This week was transfers and........I left Kensington AND got a new companion!!! I was really sad to leave but SOOO excited to be with......sister KUNZ!!!! Sister Kunz was the only person I knew coming into the MTC (because I stalked her on instagram) and she was the first person I met in the MTC. She is from Idaho and we have been such great friends on the mission. We never thought that we would get to be companions! But now we are and it has been a blast. We are in Carrollton, and it is a great area to serve in. Most people that we pass on the street are from either Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Nigeria, or Ghana. It's a lot different than any of the areas that I have served in, but I love it. The ward is pretty small, it almost reminds me of Kent Island branch and there is a lot of diversity.
Yesterday I had the coolest experience on teaching center at the visitors center!!!! So I had a girls information who went on Facebook and I wasn't sure what she wanted. All that I had was a phone number and her name. I had called her a couple of times, but no answer until yesterday. She answered the phone and her name was Gemma. I started getting to know her and she said that she had a lot of friends who were members of the church (She's 15). I asked if she had ever heard of the Book of Mormon and she said no, but that she would really love a copy for herself. I asked for her address so that we could send it. She told me it was in Las Vegas and I told her how one of my best friends was serving her mission there. We finished talking to each other and I was so happy to have finally been able to talk to someone who actually is sincere and wanting to learn more. I sent it the local missionaries and it assigned it to Gemma's local ward.....the missionaries name who popped up was......yep, Sister Haylee Maughan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so so so excited to send her a referral and so I was able to leave her a message about this awesome girl who wanted to learn more. It was really cool.
This week we were able to start teaching a man named Manuel. He has been taught a few times from missionaries close by, but he just moved into our ward boundaries. He came to church with us this week and is doing so well. He wants to be baptized and hopefully by the end of next month he will be able to. He struggles with the Word of Wisdom, but has a strong desire to overcome it, so we are helping him with that.
Another miracle this week is about a man named Tawoio. He is from Nigeria and really great. Sister Wilcox (my MTC companion) and sister Kunz found him last transfer, but he has never been able to come to church. This week he finally came and stayed for the whole time!! Also he opened his Book of Mormon to where he had Book marked and he was in Alma 5!
At church on Sunday I met this really cool member, but she didn't speak any English. I thought I heard her speaking Spanish and went up to introduce myself. She told me her name was Nágila Aparecida Dos Santos Bills. I found out she was speaking Portuguese and I got excited to tell her that my dad went to Brazil and spoke Portuguese on his mission. We talked in Spanish/Portuguese for a little bit and she told me that she served in Recife Brazil (The exact mission my dad served!!!) on her mission around the exact same time that he served! It was a tender mercy for sure.
On Thursday we went over to a lady's house in our ward who has been less active and struggling a lot with certain things concerning her testimony. She has really been trying to work on it and knows that it is true but has a hard time. She asked us for some help painting, so we went over that morning. After we were done helping her, we shared a message with her. The message we shared was something that sister Kunz and I both felt inspired to share; faith. We both had studied that previously that morning and one quote that I loved was from a talk called Choose To Believe. It says, "Belief and testimony and faith are not passive principles. They do not just happen to us. Belief is something we choose—we hope for it, we work for it, and we sacrifice for it. We will not accidentally come to believe in the Savior and His gospel any more than we will accidentally pray or pay tithing. We actively choose to believe, just like we choose to keep other commandments." She came to church this week which was great and it just helped me remember how important it is to continually be doing things each day to strengthen our testimony. It takes effort and faith on our part, which will increase our desire to strengthen it every day. I love you all!
Love Sister Haertling
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