Hola!

So no transfers this week (well, yes, there are transfers, but we are staying where we are), but lots of exciting miracles!

This week, we found five new investigators! That is fantastic! And we set two of them on date in the very first lesson we had with them!

So the first one we found is A, and we knew he was going to be an investigator because we had taught his wife and brother already, and he was the one that we had talked to and had been interested in the first place. But they are really cool. They also have two daughters (1 1/2 and 3) that are SO CUTE. Unfortunately, they are EXTREMELY distracting. The first lesson we had a member with us and she was holding them and playing with one of them. But they keep trying to climb in our laps and it is hard to say no because they are super cute. But we do anyways. Most of our pass-along-cards go towards keeping them quiet while the other one of us talks.
Then we finally taught a referral that we got from a member of the Scotchtown ward a couple weeks ago. She is incredible. She has a brain tumor, and has had it for years and has had a ton of medical procedures done and stuff to kill the tumor and fix a lot of other problems that it caused. She hadn't talked to this member in years, but then she decided she wanted to have a closer relationship with God, and this member was the person she knew that had the best relationship with God. So we called her and she called us, too (a miracle, right there) and we just played phone tag for like three or four days, then we finally set up and appointment and then we had to change it, then we finally got another one and taught her and she told us her WHOLE life story. She is super prepared. We are so excited to teach her more.
Then we were driving around a trailer park on our way to try to contact one of our potentials and we saw a guy outside of a house that I recognized as a potential from forever ago that me and my last companion tried to contact a few times. so we pulled over and talked to him, and he wasn't super interested (although not entirely without hope, I'd say) but that we could ask his wife. So we went inside but his wife was in the shower. So we were talking to his two teenage daughters (18 and 16) and they said we could teach them. So we taught them the restoration and they told us they had gone to a Mormon church like 5 years ago and they remembered a bit of the lesson from when the missionaries had taught them back then. We used a lot of visuals and they understood really well. We asked them if they would be baptized, and they said yes. Then Hermana Depablos gave them a date and they said yes! It was so cool!
Also we went by to see a potential that we had found at Walmart one time, who lives with J, our investigator who has a date for April 5th, but they were in the shower, so we talked to J for a little while, then we taught the husband of the potential we had gone by to visit.. He is super cool and J bore his testimony and answered some of his questions and stuff and it was SO COOL! J will be such a strong member someday.
AND, we set another one of our investigators on date, too! His name is J. He is set for April 26th. He is the cousins of a family of recent converts in Chesterfield. I actually was the first one to teach him, back in like August, at his cousins house. I didn't speak much Spanish then, but I remember it being a cool experience. At the time we gave him as a referral for the Mechanicsville Hermanas and I totally forgot about it, then when I went to his house for the first time in January, he was like, "I remember you! You taught me before!" And it was dark and I didn't recognize him at all and I was just like, "Ummmm.... I don't think so...." And then he was like, "No, I remember, you taught me about Jose Smith. Your Spanish is a lot better now." And suddenly I remembered and it was a cool moment. And now he has a baptismal date! Yay!

Also, we finally caught one of our mice with one of the sticky traps we got from our office. It was so sad! It was still alive, but it was so terrified! I was just watching it struggle on there for like an hour while I was studying. Then we gave it to the Elders. We told them not to kill it, but who knows. Elder Hillock was like becoming its best friend, but Elder Stapley, who was holding the trap, looked super disgusted and he had been planning on killing it. So we told him to give it to Elder Hillock to do something with, but who knows what happened. They are supposed to be sending a picture. If they do, I'll forward it to you. But it was a really cute little mouse.

Well, anyways. I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,
Hermana Emily Pratt

Emily with Hermana Depablos and Sister Crandall

Corgi + Labrador

Emily & Hermana Horton (previous companion)

So last Monday we were shopping, and we got a call from President Wilson saying that a Hermana in Stafford went home and they needed Hermana Crandall to go up and be with her companion. So they stole her from us Monday morning. It was crazy, and Hermana Depablos and I have just kind of been trying to figure everything out and stuff.

Ps this letter will probably be really short. My fingers are numb for some reason so I'm really struggling with typing. And I don't have a lot to say today.

It's snowing again, also, which means we have to leave the library early and I will be back on tomorrow. So that is the other reason.

But this week has been really crazy. We found 4 new investigators, one of which is hilarious. His name is E. And he is just a super smiley person. He is just like constantly giggling. It is funny. We were talking to him and we'd met him before and so we were like, "Do you have some time right now for a lesson?" and he was like, "Well, no, I have to go to work in an hour and a half and there are some things I have to do first..." And we were like, "Well, do you even have like 15 minutes for a lesson?" and he said, "Yes, of course I do!" and so we were just like ok.... So we taught the restoration and pretty much everything was like that. We asked if we could come back, and he's like, "No, I work all the time and my schedule is crazy," etc. Then we asked, "Well, could we come back Wednesday at the same time?" And he's like, "Yeah, of course! I'll be here!" and so pretty much the whole lesson went like that. It was really interesting.

 And we put someone on date! For.... This Saturday!

His name is J. He is super great. He's been getting taught since October and his testimony is SUPER solid, he is just afraid to take the step and has been procrastinating a lot. But he reads and prays and comes to church (when he doesn't have to work). We have been using this case study thing we got in Zone Conference (some missionaries in some mission give written homework with specific questions and written instructions and they have to write their answers and stuff) with him and he LOVES it! He answered all the questions we gave him and they were super smart answers and he had clearly thought about it a lot. I even learned new stuff from his answers. We read some scriptures with him and talked to him for like 45 minutes about baptism and such, and then we gave him a date and told him to pray about it! And he finally said yes! We thought it was in two weeks, but apparently it was only one. So yeah. That will be difficult, and it is hard to coordinate with the Henrico branch since we don't know anyone there yet, but we have faith that it will all work out. I'll let you know how it goes. Jenn, the story you told on the voice recorder about the guy that was dragging his feet so you just acted as if he was getting baptized is kind of what we are doing. Pray for us and especially for him, please!

Oh, and you wanted to know about service, well, we cleaned the Ramsey's floors for them! Sister Ramsey is pregnant with child #7 and having a really hard time, so we were glad to do it! They have SUCH cute kids! And they are all very well behaved (for the most part, of course...) It was really fun.

Also, when you take the challenge I gave you to give one Spanish speaker a pass along card -  what you do when they speak back to you is you smile and hand them the card and just say, "Si, si! Jesucristo es bueno!" and then they will take the card. There was a missionary that did that in this area and we always got like a million referrals from her, so it works. And a few of those referrals we are still teaching, so it really is great!

So what is going on with you? Mostly we've just been working hard and doing the usual missionary thing. I would love to hear from everyone about their lives and stuff...

So transfers are next Tuesday. And even though this transfer has seemed so slow just because of everything that's been going on and stuff, it seems like the first week of the transfer, still! But it's actually the last week! 

Well, adios, love you all!

Hermana Emily Ann Pratt

At the Murrells! Ps they have chickens. Bro Murrell gave us some fresh chicken eggs! They are brown and blue and green. They aren't even dyed! It is crazy! But they are yummy. :)

Mechanicsville Hermana's

Hola!

How's it going with your lives?

My life is pretty good. We've found a lot of new investigators, so that's good.

So this week we've found five new investigators! We were really excited. One of them, named M, was a referral from the office of the apartments we live in - we were in there and asked if any Hispanics lived here. She told us there were two. One of them we already knew about, but the other one was new. We went by a couple times and she seemed super uninterested and I was about to say we should just stop trying and call it good, but then we went by last night and she let us in and told us she was catholic, and worships the Virgin Mary and stuff. She was recently married and has a cute little baby. She's 20 years old. And she was talking about how she hasn't been to church since like a month after she is born, but she still is happy in her church. But after we talked for a little while about the restoration, she told us she had a lot of doubts about the Catholic church and all the stuff that goes on there, and how people don't really live their beliefs in the church. Then afterwards she asked us what the ten commandments are and she had questions/a story about like every one of them. But when we got to honor your parents, she really opened up and told her that her father had abused her sisters and she had also been abused and she was having a really hard time knowing whether she should go visit him in jail or not. And when she prayed, she said, "Thank you for bringing these girls here, they really opened my heart and that they listened to me and helped me out." And it was really amazing because I was pretty much just sitting there watching her heart open. It was amazing the difference from her at the beginning of the lesson and her at the end. She just let us in because she and her husband had felt really bad about turning us away into the cold (it was like a gigantic blizzard the first time we went by). But yeah, it was cool.
And one of them was named C. We knocked his door and a Hispanic woman answered and she's like, "I'm cooking, I don't have time right now. But my husband is right there, you can teach him." And she just points to this guy that was standing there in church clothes (they had just come from their church) and so we went in and taught him. He was trying to bash with us a little bit, like quoting scriptures at us and stuff, and refused to read the Book of Mormon, but we set up an appointment for last Saturday. He said, "I'll prepare something from the Bible, you prepare your thing from the Book of Mormon, and we'll share them next time. So we were debating whether or not we should even go back. But we decided that we couldn't just not show up, so we asked a member of the bishopric, Bro Spear, to come with us (he speaks Spanish and he's a really calm person, so we thought he'd be great.) So we got there and talked about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and read in Alma 7 where it talks about it, and C really liked it. He shared a lot of stories about his childhood when God had protected him. And every story he told, he pretty much told it directly to Bro Spear. It was so great. Having him with us really made all the difference. And he bore a really powerful testimony and had a lot of good comments to add, and there was no contention and the Spirit was there. We had to leave before C could share his things about the Bible, so we asked if he could give it to us to read as homework, and we would give him stuff from the Bible and the Book of Mormon that support each other. He said sure, that would be fine, so we left. But it was amazing! And C had actually read a couple pages of the chapter we assigned him from the Book of Mormon, too! Actually, when he had been reading the Bible that morning, he read about what we had prepared to talk about with him, and he said it must have been the Spirit, and we agreed wholeheartedly. It was super cool, because we'd been praying so hard that it wouldn't just be a scripture battle with him. And the whole first lesson, I just had the Spirit telling me that he is prepared. I was really confused at the time because he certainly didn't look prepared, but obviously God knows more than I do, because he is starting to change!
So yesterday we went to the Henrico branch. We got a ride with F, which was like the funniest half hour of my life. We get to where we were meeting him and he gives us a hug, (he does that sometimes when he is really excited to see us, which he was because it was Hermana Depablos's bday on Thursday... It's kind of uncomfortable) then we get in the car and he like runs to the trunk and pulls out this mango juice stuff and some fruit cups and gives them to us. So we start to drive over to J's (who came to church! Yay!), and he is just like blasting U2 and telling us how much he loves rock and roll, and we're just like, "Ummm... That's great. Can we listen to this Motab CD?" Luckily Hermana Crandall had thought to bring it from our car. And so yeah. It was really funny. Also I thought we were probably going to fly off the road a couple times. Virginia roads are ridiculous. They have these TINY little narrow roads that are super windy, and the speed limit on all of them is like 45! It is crazy! I feel like 25 is too fast for some of them! And I usually go super slow, but he was going like 50. Oh well. We made it alive.

Also we had lunch with a random Indian man and his 9-year-old daughter. It is one of Hermana Depablos's investigators from temple square that lives in Arlington and he was going to be down in Richmond, so he took us to a random little Virginia barbecue place (It wasn't all that good... It was one of those, "Oh I don't really know this area that well, let's pull up the closest place on the GPS," kind of things). Then he and his daughter came to church the next day! He didn't want to go, but then we asked his daughter and she did, so they went. She's totally got him all wrapped around her finger. It is funny. And his accent sounds fake, but it is real. So Hermana Depablos, in Temple Square, was just like, "Wow, you speak really good English!" And he's just like, "English is my first language..." Awkward. So luckily she warned us not to ask that. But he also speaks Hindi and is learning Spanish. It was just super random. He is from India, she is from Venezuela, they met in Temple Square, he lives in Virginia and she is doing her outbound there, and me and Hermana Crandall are both from Utah. The world is a crazy place.

Well, yeah. Enjoy it.

Love you all!

Hermana Pratt

Ps how are you all doing on sharing the Gospel with a Hispanic? 

Let me know the stories! Especially the awkward ones! Remember: "Hola, yo no hablo mucho espanol, pero quiere escuchar un mensaje de Jesucristo?" "Yo se que la iglesia es verdadera." "Yo se que Jose Smith era un profeta." "Yo se que el Libro de Mormon es la palabra de Dios." "Yo se que Jesucristo es mi Salvador."

Embrace the awkwardness!

^The theme of my whole mission.

Spanish Lesson...

So this week has been another difficult one for me. Partly because I'm sick AGAIN. I swear, I've never gotten sick this much in my life. Also, I love my companions, but we don't get along super well. They both get along great and agree on most everything and stuff, but I have different ideas which usually just get smacked down because it is two against one. But oh well.

Nothing at all happened last week. Yesterday we were just trapped inside all day because of more snow and ice. Most of our lessons cancelled on us, too. We've found a few new potentials, though, which is great.

A new bishopric AND a new stake president? Man, the ward will be different when I get back.

So this week I've been reading the Ensign and there are a lot of really great articles in there. If you get a chance, read them.

I love being a missionary! Teaching people about the Gospel and inviting them to come unto Christ is the best calling I could ever have. Sorry this is going to be another one of those really short letters, but I just really don't have anything new to say.

So I've been recording some more stuff on the voice recorder and last night I recorded "how to share the gospel with a Hispanic." And I invite you all to share the Gospel with one Hispanic before mother's day. Just one. And I recorded this vocally, but I'm also going to write down the stuff I taught you to say in Spanish. They are very basic and easy to use phrases that I want you to memorize, or at least keep with you so you can use them when the opportunities that I've prayed for you to have and that you should be praying to have come to share the Gospel. So, the basic phrases that I teach on the voice recorder are:

"Hello, I don't speak a lot of Spanish, but do you want to hear a message about Jesus Christ?"

                                                                      =

 "Hola (Oh-law), yo no hablo (AH-blow) mucho (MOO-cho) espanol (ess-pahn-YOHL), pero quiere (Kee-YAIR-ay) escuchar (ess-koo-CHAR) un (oon) mensaje (men-SAW-hey) de (day) Jesucristo (HEY-soo-CREE-stow)?"

"Hola, yo no hablo mucho espanol, pero quiere escuchar un mensaje de Jesucristo?"

Then you would hand them the pass-along-card with a picture of Jesus on it (I expect you all to acquire one in Spanish) and with the Spanish missionary's phone number on it. If you can, try and get their address for the missionaries too.

Then you would bear your testimony to them.

"I know the church is true."

                                                                       =

"Yo se (say) que (kay) la (law) iglesia (ee-GLAY-see-ah) es verdadera (VAIR-dah-DAIR-ah)."

"Yo se que la iglesia es verdadera."

"I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet."

                                                                       =

"Yo se (say) que (kay) Jose (hoe-SAY) Smith era (AIR-ah) un (oon) profeta (pro-FEH-tah)."

"Yo se que Jose Smith era un profeta."

"I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God."

                                                                       =

"Yo se (say) que (kay) el Libro (LEE-bro) de (day) Mormon (mor-MOWN) es la palabra (pah-LAW-brah) de Dios (dee-OWS)."

"Yo se que el Libro de Mormon es la palabra de Dios."

"I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior." Ps this is the most important one! Hispanics will listen if you use this one!

"Yo se (say) que (kay) Jesucristo (HEY-soo-CREE-stow) es mi (mee) Salvador (SAHL-vah-DOR (or like el Salvador, the country))."

"Yo se que Jesucristo es mi Salvador."

So there you have it. No more excuses not to share the Gospel with a Hispanic. So, will you all share the Gospel with AT LEAST ONE Hispanic between right now and Mother's day? I know you will have opportunities, and I know that you don't even have to speak Spanish to share the Gospel with everyone. Even if you can't remember how to say these things (Or you could keep them written in your bag or something), even if you just hand them a card or anything. And Hispanics also won't judge you. They think it is SO WONDERFUL when Americans even attempt to learn Spanish. They will help you out and think you are so cute. I promise that even if you do nothing but plant seeds, the Lord will send you many rich blessings for your effort, especially since you had to put forth more effort. The more the sacrifice, the more the blessings! You can all do it!

And for those of you that know some Spanish, brush up on it and have a conversation with them. For those who don't, just smile and give them a hug! They are a very warm and loving and accepting people.

Love you all! Have a great week!

Hermana Emily Ann Pratt

Ps let me know how it goes! And if you get one, don't stop there! Keep going! Love you!