miracles

Dear friends and family!!

Hello all!! how are you all doing? I am doing amazing. seriously, this week was great. we have been seeing soo many miracles! and The coolest thing is that I know why we have been seeing so many miracles.  It is because we have been opening our mouths and talking to everyone!! Really though, everyone said it worked.. and I always struggled with it.. but the last couple weeks I have just put away my fears and talked to everyone I can.  And from that, we have seen a lot of little miracles in the work.  It's amazing.

I want to tell you about the biggest miracle we had this week.  Seriously, we were all kind of in shock.  When things like this happen... you don't know if you are dreaming or not.  So long story short, theres this girl named Raquel.  She is an old referral we got when I first came here.  We have never forgotten her, and have always looked for her but never found her, except the first day way back in july.  Anyway, two weeks ago when I was on exchanges.. I had the thought that we should put her as a backup.  I didn't want to because I was scared because if we found her I didn't know what to say.  But I kept getting the prompting.  Then the next day, when our appointment fell through, I knew we had to go try and find her.  We did, and we didn't find her.  But we found Miguel Angel.  Who we set a return appointment with.  Well when we went back to teach him... we knocked on the door.. and this girl answered.  We didn't recognize her but she started going off on how miguel angel never lived here, he was just visiting from mexico, and how he is her brother in law.  Then she tells us that she is Raquel and that she has seen us looking for her and wasnt sure if she wanted it.  and that she moved apartments and that its crazy that we found her.. and that now she wants to learn. yeah. crazy. so we set up a return appointment. the next day, we are trying to find another investigator in the same apt building.  raquel walks by, and we tell her we will see her tomorrow.  we are walking away... and i look back for some reason.  i dont know why. but i see her at the top of the stairs yelling for us to come back. she asks us if we have time right then.  we say yes.  she then tells us that she was going to go out with her friend but had the strong feeling to just ask us to come now.  so we teach her! we find out that she has had CRAZY things happen to her.. and she tells us that she knows God saved her.  She told us the reason she wants us to teach her and her family, is because she wants to know what she needs to do in order to follow in God's way.  So we have another appointment with her tomorrow.  She is amazing!! We are soo grateful for her!!! It's just amazing the way heavenly father worked it all out.  If we would've done one little thing different than our promptings with planning.. we never would've found her.  MIRACLES.

But yes.  That is the biggest of miracles we saw this week.  We also had a man we left with our number call us and ask to meet with us tomorrow to learn more.  So yeah, missionary life is awesome.

This week we had Zone Conference with Elder Hamula, a member of the 70.  It was amazing!!! I wish I had my notes with me so I could share it all with you.  But I want to tell you a part I remember.  So he was talking about how sometimes we feel like we don't get answers from our heavenly father.  because sometimes he wants us to choose, because he trusts us.  And he told an analogy for it.  He said that its like parents teaching there kid to ride a bike.  We start out with our hands on the kid, so we are doing a lot of the work.  But then we take our hands off, but our hands are still close by them, to catch them when they fall.     I just though that was amazing.  And it's true.  Heavenly Father may take his hands off us to let us steer for a little bit, but his hands are right there close for when we stumble or fall.  When we are making decisions, we need to trust his trust in us.  And we need to remember that it will be okay because if we make the wrong decision, he is going to put his hands back on us and let us know.  He isn't going to just let us fall, as long as we keep trusting in him and continuing forward in faith.

I don't know, I just thought that was cool.  His whole talk was amazing.  I love zone conference.

Yesterday we had stake conference in Oakland at the interstake center right by the temple.  They have a huge auditorium.  It's awesome!  It was really good.  An 11 year old girl spoke and it was AMAZING.  I was in awe.  Hahah.  Also, they had a childrens choir and it was the cutest thing ever. man, I love kids.  Being with that many americans for a church thing made me feel like I was back in utah.  It was a weird feeling.

I have a ton of pictures to send this week!! some from driving to zone conference, some from going to stake conference at the temple.. and on top of the temple with oakland and san fran behind us.. and then some from the best thing ever.. ahha cuco and carlos taught us this week!! we told them they had to be our missionaries for a change, and teach us the restoration.  THey did AMAZING!!!! we were so impressed.  And the best part, is idk if you can tell in the pictures, but they made little missionary name tags that say elder jimenez and elder barajas.  hahaha it was the best thing ever! cuco is 14 and carlos is 10 and they are BEST FRIENDS.  they remind me so much of spencer and caleb.

Thank you all for all you do!! I am doing so great here.  I love the mission.  Have a great week!!!