Zoe's First Latin Companion- Hermana Dominguez from Puerto Rico

From David (Zoe's Dad)- We get other, personal e-mails from Zoe and they all sound great. Some weeks Zoe sends a dozen pictures and some weeks she doesn't send any. This week she didn't send any! I found this picture of Zoe in the middle of a haircut on another blog. It is low resolution, but better than nothing!

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Hello everybody!

Transfers are tomorrow and I´m staying in my same area, but getting my first Latin companion! Her name is Hermana Dominguez and is from Puerto Rico. She speaks both Spanish and English, but I think I´ll ask her to force me to speak in more Spanish. It´s hard to always force yourselve with two Americans , because it´s just easier to speak in English! 

Everything is great here! Still working with people... the usual. But we do have a very cute family we´ve more recently started working with. The boy´s name is Juan' Carlos and he is 9 years old. There´s also his mom, Ciomara, and they have a little baby brother too. We met them through people in our ward who are their friends. Juan Carlos is very excited about all the new stuff he´s learning. We ran into him the other day in the street and he asked us when we could come teach him again, and not the other way around! (We´re usually the ones who do the asking). Then when we went to visit his family his mom had read her whole reading assignment and Juan Carlos had worked on praying like we had taught him the week before. His mom said he prays every morning and night. He also said the closing prayer to our lesson and then after said, ¨Look my prayers are getting better!¨ He´s been to church 2 weeks in a row now, and his mom came for the first time yesterday. I´m very excited to see how things keep progressing and I love how their enthusiasm!

Another enthusiastic one is Rosie. I think I talked a little bit about her before. She has a brother who´s a convert and joined the church a couple years ago and is 17. She´s 16 and has been coming to church and all the activities for a year now, but just very recently (since I´ve been here) has decided that she believes in the church and loves it and really wants to be baptized. For the first time she´s reading the Book of Mormon and reads about 2 chapters every couple of days. Last time we went to see her and we asked how her reading was doing and she shared 2 verses that she liked that she had read, even though we hadn´t even asked her! She excited for her baptism coming up this month and she´s asked that her older brother be the one to do it! It´s so excited and there´s been such a positive change her, even in the short amount of time that I´ve been here, she´s become so much more happy and has been doing good things and it´s awesome! I´m so excited for all the great things she´s going to do!

Those are just a couple investigators for this week, but I´ll make sure to talk about more some other time.

Also, I found a quotation that I really liked this week and thought I´d like to share it. It´s from Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin who was an apostle not to long ago, but now he´s passed away. 

He says, ¨We´re all busy. It´s easy to find excuses for not reaching out to others, but I imagine they will sound as hollow to our Heavenly Father as the elementary school boy who gave his teacher a note asking that he be excused from school March 30th through the 34th.¨ 

It made me chuckle, and it was good, so I thought I would share.

Don´t forget to reach out to others! It´s something you won´t regret!

Until next time,

Hermana Safeer