Dear all,
Happy November!! Fall in Washington DC is beautiful. On Tuesday we had exchanges which means that we switch companions for a day/night with one of the Sister Training leaders. I went with sister Acosta who is in the Spanish speaking area. Our ward is pretty good about feeding the missionaries for dinner...but wow the Spanish branch feeds their missionaries like crazy! It was fun to see a different area. None of the investigators that we taught spoke any English so I just sat and tried to understand some of it. I was actually able to understand almost everything, or at least have some idea of what they were talking about. Sister Acosta and I had 3 referrals (people that we didn’t know that said they would be interested in learning more about the gospel) that we were going to go visit for the first time. The first address we went to led us to the end of a street that was wrong. We went to turn around and had a feeling that we needed to knock on the house in front of us. We knocked and waited at the door, but nobody ever answered. I felt a little discouraged because we both had such a strong feeling about knocking on this particular house. So we decided to go to the next referral. It was completely across town. When we got there they said they weren’t interested anymore. We went to check the last referral and plugged in the last address. When we pulled into the driveway we realized that the house we were going to was the exact same house that we both had an impression to knock on that first time. It was crazy! We knew that there was a reason why we had that impression. They still weren’t home so we left a note with our phone number on it. It was such a great experience and even though that family might not be interested right now, it was such a testimony builder to me that the Spirit is real and can guide us exactly where we need to be at the right time. On Wednesday I was back with Sister Freeman. We had zone conference all day where the AP’s, zone leaders, and President and sister Johnson taught us. We learned more about teaching the Plan of Salvation and the importance of planning. That night we went to check up on a less active member in our ward that we both had never met. We pulled into the neighborhood and realized she lives in “the mansions”. That area is one of the richest parts in Maryland by far and has the biggest houses I have ever seen haha! She wasn’t home and our backup plan was to go tracting around her house...so we decided to tract the mansions! The driveways were like a quarter mile long each and there weren’t any street lights/lamps so we couldn’t see where we were walking. We went up to one house and while we were walking up the long driveway we heard movement in the forest next to us. We just walked faster and finally got to the front door. We knocked and waited for about a minute, but the lights were out and nobody answered. We turned around and about 15 feet in front of us were 13 or 14 deer just staring at us blocking the driveway where we had just walked… Sister Freeman and I froze and even though we knew the deer wouldn’t do anything, we immediately grabbed each other and started laughing/quietly squealing. They wouldn’t move so we waited there and stared back until they left. Because it was pitch black and all of these mansions seemed empty and dark, we ran back to our car which was about a mile away. It was quite the adventure. On Friday we had VC training and we talked a lot about repentance. A lot of times we think of repentance as going through the “checklist of R’s” (recognition, remorse, restitution, reformation, resolution). Although this is obviously very important and part of the process, a lot of times we can easily overlook the most important R that isn’t listed. Redeemer. There is so much power in the Atonement and it is always available to us. I love our Savior Jesus Christ so much and love being able to bear my testimony of Him everyday. We met a man named Winston while we were waiting for the metro, who took one look at our name tags and said he was already saved...we ended up walking to the metro together and talked for 20 minutes. He is Jewish and was up here visiting his daughter taking her to a Broadway musical or something. On Monday we taught Doris it was kinda hard because she doesn't understand the whole reverence concept in church.. She likes to clap and sing and dance, and it doesn’t make sense to her why she has to sit there and be quiet. Other than that, everything else is going great with her. On our way home that night we got lost..again.. and after 30 minutes of going in circles and almost hitting 5 deer we prayed. Less than 2 minutes later we found the road we were looking for. We thanked Heavenly Father once we knew where we were exactly and I felt an overwhelming feeling that Heavenly Father was aware of the small struggles in my life as well as the bigger ones. He is there for us no matter what, all we have to do is turn to Him. In the VC we have been decorating for Christmas while it's slow and while we were doing that, we got a call from the temple front desk saying that there was a group of monks meditating outside the temple and we should go see them. We went out and met them and showed them the lobby of the temple. They wanted to see the inside so we took them to the visitors center where we have the big temple model of everything inside. They loved it and said they would be back next week. This time of year is starting to get busy. I am so excited for the Festival of Lights which starts December 1st. They are almost finished with the 650,00 Christmas lights outside! Today we were able to go to the temple. We get to go 4 times a year and I was so excited to be inside for the first time there! It was such an amazing experience and I am so grateful to be so close to it. I hope you all have a great week!
Love, Sister Haertling
middle picture: talks with monks outside the temple
bottom picture: beautiful fall landscape
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