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.