Assyrian Babylonians!

Hello family! Well, it’s the halfway point of the transfer. Things are still excellent here! I love California. Seriously. It’s funny how a place becomes your home. I definitely will miss it here. I just love the people and the palm trees and the sunny days and everything else. It still is weird, but this is definitely the place where I needed to be! Who would’ve thought?Let’s see, an update on people. The Luceros are doing great. For the last week and a half we had planned to read in the introduction to the Book of Mormon with them, and then get Brother Lucero (non member) to pray right then, with us, and then we were going to ask him to be baptized. This is what President Watrous wants us to do with everyone when we first teach them. And even though B. Lucero has been taught for a long time, we wanted to do it with him anyway. And it went really well. The spirit was definitely there, and we asked him to be baptized. He said he wasn’t ready. We pretty much expected that. But we had to ask. That’s what missionaries do! But for the next little bit that we were there talking to the girls about their baptisms, and when we left, he definitely looked like he was thinking really hard. Good! Who knows.The Lopez are also doing great. Everything’s set to finish up the last couple of lessons and get their program together. And after saying it over and over again, we finally feel like people are starting to fellowship them in the ward. Good!Raven’s good. Still teaching him. Also still teaching Cesar and getting him ready for baptism. We found out he smokes. But because he’s bored. He said that the addictive properties don’t affect him, and he can completely stop whenever he wants. Alright. We’ll see. Cesar understands and remembers everything we teach, but he definitely still has some kind of disability. We don’t know what though. When we started talking about prophets and asked him why it would be good to listen to a prophet he said “because it’s a straight shot to the celestial kingdom.” True, true. We were glad he remembered the lesson about the Plan of Salvation a couple of days earlier! He also asked us if after the resurrection, if the pre-earth life would be destroyed-because there “would be no need for it.” Interesting, I’ve never thought about that one before. This is why it’s great talking to all the odd people we teach, because their perspectives are so different, and their questions are so much fun. I love it!

On Saturday we went to teach Nicole. Oh man. That morning she called and asked me if it was okay that she was already wearing her Halloween costume-because that night was our ward activity and she was going to it. I said that was fine. She said she should’ve called the night before to check with us and she was sorry. But I said it’s okay, you can be wearing it. She said she just wants to respect us and she’s sorry, and blah blah. Really, Nicole is one of the most interesting characters ever. I will try my best to do an impression of her someday. We brought one of our ward missionaries with us to the appointment and when we opened the door, there she was, Snow White! The thing is, Nicole is very small, thin, super pale, black short hair, always wears red or pink lipstick. So her doing Snow White makes sense. Yet she still wore a wig and oh wow, she looked pretty funny. It was so hard not to be distracted and look at each other and laugh. There she is sitting on the couch as snow white as we talked to her about prophets. Then there’s a knock on the door. Nicole freaks out and doesn’t want to answer it. That’s normal. She asks us if she should answer it. We say yes. She doesn’t want to because she thinks it’s her mom. Then you hear someone say something through the door, and Nicole’s 2 year old son George goes “Grandma!” So Nicole lets them in. It’s her mom and her grandma. We have never met them, and we’ve always been curious about Nicole’s mom. Nicole swears her mom doesn’t love her. Her mom is in these little black stretch pants and leopard print shirt and sweeps into the home and is like “oh Nicole, oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company, oh George! Oh Nicole, have you eaten..blah blah blah.” She was very dramatic and funny and came in with pizza and gave us all pizza as she talked the entire time and kept moving around, doing Nicole’s dishes, and cleaning her house and, well it was pretty hilarious to us, even though Nicole was distressed. I asked her mom where she was from and she said “oh, we’re Assyrian Babylonian. We’re east Catholic, Nicole was baptized as a child…” and Nicole is going “mother, please, mother. you weren’t supposed to come until later. Mother…” Very funny. So apparently her family is from Iran. Who knew? Assyrian Babylonian. That’s a first from me. I guess I’m wrong, but I sure thought the Assyrian and Babylonian empire were destroyed a long time ago. Pretty much her mom is not what we expected. Just a flashy/dramatic/nagging mom. And as she was doing her dishes, our member said she wishes her mom would come over and do her dishes at her house and Nicole pipes up and offers to come over and do her dishes for her. It was one of the best teaching appointments I’ve had. Snow white and her mom.

That’s probably the best story of the week. There are always lots of good stories. This week we should be pretty busy too. We have to go on splits a couple of times, and that should be crazy. Good to be busy! We’re just trying to find those new investigators, so that after these people are baptized, there will still be people to teach. Just in case you were wondering what we’re doing here on Halloween…well, we’re doing normal missionary work! Last year we were supposed to be in the apartment at 6:00pm, studying, if we didn’t already have set appointments to go to. But this year we are to be out working as usual! So we’ll be doing that. Trick or treat, we brought you the Book of Mormon! And today we will be carving pumpkins as a district to celebrate!

I can’t believe how time is flying. Everyday I love being a missionary more and more! It’s crazy! It’s odd and feels a little, uh, scary, to think I won’t be doing this much longer. So I try not to think about it! We’re still sprinting! I love you all so much!

Love,Emily

Lunch with Braden

Last week I was invited to lunch with Braden at his beautiful elementary school, Hassan Elementary. He's a kid who really knows how to enjoy life: eat dessert first. Braden was so cute and when he saw me he came right to me, took my hand, and led me back to his table. What a wonderful thing that is to have your hand in the hand of a little person. Afterwards, I was invited to see his classroom and it is all so wonderful. Another wonderful thing about living in Minnesota: living near the Galloways!

Jones Update

These are some of the happenings in our world lately. Brock finally finished up his Eagle Project. He planted 10 trees at a new park in northeast Centerville. Brock, Raymond, Brock's leaders and troop worked hard on 2 different days to get them all planted. The soil was rocky and hard so he was grateful for all the help he received from everyone. Now to just get all the paperwork completed so he can be awarded his eagle.

It is hard to believe Cole has only 1 more regular season football game left. It seems he was just playing sophomore football and now his senior season is almost over.

The Viewmont Vikings have had some highs and lows this season with big wins over Davis, Weber, Northridge and Layton but difinitely should have won the close games against Syracuse, Fremont and Bountiful. It has been "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" this season. Cole tore his MCL against Layton. It ended up being a grade 1 tear so he only missed 4 practices and no games but will have to wear a brace until the first of the year.


Cole also had fun attending the Homecoming Dance!!

Home in Anaheim**

Sister Sanders with Vanessa Delgado and her children, Andrew, Ruby and Carina in La Habra

We had a pretty wonderful week I must say. Nothing especially spectacular. We did a Family Home Evening with the Lucero family and the stake president's family. We taught the Plan of Salvation and then basically played charades/catch phrase/pictionary with different Plan of Salvation words and phrases. Like what we did with Raven and the Restoration. It's good to see how much people know-it shows in how they explain it. Plus, we just want the Luceros fellowshipped more. I don't remember if I clearly explained the Luceros before. Sister Lucero is a member. She's Spanish. I knew her sister in the Santa Ana ward. Robert, the husband, is not Spanish, and not a member. For years S. Lucero took her two daughters with her to a Spanish ward, but last year decided it would be better for them to be in an English ward. Plus, if her husband ever joins, English is better for him too. The girls want to be baptized, always have, but Dad said not until the oldest was 15. So that's now. Jenny (15) and Ashley (13) will be baptized Nov. 14. The Dad is doing well too. He's had lots of missionary lessons. He's never seemed to show too much desire to commit to anything. But he's showing signs of change. Hopefully his daughter's excitement and baptism will help soften his heart!

Raven continues to do really well. We had a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation. He's a deep thinker and had a bunch of questions the other week, so we decided we'd reteach this lesson and help answer/direct his questions. He has interesting questions about the resurrection. He's accepting of the things we explain, he just wants to get it even more. So he was asking if we all have a personal resurrection, at different times, and if Christ would have to be born again and die again and resurrect again so we could then be resurrected. I've never had someone ask that. He also asked if when people are resurrected, if people who aren't resurrected can "perceive them in their physical form." Meaning if we are here as mortals and someone else comes as a resurrected being, if we would see them as we see anybody else. We just used a lot of scripture references and stories to explain principles to him. We had a member there too who brought up all these crazy theories and together they got all philosophical about stuff. That's great. But bottom line is the other stuff doesn't matter. The scriptures tell us plainly what we need to know.

No new investigators this week. Close though! We both really want it though, and are absolutely committed to knocking as much as we need to and working with the members as much as possible to find new people to teach! There are some members that are really trying hard to work with their friends. Others are a little slower about it. Hopefully they got re-inspired from conference this weekend. I though Elder Perry's talk was great. Where he said that as members, we have to study and gain a testimony of the three basic lessons that missionaries teach, so that the member can be ready to testify of them as well. Also just the huge theme of loving one another and serving people that definitely is the heart of missionary work.

I must say my favorite talks were probably Elder Bednar's, because he's always very clear about what he wants to say. They were all wonderful. I really appreciated the ones that talked about learning to recognize the spirit in the first session. That's something I've been trying to improve from day one in the MTC! But I have to agree with you Dad, that Elder Holland's talk was just amazing. He's always sooo passionate and so direct in the way he talks. It's almost a little overwhelming sometimes. But I really appreciated his testimony of the Book of Mormon. It’s inspired me to read the Book of Mormon one more time before I'm finished here. I'm only in Jacob, so I'm really going to have to pick up my pace! It's just so wonderful to hear from the prophet and the apostles! They truly are men called of God!

We got a flat tire yesterday in between conference sessions. I was going to figure out how to change it, because I know it's pretty simple. But this nice man came out and changed it for us. He earned himself a pass-along card! Then yesterday we had dinner with a funny couple. It was S. Cooprider's b-day and she really likes this family. They're 60ish and she's super energetic and never stops talking. She joined the church when they first got married. He used to pitch for the Angels. Apparently he was one of their best. His name is Clyde Wright. (Their son also played baseball, but for the Yankees and for the Cleveland Indians-his name is Jared Wright-in case any crazy baseball fans want to look them up...David!) Anyway. Brother Wright joined the church like 6 years ago. He's crazy. He only goes to priesthood, and not every week. His wife isn't sure why he really joined the church. She said the only time she's heard him pray was when their son was pitching in the World Series. He's really nice though, and funny. He talks like he's an old man, and he calls us Jehovah's Witnesses. Dinner was interesting. This is probably the first time in a long time that they sat down together for dinner.

Love,
Emily

It's getting to be the last opportunity for any of you to write Emily a letter. Her mission home address is:

2500 North Bristol Street, Santa Ana, CA 92706

I am sure she would love to hear from you!!

Raymond and the Big 5-0!

I'm sure Raymond is going to love this post. Yup! He's 50 but can still beat anyone up the mountain. HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAYMOND!!

A Day on the "New" "Old" Boat

We went up to Pine View Dam last Saturday to test out the new, old boat. It has been in storage down at Rick's shop for a few years. Rick discovered that racoons had destroyed the inside of the boat and had been nesting there. They had ripped and chewed through the seats and had stripped the covering off the walls of the boat. They also chewed up the ski ropes and left lots of surprises. Rick has cleaned and cleaned and cleaned the boat. He also has worked and worked and worked to get it running. It's not the same boat that we have loved and spent so many wonderful hours on but we had fun!

Merri

Anne

Elaine

Rick

Rick is there somewhere!

Maddi, Merri & Lexie

E, F & A

It's Salsa Making Time

Most people equate autumn with the falling of leaves and cooler temperatures. We think of the autumn time and know that salsa making time is here. Every couple of years we buy enough supplies (tomatoes, onions, peppers) to brew our own home made batch (or more) or salsa by Kirk. This has become his project as he loves, loves salsa. He tweaks it this way and that to make it just the way that he likes it. I especially love that this has become his project from beginning to end. It's great to see his finished project.

Kirk's Kids



Salsa ingredients

Braden

Ashleigh


Justin

Nannie + 3 = Fun

The Game of Life

Justin, the littlest slugger

One Friday evening recently we all went to a St. Paul Saints baseball game. This is a minor league team, a "farm" team where they try hard to entertain the small crowd gathered. We have just a couple of memorable photos of what turned out to be an unusually chilly night (we left early!). Even though we were all there, it seems as the two littlest sluggers had the most fun!

Leigh and Lindsey

A Day in the Life

Hello all! Everyday this week seemed to just blaze by. But by last night, I realized that somehow the week still seemed long and I was worn out! We had a very full week. Monday we pretty much just got our basic p-day things done really fast then spend the day cleaning our apartment. A couple of girls from the singles ward and Sister Chriswell and Sister Nekesi came and helped us clean. We found out this apartment had missionaries living in it for 5 years. I did almost a year in it myself! We got everything packed up and thrown away and organized and we moved on Thursday. We have elders who are also the "mechanics." They drive a truck so they can help missionaries move and drive around all the luggage when missionaries come/go.

And now we are in our new apartment. I will have to take some pictures. I think we live in the best deal in the mission aside from living with members. We have a washer/dryer in our apartment, granite countertops, all new appliances, very beautiful pool (oh wait, that doesn't effect us) and computers/internet to use on the main floor. They also have a nice little gym here, but we're not allowed to use the gyms as missionaries. Anyway, living here is definitely a perk. We'll see if I end up finishing my mission here! Moving took up a large chunk of our time on Thursday, but we actually were able to visit more people and teach more people this week than our first two weeks. Yeah! It was a very busy week! And we got a bunch of referrals from missionaries, members and other random sources. Even though not all of those are really going anywhere, it's still a blessing to receive referrals! I will try to share some of the highlights from the week.

We continue to teach Raven. He is doing so well! We had to explain to him that his baptismal date will be on hold until he's off probation. But he's reading everything we give him, and more. He came to stake conference on Sunday, and really, he is progressing. I've already seen the changes in him. He was a little more unkempt when we first met him, but he's cleaned up, got a haircut, wears the closest thing he has to a suit to church. I only pray that the branch will really just continue to fellowship him because he's on probation for at least a year, so this is a long term thing. But so far so good!

Right before I got to this area, the sisters received a media referral. A guy was referring his girlfriend to have the lessons. He even called the sisters. But other than that little contact, we had never been able to meet him or her or get in any more contact. After multiple calls this week, we finally talked to him, and he's down in Irvine, but her official home is here in Anaheim so he thought we could teach her.

We met with Raichel on Saturday. Her boyfriend couldn't come, but it all worked out. I have never in my mission met anyone who was sooooo incredibly prepared to just be baptized. She's 27, has always lived in Orange County, is really smart and has her own skin care/waxing business. She was raised Christian/Pentecostal; but she always felt something was missing. After ending a 2 year sort of destructive relationship she just wanted to do her own thing for a while. Lots of people kept saying she would meet someone soon who would change everything for her. A couple of days later she went to a club with a friend and saw this guy in line and told her friend "that's my husband." She knew it sounded crazy, but she just felt it. Later that night she finally saw him again and she was just thrilled to have met a "nice Christian boy." When he told her he was a Mormon it was no problem.

They've been dating 6 months and she says he's a little less active actually, but she's gone to church with him a couple of times and has a Book of Mormon and has read various chapters and she just knows it all makes sense. She had a couple of doubts/questions about the trinity, Satan, why we focus on the Book of Mormon, etc., and we talked about them, but after she said her questions were completely answered. She really really wanted to be baptized, but she just wasn't sure. And her dad's a little anti. It was amazing because I feel like we only had to be there to officially invite her to be baptized. As we taught her the Restoration she said she knew it was all true and she cried as we shared the first vision. I don't know that I've ever taught the Restoration where the spirit has been so strong or when the other person has made me want to cry too! Raichel is just incredible. She says she knows it sounds lame but all she really wants is to be a mom and have kids and she feels like that will fulfill her. Yeah! She went to some type of fireside where Elder Scott spoke and she just knew he was an apostle and she's so impressed with everything. She accepted the invitation to be baptized and is so excited and thrilled with everything. She's just so driven by a desire to do what is right. So that's my really long story about Raichel.

Sisters Sanders & Fatkin after a "P" day bike ride (borrowed member's bikes)

The only downside to the story is that we feel like because her boyfriend is in Irvine, and she'd really be going to church there, that the best thing for her would be to be taught by the elders there. Sad! But I'm so excited for her. I have no doubt that she'll be baptized and as long as this Cody, her boyfriend, is right for her, then they will be married in the temple. In fact she'll probably be the driving force for him to become fully active. That's my best story of the week!

Another interesting teaching experience was one we had yesterday. One of the counselors in our branch presidency has 2 Danish exchange students living with him. One is the daughter of a mission companion he had and the other girl isn't a member. And they've come to church together the last couple of weeks. So we thought, “Hey, why not go visit them?” They're both around 21ish: Pia (non member) and Sarah (member).

We talked with them for a little while about all their plans while they're here, and talked about Denmark (now I have someone to go stay with there!) and they had us try black Danish licorice. And I asked them about Ebbleskivers. We asked Pia a little about her religious background. She doesn't really have one. Kind of believes in God, but just figures people believe in whatever makes them feel good and she just doesn't have a belief in much. We asked if we could share a message. Pia was a little surprised, because obviously she doesn't know too much about missionaries. But Sarah wasn't surprised! We watched that video "Finding Happiness" and put it in Danish because though Pia speaks very good English, we figured it would be easier. It seemed perfect because it just talks about the basics, talks about there being a God.

Afterwards she really didn't have much to say. We all bore our testimonies on God and prayer. I invited her to try praying. Her response was kind of like "not to be rude, but is this what you do?" Wondering if that's what we do as missionaries. Yes. It was interesting. She really didn't respond much to the idea of praying or anything. But it's okay. We thought we'd try. Plus now she knows us so maybe if she gets a desire to learn more, she won't be afraid to ask. And I know the family they're staying with does FHE and family prayer together and everything. And they're really good to these girls, so that's a good impression. It was different though to teach someone who really was kind of ambivalent to the idea of God and though she said she's prayed before she never really felt like someone was listening. Hmmm. That was our Danish experience!

We had a really great week! Everything is going really well! We still aren't sure who is going to be baptized this transfer, but it will happen! The weather has been pretty nice, and I'm getting used to the ward/branch. I love you all! Thank you for your prayers and love and support!

Love,
Emily

Sisters Sanders, Fatkin and Dutson

Jordan Ryan Sanders

Here's a littlest boy: Jordan Ryan Sanders who was born June 17, 2009. This is the day that his daddy, Ryan, blessed him and gave him his name (well, actually, he's always known his name just like the rest of us!). We just think he's quite the boy and can't wait to meet him.

Melanie & Ryan on Jordan's Blessing Day
August 23 (duh!), 2009
Austin, Texas