What a Difference

What a difference a week makes.  We are now officially assigned to the Jefferson Ward (English speaking).  We have seen many of the members since we moved into New Orleans.  We actually spoke in their Sacrament Meeting in December and have made many friends.

Don has begun our Photo Directory for the English Ward.  They have had a picture directory for the Relief Society, but the Bishop wants one with all of the members.  This gives us a great way to get to know everyone's names.

Don is working on a photo directory for the Mission.  With head shots of each missionary by name.  We will make a directory by Zone and District.  This will make it easier for everyone to learn all of the missionaries names.

Wednesday, we drove up to Baton Rouge to attend the Temple with our departing missionaries.  It was wonderful to spend some time with the Armstrongs, they are from California and we love them.  We enjoyed that experience.  It is always wonderful to be in the Temple with Don, he is my eternal companion and I love him very much.

We have spent the past few days with the new Spanish senior couple, the Andersons. They rented an apartment in our complex and we took them around to see where some of the stores are.  Monday they move into to their apartment.  We are so excited for them.  They are from Provo and have such a great spirit about them.  He is fluent in Spanish and she understands it much better than we did when we got here.

Family Home Evening at the Zavala home.  They had their daughters here from Venezuela and they invited us over for a special family night. They had everyone share their testimony about how the gospel has changed their lives.  It was a wonderful meeting with these wonderful people.  They had one of the daughters bring a necklace from Venezuela for me.  It's all handmade and I will cherish it forever.

We went to the Jefferson Ward activity on Saturday night for Pioneer Day.  It was fun to get to know the people that came to the activity on a more intimate basis.

On Sunday, we enjoyed all of our meetings in English.  It was so nice. After lunch we came back to the Church for a very special baptism. Jaime Perez turned 8 and was so excited to be baptized and have us be there.  He had invited us at least a dozen times.  It was a very special baptism and there were over 80 people there.  (I had Don count because the Relief Society room was standing room only.)  It was great to see him so excited about getting baptized and confirmed.

We are so grateful for our many blessings.  We love the Hispanic people so much.  They are always so loving and kind to us.  Some of them were crying on Sunday when they found out before Sacrament Meeting that we were transferred, but when we saw them at the baptism (after the Andersons had spoken in Sacrament Meeting) they were okay with it.  We are excited about our new assignment and already have a list of about 20 families that we want to visit soon.