Serving in San Antonio Texas: LORI ON DATE! Sept 16, 2019...

Good morning family and friends!! I hope everyone is just loving life right now because there is so much to enjoy out there!! This week for me was super awesome! We have been seeing so many miracles lately and our friends are progressing a lot! I hope and pray that you are all doing well!

This last week started off great... haha we did device audits and our first companionship inventory and it was crazy! We were kind of in a rush that afternoon so my plan was to just go through them and explain how they are done, but we actually did them haha. So with device audits, every week we check each others phones to make sure that if President Nelson took one of our phones, he could show it to everyone and say, "This is one of our missionaries phones!" Which is crazy to think about haha but we also have a rule that we aren't allowed to chat back and forth with anyone other than parents, and so that was fun explaining that rule and why we have it.. It's just always hard for me to be the bad guy haha. Then we had companionship inventory and I wasn't mean, I promise!! But my companion started to cry and it was hard :( It is always tricky adjusting to the field though and she also told me she is a cryer, so this will be super fun!But she is doing a ton better and adjusting better as well! I have just loved her and told her how amazing she is, because she really is!! She is such a pro, like so outgoing and talks to everyone, I have no idea how I have been so blessed, but I am so grateful!
We visited with a member this past week that hasn't been active for years, and it was so awesome and spiritual because she said just that week she had been thinking about coming back to church and how she thinks it is time, and then we contacted her to come visit her! It is seriously always so awesome to notice how the Spirit is working through us!
We had a couple visits with Lori, and just like my subject line says... SHE IS ON DATE! and wow I am so stinking happy for her! We visited her on Tuesday and she has been doing so good, and is getting so close, so we asked her if she wanted to set a goal and a date for her baptism and she started crying she was so happy!! She really never thought this day would come. So we prayed about it and felt that we should set it for October 5th. As soon as we left her house though, we realized that weekend is general conference.. SO... it is possibly going to be moved FORWARD to the 28th.. so next weekend!! Seriously. I. AM. SO. THRILLED!!! The only problem we might see with that date is that it is also the day of the funeral for her father.. But this week we will get it all figured out with her and I'll update you all next week :)
We had a busy Wednesday last week, in which we visited with Celia and taught another english lesson to her! She is so cute! It is also so fun to get to practice some spanish! Then we had district council and those are always so interesting haha. We also had a lesson with Hannah, and she is so fun to be with and to teach, especially because she asks us questions that really help us grow as missionaries, but it is hard because she isn't progressing much so we might have to stop teaching her :( She is out of town this week, so we don't have a lesson until next week, but we hope her heart changes and she becomes more receptive to the messages we are bringing to her. That evening we had our first ward coordination in Parkside and it was awesome! It is so fun and rewarding to leave a coordination meeting and feel like you accomplished something, especially when you feel like you accomplished a lot! It has been a journey figuring everything out in the three wards, but after tonight, we will have officially had a coordination in all three wards! It only took 6 weeks, but that's ok haha.

We had an awesome lesson with Kris planned this last week (he is the one that missionaries have been trying to meet with for 5 years but he always cancels on them) and we really thought it was actually going to happen, but we were wrong.. about an hour before the lesson was planned for, he cancelled.. so we changed our plans and we went to a members house and made cookies, in which we delivered to Stephanie and her family! Stephanie had some dental work done on Friday, and so she wasn't able to come to church, but we surprised her Thursday evening with cookies and ice cream and she really loved that!
We also had another really cool experience with the Spirit working through us! Right before we went to the members house to make the cookies, I was thinking about who we could call to visit this next week, and Sister Pfeiler's name ran through my head, so we called her. She seemed to be doing good and we were able to schedule a visit with her for this Thursday, but she also shared something really cool. She said that just a minute before that, she had been thinking about maybe if she started to start reading the Book of Mormon again, that maybe things in her life would start being better and easier again. She started thinking about people she could ask for a Book of Mormon, but then kept telling herself it would be weird, and then like 5 seconds later, we called her. She told us that over the phone and my eyes started tearing up because of how special it was, and I knew she needed an experience like that.

Friday we had such a special zone conference!! Elder Ochoa came from the seventy and it was so awesome to be taught by him! He was so interactive, like came down by all of us missionaries instead of standing at the pulpit, and he just talked to us and helped us figure out how we can become better missionaries! He talked a ton about repentance, and it was awesome because truly if we are out here inviting others and asking others to change their lives and repent, we also should be doing the same thing! It was super special to be in his presence!
I also got to meet Hermana Chamberlain at zone conference, and this is special because she is my "little sister," which means that my awesome trainer Hermana Schellenberg trained her after she trained me! She must have got the more polished version of my trainer, as I was her trial and error ;) But Hermana Chamberlain is actually originally from the wards that I am serving in, which is crazy! She moved to California after high school and then got called right back to her home mission! So since I am serving in her home ward, I have heard a lot about her haha but it was great to finally meet her!
We also had a visit with Candy this last week and it was good in a sense that she keeps saying she wants to be baptized sometime in the future! We didn't have the longest lesson since her baby needed her after about 20 min of being there haha. We are still really hoping to get someone who speaks Mandarin to come on visits with us!

Saturday we had quite the day! We were literally at the church from 11 am until 6 pm, standing like the whole time haha. We had our open house for our new church building, and it was so awesome! We had so many nonmembers come see our new building and it was perfectly set up! In every room, there was a different program set up so that people could come and see what we do and are really all about! We were there promoting our english class, so it was fun and we really hope to have some people start coming to our class! We had about 600 people in total come and view our new building, and about 150 of them were nonmembers! We really hope and pray that some good seeds were planted for future missionary work!

Last night we had dinner with an awesome member family, and one of the girls had her boyfriend over for dinner as well, which is always a wonderful surprise when we go to dinner and there is a nonmember there! He asked us a lot of great questions, and it was actually his first interaction with the missionaries in the whole 2 years they have been dating! He has come to church with her though and he often plays basket ball at the church! He will for sure become a member some day haha.
After dinner last night we had a wonderful visit with a recent convert of about 2 years, Sister Leever, and also her two daughters who are 12 and 10, and are not members! It was a wonderful visit and we are going to start visiting with them weekly to teach them the lessons again, so we really hope the two girls enjoy them! We are excited for this opportunity to hopefully help their family become more united as well.

This week we have lots of wonderful stuff planned! We have interviews with president tomorrow, and then lots of wonderful visits scheduled that we hope don't cancel on us! Thank you all again so much for your love and support you constantly give me! I am so incredibly blessed to have you all!

Have a wonderful week!
Hermana Griffin :)