I DO Have a Testimony Of This Gospel

     Wow...this week has been one for the books-that's for sure. The flea market on Tuesday was fantastic! It was super hot, but we loved it. What I really liked was when people would say something to us in Spanish and we would smile and actually respond to them. Or, they would say something funny and I would laugh. They would give us a weird look and say, "Oh! Son muy hueritas. Hablan Espanol muy bien." It was fun. Hna Toro and I just tried to enjoy our last day together. I had to scramble to pack all of my junk. After 12 weeks in one place things really start to accumulate. I need to de-junk. We made some peach cobbler (sorry, no pictures) to enjoy. Actually, we were both kind of moping around the apartment that night and we ate our feelings with cupcakes, ice cream, and peach cobbler. Missionary drama :) On Tuesday morning we headed to the mission office with Brenda. We met a lot of the other sisters there and talked while we waited for the new missionaries to come through. I sat in the back with Hna Toro while President announced the new companionships. We said goodbye and took some pictures. Just ignore how crazy I look. I had been crying a lot that morning. However, I am now with Hna White and Hna Carlson and I love them! Hna White is from Massachusetts and this is her 3rd time training. Hna Carlson is from Orem, Ut and she is just a cute little 19 year-old missionary with a strong desire to serve! 
     We have some golden investigators here! One is a girl named Lili. She is 16 and her tios are members. She wants to get baptized so bad but her mom hasn't been letting her come to church. Well, we went by and taught her with a member and her mom said that is was ok if she came. SCORE! She came to church and loved it! She is praying about getting baptized on the 7th of September. We told her about General Conference and she was like, "It's only twice a year?" How great is she?! Our other guy is Isaac. He is 23 and just moved here from Guatemala. He grew up a 7th Day Adventist. He is very nice ad doesn't have anything against the church, he just is very "by the Bible." I'm so glad we have the Libro de Mormon so that we aren't so confused about certain things. He also came to church for sacrament meeting :)
     Last night we decided to go and look for a couple of people that had been taught before. One of them is named Luz. She has 2 boys and a girl on the way. Hna Toro taught her both times that she was in this area and she told me on Tuesday night that I should baptize her. Lol, I hope so! She is the sweetest person ever! The biggest potential problem is that her "esposo" doesn't want to marry her. Grrrr....the Law of Chastity is there for a reason people! Anywho, we are going back to teach her this week. We also met a man named Gabriel. Well, first we met his mother who is like a straight-up witch doctor who told all three of us our future...appartently, when I get home, there will be two men in my life: un moreno y un blanco. I guess I won't be able to choose between the two of them...but hey! Two men! My future looks bright :) Ha! So her son, Gabriel, is amazing! He had tons of great questions and he is a searcher. He asked me in the lesson why I decided to serve a mission and I told him and was able to bare my testimony about the gospel and it was such a powerful moment. It reminded me of a scripture in Alma 30. In this story Alma is contending with Korihor, the anti-Christ, and he basically tells him that, as long as he has his testimony, he has everything he needs. I DO have a testimony of this gospel and I am so grateful for the opportunity that I have to share it with my brothers and sisters here in Sacramento!
     Well, I love it here! We are actually living in an apartment again. They moved us out of Sister Crosby's house and put the English sisters there. English sisters...they must think they're entitled or something...? :) JK.

Love always, Hermana Freestone

P.S. "Let's not use a sickle. Let's use a combine." -Vaughn J. Featherstone
in reference to Doctrine & Covenants 4

Its hard to listen to the spirit when we arent paying attention

. This letter may be a bit short today, we have a TON of stuff to do with transfers! Speaking of which, I am leaving Lodi. Hna Toro is going to be staying here with Hna Pitcher and they are both Sister Training Leaders. I am going to the Sac 7th branch with Hna White and a visa waiter that will be here tomorrow. Yup, I am going to be in a trio and living with a member :) Hna White is also a Sister Training Leader. I was telling Hna Toro last night before we got the phone call that the one thing I won't miss being her comp for is all of the exchanges she had to do (we were almost positive that she and Hna White were going to be put together). Well...PSYCH! The Lord was probably laughing really hard at me...He has a weird sense of humor that way :) 

     We were able to finally find Esperanza this week and teach her and her "esposo" and his son. However, they were going to separate shortly and, when we went back to teach her two days later there was a moving van in front of their house and she was in the hospital with stomach pains...what the random, right? So yeah, we are going to try and find her tonight (I will leave for Sactomorrow). Our investigator Anselma is no more. Que triste! Her husband is just super controlling and a little abusive and he doesn't think that she needs to be baptized so she has lost all desire to keep learning. We were super bummed! We have visited a few other people this week, but nothing too amazing. We visited with Alejandro though! He is just the sweetest person ever! He said the sweetest prayer before we left and when we walked out I just turned to Hna Toro and said, "Can we keep him?" I am really bummed to leave him behind. I hope he and his wife go through the temple in a year so that I can come back and see them! We also have another member that I just love! Every time that we call her she practically yells, "HOLA MISIONERAS!" It's just so great!

     We also had a chance to teach the sister of one of our members. She lives just a couple of houses down from them so we like to visit her from time to time. She tells us things that she is confused about and we do our best to help her understand. The problem there is that the gospel principles and truths that are confusing in the Bible can be made more clear using the Book of Mormon, and she really won't let us use it. We taught her two days in a row and she finally agreed to let us come by and just tell her what we believe and why we believe it. I think she has heard so many things from her sister and brother-in-law that just confuse her. We are going to go back this week. Teaching her just built my testimony on the book of Mormon. I'm SO glad that we have it so that things can be made more clear for us!

     A couple of funny moments. Both involve our zone training last Thursday. The first one is that I had to put the bike rack on the car so we could take the Galt sisters their bikes. Well, I put the wrench on the back of the car and thought that Hna Toro grabbed it. Come to find out-she didn't. We heard a loud noise driving to the conference and thought that the bikes had slipped off the rack...nope! We lost the wrench-so guess who gets to buy a new one...yay for my seemingly endless blonde missionary moments :) The other fun story was an object lesson. Two elders were blindfolded and given a ball. They had to walk through an obstacle course in the gym and put the ball in a bucket. I was "the spirit" for Elder Idso and Sis Oliphant was "the spirit" for Elder Ruiz. The tricky part was that each of them had 7 or 8 other missionaries yelling at them and trying to trip them up through the obstacle course. Our team dominated! I was yelling at the top of my lungs practically (which is totally contra the idea of the spirit) and it was really hard for poor Elder Idso to hear my voice. He really had to pay attention. It was all good fun though! It made me think of how many distractions we have around us and how it can be really hard to hear the Spirit if we aren't paying attention. I know I really need to work on that.

     Well, I am excited to see what this week will bring with all of the transfers and such. I can't even begin to describe how much I am going to miss Hna Toro, but I will get to see her again at the giant Spanish activity we are going to have on the 2nd of September. And today we are going to "la pulga" aka the flea market. Be jealous mom! Actually don't...that's bad. I love you all so so so so much! I'm so blessed! The church is true, the book is blue! Work hard, have fun, git 'r done! MWAH!

Love always, 

Hermana Freestone

Once we were lost, but now are found

 So this week was very interesting. We started to teach a lady named Tayde and her daughter Cassandra. We have met with her once before, but she was always working. A few weeks ago she fell off a tractor while she was working and messed up her back and all that fun stuff so she can hardly walk right now. It just looks painful. She is home every day so we go over as often as we can to teach and help around the house. Sometimes the teaching is hard because she REALLY likes to talk! It makes sense though. She is a single mom that can't work right now and all of her kids are in school. I would want someone to talk to as well. We taught her and her daughter most of the Restoration. I have a good feeling about this one :) In fact, we went over there one night and a guy was working on her car. When we showed up I guess he told her that he had his Bible and he was going to come over to "prove us wrong." She told him that she likes listening to us and she always hears people say bad things about the Mormons but she never has heard us talk bad about anyone else. She also said that she sees a lot of bad things on the news about other religions, but she has never seen something bad in the news about our church. Then she told him that if she were to convert to any religion it would be to ours. How fantastic is she?! We also started teaching another lady named Theresa. She is a friend of one of our members. We were hoping that bringing a member to the lesson with us would help us out because Theresa like to talk a lot too. Well, if you want the member to help out you probably shouldn't bring the investigator's best friend. We had a hard time getting a word in edgewise and when we finally did the member took it in a completely different direction...oh the joys of a mission! Ha! But they both learned something about the Spirit. Theresa mentioned something about seeing people on tv "feeling the spirit" and yelling and fainting all over the place. Hermana Toro quickly corrected her and told her that that is not the Spirit. The Spirit should make us feel at peace inside and shouldn't make those around us feel uncomfortable to be there either. I'm not sure how willing Theresa is to change right now, but we will have at least planted a seed for future missionaries :)

     One funny thing that happened this week: we were going to a member's house for dinner and I plugged their address in Hna GPS (the gps-our amazing 3rd companion) and we took off. Well, it was taking us a really different way than usual so we checked the address and it was right so we kept on driving. We started to get into unfamiliar territory so Hna Toto checked the address-still good. We kept on driving and just about got to out destination when I checked the address for the third time. Well, our members live in a town called Acampo. When I put the address in Hna GPS I put that they lived on Acampo road-which is clear out in the sticks of Acampo. Yeah...we drove like 20 miles out of our way. Both of us were just laughing. We joked that we once were lost, but now are found! Thankfully we had extra miles and it was the last day of the month :) We were literally so far out in the boonies!

     Hna Toro had another leadership meeting on Friday so I spent half of my day in Sacramento with Hna Cardullo and Hna Sharp who are from Provo and West Jordan respectively. They are in a trio with Hna White-the other sister training leader. They are so great! They have both been out just a transfer more then I have. One of them had to go and get some work done at the clinic so we spent a lot of our morning there. They are both 20 I think. I love being able to meet new sisters! At this point there are 21 Spanish sisters-2 are visa waiters-and I have spent the day with 14 of them. So, as much as I don't like my comp being gone all of the time, I enjoy meeting everyone else :)

     This week I learned some more about a few other cultures. While I was with the sisters in Sacramento we met a super sweet little Muslim man! We learned all about their Ramadan (I think that's how you spell it) fast for 40 days and a little bit more about their culture. They invited us to come back when they had their big feast to break their fast. It would have been fun, but we're not allowed. Actually, we have to get permission to teach anyone who is Muslim due to some of their beliefs. It's not really safe for them. Anywho, I also met a man yesterday who was a Jehovah's Witness growing up and then left when he was 20. He told us a lot about their religion and some of the things that they practice. I kind of enjoy learning about other people's beliefs. 

     We are really pushing to get our less actives back to church. We are still working with Dulce (got to love teenagers) and we are also visiting a man named Hno Rivas. We have visited him a few times and he finally came to church last week. When we went to visit him on Saturday we found out that he was able to find a new job where he doesn't have to work on Sundays. Um...BLESSINGS!!! He was very happy about it and he came to church yesterday again :) I love this work! I really love seeing how happy it makes other people too :)

     Well, I love you all and hope that you are all having fun and enjoying life. "Men are that they might have joy." So work hard, have fun, git 'r done! :) MWAH!

Love, Hermana Freestone