February 9, 2015

Hello friends and family,

We're going to see another one of our investigators, El, get baptized this week. I am SO excited for this baptism. The Lord has prepared her for this day for so long. 

Other than that, our investigators are all somewhat new. With a lot of them, we're trying to visit them frequently, while at the same time gauge how interested they are. It's interesting because some of them are former investigators from before. One of them remembers going to watch her neighbor's baptism into the church. (The member got baptized a couple of years ago.)

One of the teenagers in our ward just confessed, with defiance in her eyes, that she has started to drink coffee and tea lately. She has been a really strong member for my whole mission. I admit, I bawled all the way home after I heard about it. It was really hard.

On the other hand, I'm really really happy for El. I am so happy that we were able to help her to become a candidate for the Celestial kingdom. She's definitely going there. She is so humble and so good. When we were going over the baptismal questions with her, we got to tithing. She was saying with true regret, "Oh, if ONLY I could work and pay my tithing. I would love that." She really can't work. She is ailing health-wise. I think it's mainly from malnutrition. She has no source of income whatsoever. All the food that she has is from her concerned friends, who are also poor. One time she gave us the last of the bread that her friend had given her. I hated taking it.

We have been trying to find creative ways to help her. It was her birthday the other day, and so we gave her a tupperware full of pasta--noodles and lecho. Along with a cut-up bell pepper, and cut--up carrots. She was so happy, but at the same time there was guilt in her eyes that we were giving her a gift. We said, "El! This is your birthday present!" She said, "But you two are my birthday presents!" I thought that that was so sweet.

This is a situation where the people truly need the welfare program, when they're literally starving. It makes my heart hurt.

We went on splits with the Charentsavan sisters. I went with one of the trainees! It was SO fun. I love it.

Also, we had our English class this week. When we asked one of the people to write out what "one" would be in English, he wrote "uno." We died. It was SO funny.

Also, we were passing off one of our investigators off to the Alaverdi elders. After the appointment, we were waiting for our taxi, and the little two year-old there was running around, and her pants start to fall down. So her mom calls over to her to tell her to pull up her pants. She then proceeds to pull up her pantlegs--confused at what her mom wants her to do. Haha

Love you all!

Sister Fielding