February 17, 2014

Familia Beckett-

Well I'm not allowed to email in any other time, but we got iPads this
week so it will make it so much easier. I'll type you up a nice long
one every Sunday night to send in the morning. The baptism is this
Sunday, the 23rd. Her name is Rubí Silva (soon to be García!)- we're
so excited for the wedding, the baptism, and to go to the temple with
her. The other date is set for March 16th- Elisa Padilla. We were
teaching her and it was going really well but then she hasn't been
home/answered the door once this week. Which is really scary because
she's in her 70's- we're hoping she's okay. The third date is March
30th- María Mendoza. I talked about her in my letter I think, but in
case you didn't get my box yet.. She's the woman that had been praying
for us ever since she saw us in Target and felt the desire to talk to
us. We invited her to be baptized just a couple days ago and were
actually really surprised when she accepted, because it was our first
real lesson with her! We're teaching lots of other people but none who
want to make commitments any time soon unfortunately. We have two
Alma's- one is our neighbor and came to our door asking to be baptized
because she wants to turn her life around. The other tells us every
time we teach her that "Mormons are so beautiful and have this light
about them and I want that light". They're both so ready to accept the
gospel but have major things we need to work with them through first.
Other than that we have two or three inactive families that we work
with on a pretty regular basis- usually service or sharing what we
read about in our personal study to strengthen them. I taught a FHE
lesson to one inactive family this week alone because they speak
English, and God just put the most powerful words in my mouth and they
cried and came to church yesterday for the first time in such a long
time! This work is so rewarding. Alma 29:9-10.

We're finding though that as we see more miracles- the adversary works
even harder to stop us. Lots of trials this week. The men here treat
me with such little respect just because I'm the only white woman. It
was easy to ignore their degrading comments, whistles, winks, and
nasty gestures the first couple weeks- it was almost funny. But slowly
it started to really drag me down, and this week my self esteem was
just in the slumps. I was hoping y'all would have some advice- sorry
if it sounds like I'm complaining. I really do love it here! They just
need to get used to having me around.

Just send me your love. And American food is always nice of course hehe. There's only
Mexican markets in our area. 

Hermana Beckett