This Week Was a 4th Quarter, Come-From-Behind, Buzzer Beater!

Baptism of R** - What a great day!

Buen Dia!!! Como estan todos?? I’m doing great! Elder A** and I had a really good week with some awesome success that I will tell you about a little bit later. But, how is everyone doing? Good I’m assuming. Why haven’t I received any photos of my new nephew yet?? What is this?? Haha. How is Tucker doing? I’m glad all is well back home. Please send photos ASAP. I really want some!

Great family from the Long Beach area

This week was a struggle at first, but towards the end we had a really great 4th quarter come-from-behind buzzer beater to end the week, haha! Of course, I’ll start with the good news—R** got baptized! Whoo!! It was such a great service too! All the speakers were awesome and we actually had a very big turn out from the ward along with friends. So I really hope she felt the love and support there. Elder A** did the baptism yesterday and I will be doing the confirmation next Sunday at church so it’s pretty exciting! It was so good to finally have another baptism in the mission because Long Beach was really hard at times, and I feared I would never have another one. I’m so glad that the Lord is always preparing his children and that we were able to be blessed to have R** come into our lives. Since R** has been taught by the missionaries her LA mom of like 20+ years has come back into activity and loves coming to church! Also, her non-member father is showing interest and even came to the baptism yesterday which was really awesome for this family. The Spirit that was there at the baptism was indescribable. It makes me very happy to know that what she decided to do will truly bless many people’s lives. So the service was great, we took some awesome photos, etc. and I will be doing my best to send them soon.

Going to miss the Long Beach members

Well, like I was explaining earlier about a 4th quarter buzzer beater, it was because after the baptism we had another miracle-find happen to us while we were out working. This week we had a goal to find two new investigators since our teaching pool is pretty small as of late. With R** getting baptized we were both a little worried and were all, "well, what do we do now?" haha. All the way up until last night we hadn’t found anybody new to teach and had a hard week in general just trying to teach anybody. So while we were out visiting potentials at around 7 PM last night, we decided we would say a prayer and go knock five random doors to find two new investigators, or at least one. After we prayed, we sort of stood around clueless trying to decide which street we should knock when we saw this house with a super nice truck in the driveway, haha. I was immediately drawn to it and decided that we should knock that house. It looked pretty white, but I still thought we should knock it anyway so that’s what we did. It turned out to be a miracle find! We contacted a young girl named K** (16) and her friend C** (16) while they were sitting at home watching TV. At first it was suuupper awkward talking to them, they were not very receptive and were thinking we were just a couple of goons at their doorstep. But, as we began to teach them we started to notice how they lightened up and then they started asking deep questions from the soul. We ended up having a 1.5-hour discussion on their doorstep answering questions that they had been wondering about. They really showed a great deal of interest in why we do what we do and even said how they want to get closer with God even though they don’t know who or what he really is. As we explained and answered their questions I really could see how God has been preparing them individually and how by us praying trying to find someone to teach, God answered their prayers. It was sweet!!!

Hard to say Good-bye to great members

The Lord really does bless us with the little tender mercies whenever we ask for them, we just need to act on the first impressions we receive even if they may seem dumb or outrageous at the time.

We also had a lot of service opportunities this week as well as a Zone Conference on Friday with President Tew. Both were super good and really helped this week turn into a better week than we thought it was going to be. For the service activity, our zone organized a LA member’s home in the Whittier English ward and helped pack up her house since she is getting ready to move in the near future. All I will say is that she had a lot of stuff!!! Like a very large amount of stuff, haha. It took about 4 hours, but we had lunch there so it was pretty cool. She was very grateful and emotional that we all came to help her since her family and kids had left her and wouldn’t help.  It felt good to help her out just a little.

Well that about sums up my week! I hope you all have a great week and stay safe. Thanks for all the love and support!! Y que tenga buena semana!!

Con mucho carino

Elder Woffinden