Model Missionaries, Obviously

 

Hi!

I love Las Vegas.

So after I emailed you last week, we went and had a dart war as a district. We walked into the gym of the stake center and the lights were dimmed, there was super dramatic church music (no lyrics) and there were tables on their sides and huge carpet rolls were standing up, and the Elders had made these huge guns made of PVC pipe and foam noodles. We all shot each other with nerf darts for about 3 hours.  We were on teams and had to shoot all of the other team. Needless to say, our district is pretty awesome. 

I convinced my companion that we should switch off every morning running and going to morning sports with our district. So now I drag her running around our complex. When she is done, she just sits where she can see me while I keep running. It's okay though, she stretches. One time while we were running we passed a huge mirror that someone was throwing away, soooo now we have a huge mirror, so both of us can get ready at the same time more easily. 

The beginning of this week was really discouraging. We could never find street contacts and our lessons kept falling through.  One day we had like 7 lessons and they ALL fell through. So frustrating. We cried (we are babies). The next day we decided to fast. UMMM let me just say that FASTING WORKS. For real. We found 20 street contacts and gained 5 new investigators AND all our lessons were good. It was basically a miracle. 

Our new investigators are so great: 

-Adrian: He is so awesome. He investigated the church a few years ago and then went to his friend that is in our singles ward and said he wanted to meet with the missionaries again. He is so prepared to hear the gospel. I invited him to be baptized last night and he said he would! We are preparing him to be baptized on July 20th. I am so excited! 

-Tony: He is being taught with Adrian. They are friends and actually both told their friend that they wanted to meet with us together. His brother passed away recently and he is searching for peace. It was amazing, last night we taught Tony and Adrian about the Restoration and afterwards we asked them how they felt. Tony said he felt "warm and oddly emotional", it was really cool and kind of funny. But so awesome! The Spirit was so strong. He is also preparing to be baptized on July 20th. 

-Nelson: We met him on P-Day at the car wash.  We took him to our Stake President's house to watch “Finding Faith in Christ”. He was supposed to come to church, but had to work. We are hoping to schedule a lesson with him soon though. He is really interested and always says that he wants to learn more. Also, interesting fact... he told us at the car wash how he and his family managed to sneak into America from El Salvador... they are citizens now, but I was like whaaaaaat you're telling us that you came here illegally... hahahah. 

-Eder: Oh my goodness, this is an awesome story. So we were street contacting and we were about to go home. We saw him standing by his car about to get in and leave. Sister Sneidere and I both had a really strong impression to go talk to him, but he was about to leave. We looked at each other and said "should we just go home?" but we decided against it. We talked to him and WOW he is so prepared. He used to have friends that are members and he had questions about the Holy Ghost. So we set up a lesson with him. He is so willing to learn and to do anything that we ask! We invited him to the YSA lake trip and he went and made friends! And he loves meeting with us to learn! He came on Sunday and loves the people and always wants to come to activities and stuff. There is a returned missionary in our ward that he has taken quite a liking to, so they are like best friends now. The RM's name is Jesse, and he loves having a friend and helping us teach Eder. We invited Eder to Family Home Evening tonight and he is going to come. Pray that Eder can feel and recognize the Spirit, please! We challenged Eder to be baptized on July 27th, so now we are preparing him for that. 

We have three baptisms this Saturday, Cristal, Edna, and Lenny. We are so excited! I love serving in a singles ward because you can relate to them and you know what to teach them a lot better (in my opinion). Pray that Edna will be ready... we thought she was but we aren't sure anymore.  The way Cristal describes the spirit is soooo cute though, she gets all excited and says that something is "growing inside of her".  One of our investigators asked me to speak at the baptism!  So I guess I will be giving a talk this Saturday. 

When we street contact, we find a LOT of drunks. Like, a LOT. It's kind of funny because they give us their information, and then we call them when they are sober to make an appointment, and they don't remember us. Well, that's not funny, but you get what I mean. One crazy guy told us that we were false prophets and that he was going to "treat us well at judgment when he judges us" because he "loves us and we are beautiful angels from God" hahah. Yeaaaah. And we're the false prophets? ;) We found a homeless lady and she said she used to be a member but then she stopped going. She wanted to go again, but we didn't know which building or what time she would go (since we are just over the singles ward). We RAN to a member’s house as fast as we could to find out the info and we ran back to her, we were afraid she would leave! People probably thought we were crazy. 

We get fed by members in one of the family wards as well as our singles ward (since the singles don't really have the money to feed us meals). 

The other sisters in our district put diesel in their car, hahahahahahaha. They aren't allowed to drive it until sometime next week. Everyone keeps asking us if we were the ones that put diesel in the car, and we tell them no, and then say, "okay good, we didn't think you were that dumb" hahahaha. Sister Hall and Sister Bohling. I love them. Sister Hall is Hawaiian. Sister Bohling reminds me EXACTLY of Stacy Mero. Even her voice! And the things she says and how she quotes movies, it's so funny. 

Sister Sneidere is awesome. We have so much fun together and we work well together. She loves to bake. And since English isn't her first language, she sometimes gets some expressions wrong and it is SO funny. We laugh and laugh about it. She says that I should be on a TV show.  She says we have more fun than her and her last companion. She is leaving to go back to temple square at the end of this transfer. I will be sad when she leaves. She likes Las Vegas better, she says. 

I am getting some great tan lines... It is so hot here and we walk in the sun a lot. Sister Sneidere's feet look dirty all the time because of her shoe tan line, it is so funny! 

Oh, Mom. Can you send me a list of the scripture mastery rhymes, and also another card that has them all on it? And if you love me a lot... can you send a CD of all the scripture mastery songs? 

Did you hear when they mentioned Las Vegas in the missionary broadcast!? We are cool. I was scanning the missionary crowd for people I know. I'm 99% sure that Derek entered last week, so I thought I might see him. I was hoping that they would show Uruguay so that Carson would be there!  That would have been awesome. 

We get to go to the temple on Friday!! Everyone has been telling me that Las Vegas has the BEST Celestial room - better than Salt Lake's, so I'm pretty pumped. And I get to see my MTC district! I am excited. 

We are so busy all the time! It's crazy! I fell asleep while I was praying last night. I woke up kneeling by my bed. I love the people here and I love teaching people the gospel. It's amazing to see how receptive some people are and how ready they are to have the gospel in their lives. The Church is so true. 

I love you guys and miss you!

 

Love,

Sister Coltrin

PS. Can you believe that I will have been out for a MONTH this Saturday!?