To start off, Saturday we had a combined tri-mission conference with the three Houston missions to listen to President RUSSELL M. NELSON! It was such a cool experience to be in a room with 700 missionaries, 20 stake presidents and their wives, the temple president and matron, three mission presidents, Elder Corbridge who is an area 70, and then to top it off the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. (He looks so much older in person!!) I wouldn't really say there was a specific theme, because he talked about the doctrine of Christ, our purpose as missionaries, temple work, working with the ward, really just everything! My favorite part was a story he told. You may remember in this last general conference he told a story about the time he operated on a little girl's heart but wasn't able to save her. Then he was asked to operate on her sister, and she also passed away. In this conference talk he mentioned how hard that was for him. Well, in this meeting on Saturday he starts a sentence by saying, "Well, I've never told this before, but...." And goes on to tell how those two girls came to him in a vision and begged him to help them be sealed to their father, who had become inactive and bitter against the church after their deaths. So President Nelson went to work! And after not too long, he was able to seal these children to their parents for time and all eternity. This meeting was so special, and something I will always remember!
I haven't yet mentioned the Tapia family. They are SO prepared to listen to and accept the gospel! They had been taught two or three times before I got here, but in these past few lessons they've started progressing really well. So there is Miguel and Adriana (the grandparents), Daniel and Joanna (the parents), and then Angel, Melissa, and Danny (the kids). They all live together, and are the cutest family EVER! We went over at 8:30 yesterday to help them get ready for church... and we still ended up being half an hour late to sacrament meeting... but THEY CAME! Joanna had gone out night before to buy a dress to wear, all the boys had their collared shirts. But what's even better is THEY LIKED IT!! We went over last night to have a lesson and they kept saying how nice all the members are, how quickly it went by, how much they learned. The kids kept talking about how good the muffins were that they got in primary haha. Ahhh it was perfect. They have a baptismal date for February 14th, and I really do think they are going to be ready!
A random family appeared in our area book app on the iPad, so we went over to try them on Tuesday! Ashley, who's 16, answered the door and she let us in to teach her and her SIX SIBLINGS! So Hna Bushman and I got all excited and we taught them a fun restoration lesson with cool visuals and all that (the parents weren't home so we just taught the kids). And when we get to the Book of Mormon one of the kids was like "Hey! We have some of those!" Then they started telling us how they've met with missionaries before. So Hermana Bushman asked them if the missionaries had asked them to be baptized before! And everyone just looked at her and you could almost hear the crickets in the room until one finally said, "We are baptized!" Hah we had just taught them the whole first lesson like they were investigators! Whoops! The parents didn't get baptized, and there is an 8 year old who isn't baptized, so it actually ended up all working out. Since that first lesson we've gone over a few more times and had some really fun lessons. We acted out Nefi getting the brass plates, and we brought treats to quiz them about Joseph Smith. The 8-year-old loves it and already wants to get baptized! The parents aren't so sure about it yet, but we'll keep working with them.
Wednesday I went on exchanges with Sister Rachuna. She was feeling sick and we had to stay in the apartment half the day, so that was a bummer. But I did get to meet a few of their investigators which is helpful now that I can put a face with their name!
Ahhh I have so much more I could tell about this week, but I think I'll just wrap up by saying that I truly love being here with all my heart. I can honestly say I've never been so happy in my whole entire life! One thing that stuck out to me from President Nelson's talk was when he said "If we keep doing what we've always done, we'll never be better than we've ever been."
Love always,
Hermana Baker
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Hermana Chavez taught us how to make the yummiest tacos in the whole world.
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