This week will be a little short because I don't have a lot of time, but it was a super good week!!
First, thank you all so much for the many birthday wishes! It was a great one! :)
Here are some of my favorite events of the week:
We went with one of our less-actives, Dev, to a stake relief society activity on Thursday. It was a "tea party," with lemonade instead of tea. It was so much fun! We helped mix lemonade and set out the decorations and sandwiches, and then we all had a wonderful time chatting and enjoying the lunch. Some of the activity day girls (8-11 year olds) came and did a talent show for us, and it was so cute! Sister Dexter came as well, so we had a wonderful time with her and Dev. Then we helped clean up and pack everything in a sister's car and we had a little lesson with Dev and her sister Donita afterwards about how Christ's atonement can help us overcome our challenges.
Wednesday was a miracle day! We spent two hours just walking around downtown talking to people. We stopped by to see Shawn in her shop, and we had some really great conversations along the way! At one point, Sister Brown stopped to talk to a man sitting on the corner reading what appeared to be a bible. Turns out, it was not a bible it was some other religious book (I don't remember the name but I had never heard of it?) and he proceeded for 10 minutes to tell us about lots of random stuff and how he didn't believe the Book of Mormon, but it was ok because he was pretty nice about it. He was kinda weird, though, and I could tell he was making Sister Brown a little nervous, but this police officer (maybe in his late 20s) walked by a couple times and looked at us as if he was saying, "no worries I'm watching." So after we were done with the conversation we walked away and the officer commented, "that was interesting." Haha it was pretty funny and we had a great conversation with the officer, whose name was Luis. Later, we had an exchange so Sister Brown could go to the new missionary dinner at the mission home, and I was walking with Hermana Carmack, and we ran into Luis! It was pretty cool and he started talking to us for a few minutes. We found out that he didn't live in our area, but we got his phone number and we passed it to the missionaries there. He was so nice and he was excited to have the missionaries come and visit him and his daughter. It was a great day.
Friday we had a cool experience with Nico, the oldest of the Otteson kids that we have dinner with and play games with every other Friday. Their mom is a member, but none of them are. Nico is 17, and we were sitting outside the high school at what we call Mormonade when school got out. Mormonade is where we hand out free lemonade to the high schoolers every Friday if they ask a question about Mormons. So Nico came up and started asking some really great questions about the Plan of Salvation. It was awesome because he has never shown a lot of interest before, but he really seems to be starting to open up a bit. That night, he asked a lot more questions, and we are hoping he might be willing to take the actual lessons very soon.
I don't have a lot more time, so I will end there, but I love y'all so much!!
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Sister Heather Bambas
California Irvine Mission
heather.bambas@myldsmail.net