Another Month gone!

Another WONDERFUL week in the mission field! The thing is I can't believe how fast time goes here, can you believe another month has come and gone??  

So let's see what has happened this week ...... We have one family here in the Ward that we go visit a lot, I guess they are living here as undocumented Americans.  It turns out that their Grandma is very sick in Mexico. Because of their circumstances, part of the family had decided to go back to be with Grandma and then just not ever come back here, but stay in Mexico. Right when that decision has been made, we knocked on their door. While we were sitting on their couch, this sweet little family was arguing about who would leave and never come back, and who would stay. During the height of this "discussion" the oldest son who is like 31 looked at me and said," Hermana Atkinson is going to sing so we can feel the spirit and decide what to do with the spirit in our home!" NO PRESSURE here! After a short pause, I began to sing, "Nearer, My God to Thee". Now just so you can understand how I feel at this moment, I have to say I was very sad to think that this sweet lady was thinking about leaving and not coming back!  You see she is honestly like my mission mom, and I love her with all my heart, so singing this was super hard for me!  I was emotional, as was she, her husband and everyone else in the room ..... as I started to sing, all I felt was peace.  BTW this hymn sounds better in Spanish! I promise. Somehow I was able to get through this entire hymn, after I was done everyone was still crying.  I look up and this Sister took her suit case and started taking things out and after 5 minutes of silence and her doing this I finally asked, "What are you doing"?  She walked over and gave me and my companions hugs and said she was staying!  She felt very strongly that her mom wouldn't want her to leave the kids and grandkids to be with her in Mexico.  We put her moms name in the temple for the prayer rolls 

Oh GREAT NEWS! We are going to have a baptism on the 14!! Sooooo funny story. Do you remember our investigator who was going to be baptized and then wasn't baptized and told us that he wanted to be baptized in two years?  I guess he had a dream and he called us over to his house and was like "Hermana's I need your help I had this dream and there was a guy in a small pool and he was wearing red and then I got scared and I ran away"!. Then he asked us what this dream meant.  We just looked at each other and were like,  uh let us do some research and we will get back to you.  So I studied like crazy about prophets that had dreams and different things about the color red and water oh and there were 5 pools... he also drew it for us and we are pretty sure that the pools are baptismal fonts!! hahaha   So we studied numbers and a ton of different things for like 4 hours and then we went to his house last night and we hadn't really discussed it all that much.  When we get into his place, he asked,"Hermana's, what do you think"? Amazingly, we all had the same ideas about what it meant. and after we told him he said he was going to be baptized. He decided that March was best, "The beginning of March I am going to be baptized in March"..The more we talked different things were discussed and somehow Valentines day came up and he was saying how he didn't have a valentine, and one of my companion said that should be the day he gets baptized to show his love for Christ.  AND he decided she was right, so we have a baptism for February .ary 14, best Valentines present EVER!

We are going bowling .... so I have to end this for now .... no pictures this week. SORRY.

Love you all!

Hermana Atkinson
Missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Washington D.C. South MIssion