Shaelyn in Chicago: Aurora is awesome!

10-20-2011

Familia,

First, I am so sorry I forgot to tell you I wouldn't be emailing yesterday. I completely forgot until Monday, and by then it was too late to send you a note in the mail. But the reason that we are having p-day today, on Thursday, is because yesterday we had a huge zone conference. We had a member of the seventy there, Elder Ellis, and half of the mission. It was fun because I got to see everyone from Rockford again and Hermana Creson, my MTC companion.

Other news is just that Aurora is awesome! It is different than Rockford for sure, because for one it is just so much closer to the city. But also, the people here are just so prepared for the Gospel! As I think I mentioned before, when I came into this area they already had 4 people with a baptismal date, and on Thursday we set one more. Saturday we called someone that Hermana Maughan and her last companion had contacted a while back, and he asked us if we could meet with him right now and accepted the invitation to be baptized.

Something really awesome happened this week too. So there is a woman that we are teaching, Cruz, and she is the daughter of a recent convert. She has been to church and apparently they have been talking to her for a while, but never really gotten the opportunity to teach her until this past week. But, we taught her about repentance and gave her a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon and she seemed actually really excited to read it. Now, Cruz had a brother, Junior, who is a little bit of a partier, loves to smoke and loves his energy drinks. He doesn't live with them and doesn't ever spend the night, because they live in just a really tiny basement apartment. But the night after we left Cruz the chapter to read in the Book of Mormon, she convinced Junior to spend the night, and for some reason he did. Cruz fell asleep that night reading the chapter we left her, and at four o clock that morning she woke up because she could hear Junior grunting. He was having a seizure, and was biting his tongue really badly. Cruz said she freaked out, and was trying to figure out what to do, and she saw the Book of Mormon sitting on her bed, grabbed it, and shoved into Junior's mouth to keep him from biting his tongue off. Once the ambulance came and they new everything was going to be fine, Cruz said she just realized all of a sudden how much God loves her. She was telling us that she had never really thought about it before, but at that moment she realized that God loves her more than she can even imagine. She came into the house and gathered her kids and her mom and just told them that they needed to thank God, and she had them all pray together to thank him. Hearing her tell this story was so so awesome. It was amazing. And we saw Junior later that day and he told us that he is going to get Sundays off from work so he can start coming to church, because Cruz told him God works in funny ways, and he knows he needs to come to church. Something else cool, is that Cruz's kids, who are 11, 9, and 8 next month have all been taught the lessons, and they want to be baptized. And they told us the other day that they want to be baptized together with their mom. We had never really talked about baptism before with Cruz, but we told her they said that and she didn't say no. She just said, "Wow, thats news to me." And she seemed completely fine with the idea of at least her kids being baptized. I am so excited to see how things go with her.

So thats about my week. Also, it is ridiculously cold. Like I was so unprepared for this, and its not even winter yet. I am probably going to die. So that is why I am writing home with a package request: Please please please send me as fast as you can: wool socks, long underwear, any warm cute sweaters that you can find, any cute scarves, basically just anything warm and cute, I don't care what it is, and I left my cute dressier coat there for some idiotic reason and if you can find that and send me it, that would be awesome. Also, I left my moccasins there, I think I might have even given them to Morgan- and I would love it if you could send me those. The only run around p-day shoes I have are flip flops, and those are def not going to work. So yeah. Its freezing. Missionary clothes are not conducive to cold weather. I am going to die when it is actually winter.

Pictures!!

1. One of my favorite investigators ever in Rockford, Silvia. Don't worry, she was happy, for some reason Hispanics just don't seem to like to smile in pictures.