Dear Family,
Hello from Fontana!
Some things I have come to notice about the area in which I serve.
-1 out of 10 houses still has Christmas decorations up.
-The ice cream trucks here play Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer
-People periodically wear their Christmas sweaters.
-TONS of people have lion statues guarding their driveways.
-Most people only speak spanish.
Which brings me to my first story. We decided to tract in the northern part of our area. There is a very dense (everyone) hispanic population. And a lot of them only speak spanish. So we decided to practice our spanish. And learned we need to practice a lot more. Basically all I know how to say is hello, we're missionaries, this is our church, we have a message for you and your family, we don't speak very much spanish, there are other missionaries who speak more than we do, could they visit you. It's enough to get by I suppose, but I wish I could understand the things they say back. It's fun, though. I haven't needed to use spanish until this area.
We had a lesson with Danny and his mom again. He quite officially really wants to take the lessons and learn more about what we believe. He says he still wants to study all the religions, but so far what we share with him makes the most sense. But he's excited to learn this time. I really hope he can open his heart to feeling the Holy Ghost. His mind is definitely open to learning, but I hope that he also gains something from this. We hope that we can teach him and his mother separately, though. She has been a member all her life, but never an active member, so she doesn't know very much herself. They both need very different things.
We didn't end up having our appointments with the potential investigators. One of them got ahold of some anti material and called and told us not to come back. The other one is just really hard to get ahold of. We saw the second one during my first week and we only talked to her for a short amount of time, but she basically said that she knows she wants to get baptized. So we really really want to be able to start teaching her!
We visited Al, a man who hasn't been less active for too long, I don't think. He served a mission and talks about it all the time, he has had lots of church callings and loved them, he still has a testimony of the gospel, but he just got out of the habit of going. It's so sad that that can happen. It's so much easier to break the habit of going to church than to form that habit. We need to take the sacrament. We need the blessing of always having the spirit with us.
Well, I'm glad for all the fun news I've gotten from everyone! I'm also glad that it's a little cooler here than in Utah. And less smokey (at least from mountain fires and stuff) I hope that there aren't any more fires. I actually remember hearing about the fires on the TV while we were in the hospital last week. (One of our recent converts has been in and out the last couple months.)
I love you all! Stay safe, don't burn up. Read your scriptures. :)
Love, Sister Stacey
PS MOM AND DAD-I'm glad that you were all able to go to Washington to see Sophia blessed! And that you're going to have so many grand children! I was so excited to read matt's email! HOWEVER I'm a little sad I'm going to miss the birth. He should at least wait for me to bless their baby. I'll tell him that. I'll also tell him that they're having a girl because I accidentally typed 'her' instead of 'their baby' the first time. So they can start picking out names. Anyway, thanks for your emails! I hope you have a safe and fun trip back from Washington! Love you both! BYE
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