Hello family, it was great to hear about the easter sacrament that you all had. I love easter!! Our choir also sang, it was super touching. I just love when everything is really focused on our Savior Jesus Christ. When reality everything we do in the church has to do with the Savior but I think we tend to forget or mention that. Our Easter Sacrament was really great. In the spanish branch it was fast and testimony meeting and so many people bore beautiful testimonies of the Savior. Then in our english ward we had a choir and they read things about Christ between each number. Then in gospel principles we talked about the life of Christ. We had easter dinner with a member who invited a friend over and we were able to teach about Jesus Christ and how we can use his atonement using the Book of Mormon and and we invited her friend to learn more. We have an appointment with her this week. I love members that understand the need to be a member missionary! So great. The rest of the night we were out talking to everyone about Jesus Christ. We had a powerful lesson with one of our investigators that really really really needed to feel that spirit. Oh I also almost forgot to mention that we were in Bakersfield this weekend and drove home sunday morning but right before we went to bed I hid some eggs that a member had given me for Sister Vasquez, so in the morning she went for a little hunt. ( I love sharing American traditions with her! so great)
Now for this week...oh man. So when we go to Bakersfield we leave Wednesday night at like 630 and come home Sunday morning. So we are only in our own area for a very short time and we always want to use that time the most effictively. Ha. Well Monday we had an appointment with Betsy but before the appointment she texted us and told us she didnt want to waste our time because she really wasnt that into it, that she wanted to be able to spend time with her family. We then told her we understood but asked if we could come over anyway and talk about it. She said yes. We went over and it pretty much broke my heart. Her boyfriend isnt in to church and she really feels like this could put a wedge between them and so forth. We shared some scriptures that she really needed to hear and I know the spirit was so strong. But at the end she still told us that she would come to church when she was ready. My heart was soooo broken. Luckily we have the atonement to rely on. We are still in good contact with her, so Im hoping soon she will want to learn more.
THEN We called the Callahan's, they are a less active family that recently had been activated and then had a huge crisis. Well we hadnt seen them for a while so we called them and she told us that they were going to a new church now and bla bla bla. No matter what we said she just kept saying "we are happy now" "we are happy where we are". So there wasnt much we could do, but it gave us hope when she said, "but you can stop whenever you want". YOU ARE NEVER TO FAR TO COME BACK! (I lovedddd conference)
THEN..a really great girl we met and set a baptismal date with last week called us and said that her grandpa now decided he doesnt want her to learn. ..
I guess things happen in threes right? haha. But it made it hard for me to want to leave our area, but we had so much faith that Heavenly Father will bless us as we keep working hard. We had and have hope.
SO..then we headed to Bakersfield, and it was SO GREAT! I LOVE love LOVE it.
We had this cool experience when I was in Taft. In planning we were praying to know what street to knock and we saw a street called Hope. So we planned to go there. Well we got caught up in other things and didnt have the chance to do so. So at one point we had an appointment and they werent there. Since we were on the street we decided to try to knock a few houses. As we were walking to a house we saw two teenage girls walking across the street and we decided to talk to them. They were so elect and so excited aboutthe gospel and the one girl said that her dad has a lot of sins that he wants to take care of but doesnt know how! We were making an appointment with them and they told us they lived on Hope street!!!!!!! I know Heavenly Father sent them to us because we werent able to make it to hope street. THE CHURCH IS TRUE!! It was really wonderful.
Another really cool experience is that I went back to Arvin (I LOVE ARVIN SOOOO MUCH), and I was with Sister Anderson (she is sooo great), anyway as we were leaving the apartment, we were planning to walk so we were just getting some books out of the car and this man stops in his car and says "hey hermanas can I have one of those books that you give out"...we were like "umm...sure?" So we started talking to him...turns our he works for hermano anastacio (I dont know if you remember him but he is someone I taught when I was in Arvin), and he says that he has seen him change as since he started going to our church and he really wants to learn more. He wanted us to come over and teach him. We gave him a Book of Mormon and got all the information. I was just so proud of Anastacio and it was just a huge testimony to me that people will want to learn about the gospel as we talk about it and as we they see our example. They will want to know Christ because they know you!!!! Love it.
Oh man so many good things but I am just running out of time. You would think 30 mintues would be enough time to talk about stuff haha.
One funny tidbit. Do you remember the story about the man that me and Sister Hunter met when we walked to thousand oaks? Well Sister Hunter just sent me a letter this week telling me his address in LA, I guess they sent the missionaries there but he wants us to write him, Oh and that he wants to donate a bunch of money to the church hahahaha. So great. I cant wait for him to get baptized!
So things are super great. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!!! There will never be another time in my life where I can just walk up to strangers in the street and tell them that Christ lives and that He loves them. I also love being a traveling sister and getting the chance to work with all the sisters. I am just learning so much!!!
LOVE LOVE LOVEEEEEEE,
Hermana Tippetts
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