serving in an actual metropolitan city as a Spanish missionary.  Bellevue is the headquarters for basically every company imaginable...casi (almost). I love both of my companions!  Hermana Brooks came out on her mission only a transfer behind me and we are both Sister Training Leaders.  She is really good at Spanish so I am learning from her.  Hermana Christiansen is outgoing and our sunshine. This is only her second transfer so Hna. Brooks and I are training her. We are already  good friends and often suffer from laugh attacks...of course very dignified laughter:) Let's face it, they think I am funny. But that's ok because I think they are kind of funny too. 

          We are crazy busy!  I think that and the sun and all the blessings and miracles that are happening right now are making me over-the-top happy!  We have six Spanish speaking Hermanas that we are STLs over so we have to drive around the mission to visit them and do exchanges. We are over an English ward (the Overlake Ward) and a Spanish branch (Crossroads branch).  That means double the investigators, meetings, members, everything.....it's so great!  My Spanish isn't as bad as I thought.  I still understand basically all of it, but it still is really hard to speak it.  I have definitely improved even from 5 days ago.  I am starting to pick it up where I left off.  And I love it.  Not to be racist or anything, but Hispanics are my favorite:) 

          I love how every ward and branch has such different dynamics.  Microsoft pretty much employs the whole Overlake ward. Not to get all worldly on you guys or to offend the people of Overlake in anyway, but picture the people from The Big Bang Theory. I have only seen 1 or 2 episodes of that show, but that can kind of help describe the people. They are so great and have such strong testimonies of the Restored gospel, they just express it differently. 

          We are working with a few investigators in the English area right now. One of them is an Indian gentleman named Shawn.  One word to describe him is classy. He fed us Indian pizza and mangos while listening to Christmas hymns.  We told him we could only listen to hymns and the Christmas ones were all he had.  He does everything with flare and style.  He has so many Mormon friends and is prepared to live the gospel.  Something was holding him back, but we didn't know what it was.  We went over to talk to him while we were fasting for him.  We were going to talk to him about fasting, but the Spirit lead the conversation and we ended up talking about Christ and the Atonement.  It turns out that he didn't fully understand what the Atonement was and we answered a lot of his doubts.  We hope that he continues to change enough to start making and keeping commitments. 

          The Hispanic branch here is much more....modern (that's probably the best word to describe it) than the branch I served in in Seahurst. They are a little more Americanized. We got to play volleyball with them Friday night and futbol (soccer) with them Saturday morning.  They are really good about bringing their nonmember friends to activities and it makes our job easier and a lot more fun!  They were some of the best finding activities that I have ever had. 

          But some of the biggest miracles of my mission have happened right here, this week!  We have found and started teaching three Hispanic families that are so incredible, so, so incredible.  All of them have moved here within the last month as well.  All of them have relatives in Mexico that are members of the church, and we can feel the power of the prayers of those relatives as we teach these new investigators. All of it is the Lord's doing.  He placed all of us perfectly at the right place at the right time.  La Familia Chavez came to church yesterday, and I already have such a deep love for them. Pray for them y La Familia Sanchez y Manuel y Paula! I am so blessed to know and work with these people!  This week I studied about the creation.  It just made my spirit feel full of light and pure joy.  With that and all of the blessings this week, my heart is full of gratitude and I challenge all of you this week to recognize the blessings in your lives. Share them with your families at dinner time and say a prayer afterwards as a family and thank our loving Father in Heaven for them.  I know that He lives and that He cares for us individually. 

Con Amor,

Hermana Stoddard

P.S. Random side note:  Almost my whole mission has been saying similar things about me:

1. I have an accent (but they don't think the other Utahns do).

2. That I look like Kiera Knightly. 

Haha I just think it's so funny because I have never heard these things until my mission, but I hear it all the time here:)

Week 48: Spanish Again

Querida Familia y Amigos,

           Guess what?  I AM IN SPANISH AGAIN!!!!  It was a long four months of English, but I guess I have learned the lessons I needed to learn there and touched the lives I was suppose to touch. But the thing is  I am actually over two areas now. One of them, the Crossroads, is a Spanish branch and the other, Overlake, is an English ward. But I am very excited for this transfer! Two areas = twice the work which I am very happy about. I would rather be ultra busy than walking around, trying to find people to teach all day.

          But oh my goodness, this last week was a spectacular one. I knew after having a hard week that there was a week of miracles around the corner. It started off with having one of our Chinese speaking members with us and we happened to find our Chinese investigator Carol at home before she left for China again. He was able to explain to her the difference and importance of our church. She said she will read the Book of Mormon and pray and she will try to find missionaries when she comes back to the United States. 

          We had the miracle of finding a potential investigator home sick, but she let us in and we taught her the Restoration. She had a hard time understanding the difference between the light of Christ, the Holy Ghost and having the gift of the Holy Ghost.  She is very nice, but its going to take some more heart softening to help her accept the fullness of the gospel.  It was fun though because we sat out on her deck, overlooking a beautiful lake. It reminded me of summers in Michigan. 

          And then there is Nikolay. He is so great. Did I mention that he looks like Jesus? Yeah, so basically the whole ward was freaking out the Sunday that he came to church. There were like, "Who is that guy?" This last week, Nikolay wasn't able to come and they all said, "Where did the guy who looks like Jesus go?" Let's just say that he will be easily accepted into the ward!  We have been teaching him almost every other day. He has changed so much in these past two weeks.  He will still have to take some time before he can be baptized, but so much peace and happiness has already come into his life. And it came through the small things like praying and reading the Book of Mormon. I am going to miss him!

Nikolay...He just shaved off his beard.

          Then we had a huge miracle....miracles come when you follow the spirit. We felt this strong prompting that we needed to cancel our coordination meeting with our ward mission leader and go tracting at 8pm on Thrusday. We felt very strongly  about a certain area. Lo and  behold, the first house we knocked on we met a guy named Shawn and we were invited in. He and his family are from Iran, but he loves Christianity especially Jesus Christ. We felt like we need to go straight into teaching him the Plan of Salvation. Later on in the lesson, we found out that his sister died a few years earlier and that has been a large trial for the whole family. He found so much peace through the Plan of Salvation. He believes that when we have hard things happen in our lives, it's because we are being punished. We have been talking to him about God's mercy and love.  Already, in just a few days, Shawn's heart has changed so much. He absolutely loves the gospel. He came to church on Sunday and really loved it even though he thought it was weird that youth were giving sermons at church and not the preacher:) Gotta love being a Mormon!

Tracting up on Cougar Mountain is
like beingforest rangers in the wilderness

          We had a truly incredible experience during the 3rd hour of church though. We saw a Hispanic couple in the lobby so naturally we wanted to go talk to them. The lady was getting her patriarchal blessing, but she couldn't be alone with the Patriarch so they asked us to sit in while she received her blessing...in Spanish! Oh, it was so beautiful. It was such a special experience to get to hear how much revelation a Patriarch can receive for those he is giving the blessing to. For the rest of the day, we were exceedingly happy! 

          Basically we just had a lot of cool things happen this week. We were tracting and found a non-interested Jewish family, but they were very nice. They were beekeepers, so they let us taste fresh honey, right out of the hive. In that same neighborhood, a man was doing yard work and though he too was not interested, he cut us some of his flowers and made us a beautiful bouquet.

Its just nice when people are nice, you know? This last thing was so funny....there were these sales guys that were going door to door too. We started walking towards a front door at the same time as one of them so it was awkward and everything....but we decided to battle it out over rock, paper, scissors. Yup, I won. Well, it was the Lord's will that we would knock on that door so naturally he insured that I won that epic game. When in doubt...rock, paper, scissors it out!

          So yeah, I was transferred this morning. I have two new companions, Hermana Brooks and Hermana Christianson. Hermana Brooks is a STL too and Hermana Christianson is still in training.  Looks like things are about to get super exciting around here!

Que tenga una buena semana! Les queiro!

Con Mucho Amor,

Hermana Stoddard

P.S. I am on page 229 of the Book of Mormon. Keep reading!