Life in Porterville

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This place has way too many hills and so we are blessed to have a car down here in the Porterville 2nd ward.  This ward has been on fire and has 11 people baptized in the last year and it is so much fun getting to know them and teaching them.  We have lots of people to teach and since the 3rd ward got combined we have a lot of paperwork to organize so we are trying to find time to find more new investigators while making everything else we need to to gets done.  First we have Grace, she was baptized 2 weeks ago and confirmed at church on Sunday.  When we talked to her later that day she said she felt like God touched her heart when she was given the gift  of the Holy Ghost and that was so amazing to hear.  We also have Sean and Sheena, who got married a few weeks ago so that they could be baptized.  They have completely changed their lives around because of the gospel and through the power of Christ.  They were going through some financially hard times but were both able to find a job and they are so grateful for God and his tender mercies.  Stake conference was last week and so this week was fast and testimony meeting.  Sean bore a beautiful testimony that everyone loved and continued to comment on it as they bore there testimony.  There are more people I will have to tell about later because I can't remember them all.  Our most amazing investigator at the moment is Youa Cha, a hmong lady with 2 adorable daughters ages 3 and 7.  They came to church yesterday and we had a great lesson with them later.  She has real intent in her study of the scriptures and in here prayers and keeps all her commitments!   I love the people hear, I love my district and I love being a missionary.  Have a great week.
It was good.  I have not had any birthday cake yet and I need to buy some flour to make it.  I did get your package on time, it was so great, thank you so much.  For service this week we helped with the Porterville museum.  We are helping them set up all there trains for the train exhibit next week, they have over 30 trains so its a bit ridiculous.  For our teaching pool we have Youa Cha.  Her family was traveling through Fresno on Sunday and she asked for the church address and time so she could still go to church up there and she said she had a great time learning about tithing and hearing peoples stories.  We have our nest lesson with her on Tuesday.  She keeps all of her commitments and the biggest step is that she needs to get married so she can continue to progress towards baptism so that will be our focus on Tuesday.  We are also teaching Ladonna and her husband Gerry.  Ladonna is super awesome and is almost finished with 2nd Nephi in the Book of Mormon and she loves to learn.  Her husband used to be a minister, I think Pentecostal and is not as open minded, it will take more time to help him keep learning.  We had a great lesson with them on Monday with our Bishop and he really helped answered some of Gerry's questions.  Jesse and Joe are also in our teaching pool.  I wasn't here when we first started teaching them but they are 12 and 15 and there mom wants to them become better so we have been working with them.  They haven't been keeping commitments so we will be talking to them about if they want us to keep coming by to help them grow on Monday.  Chris Xiong, he is the unbaptized on of one of the less active hmong families in our ward.  There house is crazy and it feels like 20 people live there.  We are also trying to work with the family to help reactivate the.  This week while we were out trying former investigators we met Felecita, her son Robert and her boyfriend Jason who let us come back and teach them on Saturday.  They expressed interest in learning more so hopefully they begin to read and feel the power of the Book of Mormon.

This place has way too many hills and so we are blessed to have a car down here in the Porterville 2nd ward.  This ward has been on fire and has 11 people baptized in the last year and it is so much fun getting to know them and teaching them.  We have lots of people to teach and since the 3rd ward got combined we have a lot of paperwork to organize so we are trying to find time to find more new investigators while making everything else we need to to gets done.  First we have Grace, she was baptized 2 weeks ago and confirmed at church on Sunday.  When we talked to her later that day she said she felt like God touched her heart when she was given the gift  of the Holy Ghost and that was so amazing to hear.  We also have Sean and Sheena, who got married a few weeks ago so that they could be baptized.  They have completely changed their lives around because of the gospel and through the power of Christ.  They were going through some financially hard times but were both able to find a job and they are so grateful for God and his tender mercies.  Stake conference was last week and so this week was fast and testimony meeting.  Sean bore a beautiful testimony that everyone loved and continued to comment on it as they bore there testimony.  There are more people I will have to tell about later because I can't remember them all.  Our most amazing investigator at the moment is Youa Cha, a hmong lady with 2 adorable daughters ages 3 and 7.  They came to church yesterday and we had a great lesson with them later.  She has real intent in her study of the scriptures and in here prayers and keeps all her commitments!   I love the people hear, I love my district and I love being a missionary.  Have a great week.