June
22, 2015-
Hey Family and
Friends!!
This
week was an amazing week!! Lani got baptized!!! She was pretty nervous when she
showed up but the spirit was super strong during her baptismal service. It was
a sweet experience to be able to baptize her. Elder Edwards told me afterwards
that I had dunked Lani so deep that he didn't thing I'd be able to pull her
back up but it ended up being alright. After her baptism she bore a super
powerful testimony about how she received an answer that this church was true.
Her whole family was there so I hope that her testimony touched one of their
hearts.
After
the baptism, we had a branch party for dia de los padres (Father's day), which
was a ton of fun.
On
Sunday night Martin and Lani invited us over to eat some of Lani's tres leches
cake, a cake from El Salvador that has 3 kinds of milk in it. Oh man, it was the best tres leches cake I've
ever eaten.
Transfer
calls were pretty crazy on Saturday! When the phone rang, I thought oh no,
I'm leaving- its going to be me. But it shocked all three of us to find out
that both Elder Garcia and I are going to stay in Norfolk and Elder Edwards is
being sent to Newport News halfway through his training. Elder Garcia and I
will be training a new missionary who is flying in from the MTC on Tuesday.
So looks like I'm going to have another son (trainee), and that means I will be
here in Norfolk for almost 8 months! (January to August) I'm glad to be staying
here, because I love this area!
I
hope everyone has a great week!
Elder
Cannon
June 29, 2015-
Hola Everyone!
It is awesome that Lani is a member now
because she has been a huge help in our lessons. We started teaching her
daughter- in-law and her daughter- in-law's friend earlier this week. Lani has
been a huge help during the lessons because she is willing and happy to bear
her testimony. Lani and her daughter-in-law and friend are having a competition
to see who can finish reading the Book of Mormon first. We set Jazmin to be
baptized on August 1st.
It would be awesome if she met that date because that would be the last
week before the next transfer and that would mean that I could be there for her
baptism.
On Wednesday, Elder Garcia and I
dropped off Elder Edwards, and picked our new greenie. His name is Elder
Thompson and he is from Utah, just like everybody else, ha ha. That makes him
my 4th companion, out of 7, from Utah. Elder Thompson's Spanish is actually
pretty good considering he just came out of the MTC.
We had a really sweet experience on Thursday.
We had received a referral from a member.
When we went to contact Ramon we realized that it was the home of the
member who gave us the referral. We knocked on the door anyway and asked for
Ramon and the member told us that he lived next door. We went next door but no
one answered. Apparently, the member
owns the house next door and rents it out to a bunch of people, because the next
thing we knew the member brought some keys over and unlocked the door. He told
us which bedroom was Ramon’s, so we walked upstairs and knocked on his bedroom
door. It was a little awkward at first when Ramon opened his door since we were
knocking on his bedroom door, but we ended up having a sweet lesson with him,
and he said he would read the Book of Mormon and come to church. Ramon is from
Puerto Rico and has only been in the United States for a couple months. However,
on Sunday the member told us that Ramon had turned in his keys and
left the area. Hopefully we'll run into
Ramon again.
I called Christopher on the phone Saturday night. He's a less active 19 year old from the
Dominican Republic. I invited him to go to church and he said he'd come if could
take him there, and he ended up coming! It was pretty sweet because that was
the first time I've seen him at church in the 6 months I've been living here.
Sunday was a pretty crazy day for
eating. Lani told us that she was going to feed us late Sunday night,
but when we got our food calendar that they pass around church for people to
sign up to feed us, it had a different family's name written down, so we talked
to our Branch Mission Leader to cancel the dinner appointment for us. He said that he would take care of it so that
we could eat with Lani. While we were
knocking an investigator's door at 4:15 p.m., we got a call from the family who
signed up asking us if we were going to come eat. Apparently our branch mission leader didn't
take care of canceling the appointment, so we headed over and ate dinner with
them anyway. Then around 6 p.m. we were in a middle of a lesson with a new
investigator named Santos, the brother of Martin's sister-in-law, when he told
us he was going to order papusas for us.
He had previously told me that he would order papusas for us because I
had told him before that I like them. So, we ate a second dinner of papusas. I'm
not going to complain since I love papusas. Then, when we showed up at Lani's
at 8 p.m. she had dinner ready for us. We
couldn't really tell her that we weren't going to eat it after she had planned
and prepared for us, so we ate a third dinner... I think that I gained 5 pounds
on Sunday.
We were told that the 4th of
July is going to be a normal proselyting day. Last year President Baker said that July 4th
would be a non-proselyting day. I'm not
sure how many people will want us to come by and teach them on that day but we
will do it anyway. With any luck, it
should end up being a good day.
I hope everyone has a great week!!
Elder Cannon
Lani's baptism day
Me, Lani, Elder Garcia, and Elder Edwards
