Sr Breitenstein Heads Home

Hello my dearest family!

We had another great week! This week I was able to go on exchanges with sister Breitenstein. She goes home from the mission in a week even though it will be right in the middle of a transfer, because she got an extension. It was fun to be able to work with her again though, but so weird to think that she is leaving. I will be the oldest Spanish sister missionary in the mission now, and I'm training the two youngest! Haha. They are really the greatest though and I am so blessed to be able to work with both of them. We still haven't had any time to get bikes, but we have some time planned today to go find some, so hopefully this week we can leave the car at home. The weather has been so nice this week and I got my first little sunburn. Curtis, I will be tanner than you when I get home. That's my goal anyways. :)

Well our investigators have been doing great. There are so many different people being put in out path. It is amazing to see the hand of the Lord in this work every day. We found three families this week and they have the cutest little kids! Two of the families accepted baptism dates and we are still working with the other one. The hardest thing has been getting investigators to come to church, because they always tell us they are going to come and end up canceling last minute. We find them rides and talk with them about the blessing that come from attending church but it's still hard to get them there. Any ideas that might help? :) 

Well, _______ is still doing great. We taught him the word of wisdom, and he has a problem with everything except for tea. He was so willing to give it up though and when we met with him again he told us how he was about to smoke but then he thought of the word of wisdom and threw his cigarette away. We also talked about baptism again and he didn't understand why he had to wait. He wanted to get baptized yesterday but we have to wait a couple of weeks to make sure he is good with the word of wisdom. Also I don't remember if I already told you about ______, but we passed him to the singles ward because we thought that he would do a lot better there. He went to institute and they said he loved it. He still seemed like he wants to get baptized and I am so excited for him. Also we haven't been able to find _______. I think she is avoiding us, so she wont be getting baptized next week but hopefully we find her soon and see if she still wants to learn. Well, that's about it for the week. Love you all!

So I didn't find my wallet this week. :/ No big deal though. Yes, I am the driver but we have permission for one of my companions to drive until I get the temporary license. They actually just called me today and said that my new missionary card and temporary license came in so I will be getting it tomorrow. Wahoo! Thanks for taking care of all that mom, sorry it was probably such a pain. I still kinda hope my wallet will show us somewhere, but we'll see. Love you all so much!

have a great week!

He Knows Jesus Is Our Savior

My dearest family,

We have had such a great week! Sister Morley came in on Tuesday from the MTC and so now we are in a trio. She is from Utah and just turned 19 in December. It has been crazy, but I love working with both of my companions. 

We taught ______ more this week and he is doing really well. He came to church and even bore his testimony in priesthood about how he knows that Jesus is our Savior and that he is so grateful for this chance to learn about this church. I am so grateful to be able to teach him and for his desire to learn. We are teaching him the word of wisdom tonight and we will see how that goes, because we already know he has problems with it. He has a ton of faith though and I know that he can follow it with the help of Heavenly Father. 

We also are teaching a guy named ________. He is progressing really well and is very smart. In the lessons he always asks really good questions. He accepted a baptismal date this week for the 14th of April, but we are probably going to pass him to the singles ward because we think he will progress better there. He came to church though and really liked it. 

We are still teaching ________ but some of the appointments have fallen through and she can't come to church because she works on Sundays. She still says that she is going to try to get off and we are planning on teaching the Sabbath day soon. She is still planning on getting baptized on the 31st if all goes well. We tried talking with her daughter more and she is not interested at all, but her grandchildren love when we come over. 

Lets see who else... there is a less active in our ward and she is friends with _______'s family. They are having them over for dinner soon and invited us to come which is great! Hopefully we will be able to teach ________ again if her family is OK with it. 

Well, I don't even remember all that happened this week so sorry this is probably a lame email. Everything is great here though. I love my companions, love the area, and love the people so much!!! I am so blessed to be out here!

They are Reading the Book of Mormon and Praying Every Day!

Hello everyone!

So we've had a great week but it has been super crazy here. So today we had transfers. I am staying in my same area and am still training sister Rollins, but tomorrow a new sister comes in from the MTC and I will be training her too. I have no idea how I am going to do that especially since they will be at different spots in the training program, but I'm sure it will be great. I am looking forward to meeting her tomorrow! Also I have had a lot of questions in letters about being the coordinating sister. Basically I go to a few different meetings and then I go on a few exchanges to different areas each transfer. I pretty much just spend the day and night with a different sister and make sure everything is going well in their area. If they are having a hard time I can plan more exchanges to help them out. That's about it though. It's fun getting to know the sisters more and spend time in different areas.

The work has been going well for the most part. It was sad though because _______ was doing so well and then her parents got really mad. They said that she is not allowed to talk to us anymore because they are in a different religion. Her friend thinks that she just needs a little bit of time for her family to calm down and then hopefully we can come back and teach. I really want to teach her family because I think it would make things a lot easier for her, but for now we are going to have to take a break. 

I don't know if I have already told you about _________, but he is so amazing and accepted a baptism date but he has started to have a few doubts so we are a little bit worried about him, but are praying that we we be able to teach to his needs and help him out. We are also still teaching _________ but we changed her baptism date to the 31st of march because she needs a little bit more time. She is great and is progressing but the problem is that she has to work on Sundays, so she can never come to church. She is trying to get next Sunday off though so hopefully she will be able to! Her grandchildren are so cute!! They are reading the Book of Mormon and marking verses that they like. They are also praying every day and love to pray at the end of our lessons. I love being able to teach them and see how excited they are to learn. :)

Anyways, mom to answer your questions, we have not been on bikes yet. I have a bike that I am borrowing from one of the elders but we haven't had any time to get a bike for my companion yet because our days have been crazy. We are going to see if our new companion wants to get a bike too so hopefully we will be able to soon. :) Also, you asked about my companion. She is great! Yes we still have to do language study together every day. She learned how to write in Spanish but never really had to learn to speak in school. She is doing really well with the language though. We have so much in common and I love working with her. She is a hard worker which I love! 

About the weather, it has warmed up a lot! California weather is so great! :) Well I think that I answered all of your questions. Thanks for all of the letters and emails. By the way we are allowed to email friends now. The first presidency wrote a letter about it. They give us extra time to email though so that we still have the same amount of time to write our families. 

ERIC I GOT YOUR LETTER AND IT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK! THANKS FOR WRITING ME LIL BRO. l LOVE AND MISS YOU TONS. I WILL BE WRITING YOU BACK SOON. Also, Elder Brooks says hi. He is in my zone so I see him quite a bit. He thinks you are a really cool guy.

Must Be Teaching the Pope

Hola!!!

Well the computer room has been full all day and there was just one computer so my companion just finished but I only have a few min. So sorry but this is going to be a really short email this week.. 

Ahh so much happened this week though! We have had so many amazing people put in our path and this week. I was in one of the most powerful lessons of my mission. It is amazing to be able to see the hand of the Lord in this work and see the miracles each day! I am so grateful for these experiences. This week we taught a girl named ________ and the spirit was so strong in the lesson! At the end she was crying and said she wants to be a member of this church. She didn't accept a date because she is really worried about her family. They are very catholic and they weren't super happy when they found out that she was talking to us.

She really wants to share what she has learned and felt with her family and see if they will listen to us. Also her best friend is a member and she sat in the lesson with us. It was really powerful when she bore her testimony. I know that members are so important in this work and I am so grateful when they are willing to help. 

We have also been working more with __________. She accepted a baptism date for the 17th of March and is doing really well. I was able to go on a couple of exchanges this week. Some of the sisters have been pretty stressed out so I hope that the exchanges helped them a little bit. I love working with all of these sisters and learning from them! I really want the time to slow down out here. 

We had president interviews this week. I asked him if I could extend my mission and he said that it depends. If I do I will only be able to stay out three extra weeks, but it would be in the middle of a transfer and so it might be better if I didn't. Anyways I guess I just really have to make the best out of the time I have left! 

Anyways, funny story from this week... so we were teaching this guy but it was at his friends house. He accepted a baptism date and we were super excited for him. Well at the end out his lesson he gave us his address. A couple of days later we went to find him and when we were looking for his address we drove up to a huge catholic church. Yeah I think he was trying to tell us that he wasn't interested... that was just a really funny way to tell us.

Haha!! Anyways sorry this is so short. Love you all so much!!! Have a great week! :)

~Sister Layton

The First Group of Nineteen Year Old Sisters

My dearest family,

We have had a great week! Sister Rollins is my new companion and she is from Washington DC. We picked her up on Tuesday from the mission home. She turned 19 in September! So crazy!... There were four Spanish sisters that came out early and two of them are already fluent in Spanish  Anyway, sister Rollins took a lot of Spanish in school and so she knows quite a bit and was in the advanced class in the MTC. She loves to play soccer and we have a lot in common. She also likes to run so we get good work outs in the mornings. I have really enjoyed working with her this week. Tonight I am going on exchanges with another one of the new sisters (Sister Corona) so that should be fun. She is from Texas and is fluent in Spanish  and she's 22 years old.

Well, the first night that sister Rollins was here we found a man to teach. He accepted a date to be baptized and said that he was going to come to church, but he wouldn't answer the phone Sunday morning and we still don't know why he didn't come. We are hoping to be able to find him again soon and hope that he is not avoiding us. We also found this guy on the street the other night who was in a rush and didn't seem interested but before he left, we asked him if he knew of anyone who was going through a hard time. 

He told us to go visit his mom and said that she would want to listen to us. Well we did and she was awesome! Her name is _________ and her two little grandkids sat in on the lesson. They were so excited to learn and really want to come to church. We are hopefully going to be able to teach their mom too because it sounded like she was interested as well. We have only met with them once though so we will see how things go. 

We have been doing a lot of finding this week because it is a pretty new area for both of us. I love it though and am so happy to be here!! The other day the assistants told us that they almost put us on bikes but they found a elders car that we could use... well, we decided that we really want to be on bike anyways and so they told us that it would be good because it saves a lot of miles on the car. My district leader and his companion said that we can borrow their bikes which will be awesome! We have been pretty much walking everywhere anyways so now we will be able to get around a lot faster! I'm excited!

That is cool that they are opening so many new missions. They are opening a new mission in Irvine California and we are not sure what will happen with our mission. I'm sure there will have to be some changes but we just don't know what yet. I think that all of these changes with missionaries right now is really cool. 

I am so grateful to be out here at this time and be part of this amazing work. I love it soooooo much!! I have seen so many blessings in my life for being here and wouldn't change this experience for anything! The gospel is true and I know it without a doubt. Love you all so much! :)

I Will Go Before Your Face

Hello family!

A lot has happened this week. Sister Minert and I got a call Thursday night from the assistants to train. I guess they had some sisters coming in early and so sister Minert is taking the west Anaheim area and I am taking the south. We haven't spent a ton of time over there and so I still have to get to know the area. It is actually a big area too. They said the sisters might already be fluent in Spanish and that's why they came out early, or they at least were in the intermediate or advanced class in the MTC. They are already in the mission home and we are supposed to pick them up today at four. 

I am changing apartments to an Elders apartment. I started moving some stuff in there today. Lets just say I will have to do a lot of cleaning... haha. I still will be in the same ward. Disneyland is in my area still and so I will get to see the fireworks every night. I am looking forward to all of the changes but am also a little bit nervous. 

Being the coordinating sister has been fun. So far I am just doing exchanges with the Spanish sisters and luckily there aren't a lot of problems so it has been nice. I actually think I learn more from the sisters I go on exchanges with than they learn from me. It's good to be able to be in different areas and get to see how different missionaries work. 

This week we had stake conference. I don't remember their names, but there were two members from the 70 there that spoke and it was really good. We also had zone conference this week and I learned so much there! It was all about having the faith to find and also working with members. I am excited to use what I learned there in the work. 

A few nights ago we were knocking doors and  had a lesson with a lady at the door and as we were praying another lady walked my and went into her apartment. About 10 seconds later she came back out and told us that she couldn't walk away from us because she knew that God sent us there. She said that when she walked by she saw a light over us and it wasn't the light that was in the hall. She said that it felt like there was someone else there with us and that she wanted to know more about our message. It was a really cool experience. 

We talked to her the other night though and she said that she cant talk to us anymore because her husband was really mad and was not happy that she wanted to talk to us. She seemed like she still really wanted to but couldn't. It was really sad when she told us that we can't come back. I was excited to teach her too.. maybe some time down the road she will find the missionaries again. 

Let see what else... I got separated from my companion today which was really weird but funny. We were trying to go up the elevator and for some reason the door wouldn't open all the way so we decided to just squeeze in. Well I went in first and as I turned around my companion was starting to come through but the door closed and I started going up. It was funny... but I guess it might not sound as funny unless you are a missionary... but hey we got a good laugh out of it. 

Well that's about all I can think of for the week. Have a great week! Love you all! :)

I Love Being in Lessons When the Spirit is So Strong

Hola familia!

Well it's been another great week here in Anaheim! Disneyland is right in the middle of our area now and when we drive home sometimes we get to drive right under the Disneyland fireworks. It's pretty cool. 

On the way to church this week right when we left our area I saw a street and realized that it is the street that uncle Harold lives on. He lives so close to my borders!! I am so tempted to go knock on his door! That would be awesome  He probably wouldn't know who I was though and might now want to talk when he sees the missionaries. Maybe I can go with the English missionaries and introduce them to him.. That's the only excuse I can think of to go over there. Haha. :) 

Anyways, things are going good here. I set up my exchanges this week so I will be starting those soon. We had a zone meeting again and they talked a lot about the exchanges we will be going on. I excited for them! Right now we are still teaching la familia _______. They are doing so well! The mom has opened up so much and the dad has always been really open.

They have the best questions and have a sincere desire to know the truth. This week we taught two guys named _______ and _______. They both accepted baptism dates, but when we came back Jesus didn't want to listen anymore. ________ was open to listening still but it seems like he is having a lot of doubts now. Hopefully he will read and pray so he can get rid of those doubts. There was a baptism picture on his table. We asked him about it, and I guess his son was baptized into the church a couple of years ago which was pretty awesome. We also are teaching a lady names ______. She is amazing. She really wants to be baptized but cant right now because she is married to someone from Mexico and is living with another guy here. She has been trying to get a divorce so that she can get married to the guy she is with now but her husband wont sign papers. She has a very strong testimony and we are praying that she will be able to get everything figured out soon.

We also met a lady named ______ this week. We went in to teach but didn't really have much time at all so we were just going to share a scripture with her. We said the opening prayer, and before the end she was bawling. She opened up a lot to us and the spirit was really strong in the lesson.  I love being in lessons when the spirit is so strong and you know they are feeling it too! It's the best! 

Lets see... OK crazy story... We were teaching this guy named _______ and he was acting really interested (yeah, he was interested all right). He would always give us referrals and so it was really good. Well this week when we went to teach him he shook my hand and then tried kissing me!! I squealed and was like NOOO! But then he did it anyways... it was kinda on my hair because I was turning away trying to avoid it... I couldn't do anything about it. I never want to go back to that area! Uhh... so awkward! Well that's about it for the week. Love you all!!!! Have a great week! :)