Three Baptisms this week PLUS a GOLDEN CONTACT!

Dear Family and Friends,

You know you're serving in Florida when the average age of your recent converts is 80. 

Last week we followed up with Eugene about his baptismal date. He told us that he had been praying about it and that the holy spirit told him that he should be baptized into our church! He also asked us if we could do it the very next day! Haha, we still have to teach him the rest of the lessons so we compromised for this Thursday. He's so excited. He's already daydreaming about receiving the priesthood. He's doing pretty swell for a 91 year old.

Luz and Eladio are also very excited for their baptisms this Saturday as well! They keep telling us how grateful they are for us because none of the missionaries beforehand made them go to church. They love church and bore their testimonies yesterday about it. They said that yesterday morning they really didn't feel good and didn't think they'd make it to church but then they set a goal to get dressed. Once they were dressed they still weren't sure but they said, "We made a promise to God that we were going to go," so they came! The moment they got to the church they started feeling better. It's a miracle!

We've also been teaching Jalicia some more. She is going to be baptized next week. For those of you who don't know who she is, she is one of the sister investigators that we picked up when sister McGee joined us.

We had another miracle yesterday at church. There's been a new woman coming to our branch for the past 3 weeks now and we've never been able to talk with her before she leaves but this week we did because she stayed all three meetings and she told us that she wanted to become a member! She said she wanted the lessons first though. You can imagine our faces at this point. We were more than happy to tell her yes.

Ooh! One last possible baptism!! On Monday we talked with Vanessa (our investigator who just got out of jail, she's had the lessons for the past year) and she said that she could possibly be baptized the first week of March depending on if she's taken off of parole! We think it's very likely because she was on house arrest before but they changed that really quickly and her attorney is doing a very good job. Please pray for her. She's so ready to be baptized. She even made her boyfriend move out to live the law of Chastity.

Other than that things have been pretty normal.

Love you tons!

Hermana Mathis

Crazy Week

Dear Family/Friends,

This week has been CRAZY!!! I feel like it went by so fast but at the same time it feels like a year in one week. 

First of all, one of the sisters in our zone got hit by a car while biking!!! Luckily she will be ok, with a few injuries. Nothing was broken. She has three stitches and neck pain. She may go home, we're not sure yet. Because we are her sister training leaders, we had to pick her up from the emergency room, since we have been in a trio with her companion sister McGee. Because she's not coming back, it looks like we will now be in the University Park Ward (English) and our branch. Right now Sister Larsen is staying with the Cusicks in the mission home. Needless to say we've been SUPER careful about biking since.

Sister Larsen is recovering well

Second big change is that the Ft. Meyers portion of our mission was taken from us and put into the Ft. Lauderdale mission. All the missionaries who were in that zone are now in the other mission and without iPads. On the bright side they have a temple in their mission. I'm going to miss them all though. 

We also reduced our iPads down to one per companionship. It was super weird to give up having two iPads. I'm learning to get back into the swing of carrying around 3-4 books. 

With all the change we have been SUPER busy teaching, cleaning, packing and coordinating. Having sister McGee with us has been such a blessing. We adore her!

We are now preparing for three baptisms on the 31st. Jalicia, a 9 year old girl in the UP Ward, Eladio and Luz. The branch is really excited for the baptisms. We're going to have quite the show up and half are going to be extended family of Eladio and Luz from out of town. There will be lots of non-members around.

Eladio and Luz

The happiest part of this week was seeing Eduardo bless the sacrament and then give a talk! I can't believe how far he's come. His talk was on humility (it's the perfect subject for him because he's so humble). After he gave his talk he said, "Next time I'll prepare a better talk, afterall I've only been a member for 2 months!" Haha. We had 8 non-members at church and they were all very moved by his talk. One of our less-actives who's just returned also talked about baptism.

We also went to a Catholic funeral with one of our investigators because her dad died. It was really interesting. I now understand their devotion a little better. Afterwards we sang with them some hymns about Jesus Christ. While we were there one of our members showed up and we were able to get some referrals from her! It was awesome. 

We found a horse!

There's so much I could write about this week, but there just isn't time.

I love you all, I love this church and this gospel. I know this is the true church and that it was restored through Joseph Smith. More than anything else I know that God hears our prayers and that He loves us. I know that we can always depend on Jesus Christ to carry our struggles.

Con Amor,

Hermana Mathis 

Teaching, Celebrating, Biking

Dear Family and Friends,

Last week we focused our teaching on our older investigators, meaning those between the age of 60 and 100. 

On Monday we taught Eugene. Eugene is an interesting character. He is 91 and was raised in the
RLDS church so he already has a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. We taught him about prophets and committed him to praying to know if Thomas S. Monson is the prophet today. He said he would fast about it.

Haha he also told us that there is a scripture in the Bible that says we need to greet him with a "Holy kiss." Out of curiosity I looked it up to see if it actually existed and it does indeed, however the JST says a "holy greeting" instead of a kiss, silly Eugene.

Tuesday we celebrated Dia de los Reyes with the youth in our Ward by playing this game where everyone has to take turns cutting a piece of bread and if you cut a piece with a toy in it then you have to throw a party. I got away without a toy, but Hermana Paulsen didn't so I guess we need to throw a party. We taught lots of people that day and even did a little service.

Wednesday we went out to Sebring for an exchange. It always seems like a road trip going out there. To give you a better idea of what it's like, there are approximately 100 orange fields between here and
Sebring and little civilization. When we arrived we went straight to the church to train. We focused our training on treating our bodies, area books, and apartments like temples; clean and orderly. Sebring was fun and went by in the blink of an eye.

Because we went out to Sebring we don't have a ton of miles so we biked for the remainder of the week. Haha we only pick the coldest days to bike. The weather was in the low 50s and my bike fell apart because a bolt came off. At this point in my mission I feel like nothing phases me. We stashed our bikes and went out to find my bolt, the whole while I said a prayer in my heart at somehow our walking around would be worth the effort. We found the bolt, and walked back to our bikes without saying a word to anyone. 

The next day we called our sisters to do follow up. They told us that their investigator was getting baptized that day! We decided to go to the baptism. Their investigator's name is Nancy. I met her with Sister Snow while biking once, we taught her a little about the church and then handed her over
to the sisters assuming she wasn't really that interested. Now she is the newest member of the University Park Ward. It just goes to show every time that we are out walking or biking we never know the impact that we are making. 

At her baptism Nancy recognized me as the sister who had pulled her over. She joked, "You have to watch out for that one, she brings people in off the street!" It really built my testimony that God knows exactly what we're doing and as He said to Joseph Smith while he was in jail, "All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good."

Con mucho amor,
Hermana Mathis

¡Feliz año nuevo!

Dear Family/Friends,

¡Feliz año nuevo! (Happy New Year!)

I hope everyone had a great new year. I know I did! It's hard to believe my blackout year is over! It went by SO fast! But lots of great things happened, I'll always be grateful to Heavenly Father for 2014. I've learned so much, so much has changed. I've come to love a new place, new people, and a new way of living obedient to Gods commands. Truly I have been blessed :) I'm so grateful to all of you for always supporting me, your one of the greatest blessings of all in my life.

This week was stellar! We had so many fun adventures. We did two exchanges back to back, one with the Bradenton hermanas and one with the University Park sisters. I went to both of their areas while Hermana Paulsen stayed here. Our zone has some of the greatest sisters ever, they're each very diligent and full of the spirit.

In Bradenton we had some success going around asking absolutely everyone for referrals. We received a referral from a woman to go see her friend Silvia. As it turns out Silvia is super interested and lives across from the church! 

In University Park we set a date with one of their investigators who has been struggling and we went to a New Year's Eve party. It was a blast! 

When I got back to our area, I was surprised to find that we had two new solid investigators, and about 20 new potentials. In other words, I love exchanges! 

This week has been a week of amazing lessons. Sister Paulsen and I were super bold and had to drop a couple people but we also set 2 dates and had more people at church than we have had in a long time. 

Due to our recent success with the older generation, we've decided maybe it's just best we only teach people over 55. We have a new investigator named Eugene who has already read the Book of Mormon and even fought to come to church with us! He's just the cutest little old man you've ever met. 

Eladio and Luz

Eladio and Luz (the sibling-in-laws of Pedro, our recent convert) have officially declared to just about everyone (and anyone who will listen to them) that they are going to be baptized on the 31 of January! I'm so exited, I consider them to be my own great grandparents! 

For New Years I went to a party with Sister Larsen on our exchange. We ate and talked with all the member's friends. We didn't watch the ball drop but we had fun anyway. The family we were celebrating with has an outside pool and about half the guests were swimming, in December! It's a completely different world out here. Haha! 

We ended our week with mission leadership training and were able to go up to Tampa with Sister Trebotitch and Ray. I love those sisters! It was an inspiring training, I am so ready to just give everything over to God. I can already tell this is going to be one of the best years of my life. 

Well that's it for the week! 

Con Amor,

Hermana Mathis

P.S. Funny/awkward story. Before every lesson we say a prayer in our car and the other day while I was with Sister Gibson in Bradenton some random person came up to our car and got in while we were praying! Haha! They thought we were their friends, it made for the greatest conversation...

Christmas Week

Dear family/friends,

It's hard to believe that I spoke with some of you just a few days ago. For those of you who I didn't talk to I'll just fill you in a bit. 

Because it was Christmas week and not a lot of people wanted to be visited, we visited EVERYONE, haha! We took bags comprised of popcorn, approximately 25 melty chocolate covered pretzels and mini marshmallows. We pawned them off on members, people in the streets, and even on one humble and unsuspecting southern dragon-footed gentleman. (That is to say, that literally his toe nails were long and green as we have always dreamed a dragon's talons would be). He was so full of Christmas spirit and love that instead of the usual Confederate rankings, he insisted on a Christmas hug. I being a wise sister missionary (and for sanitary reasons) kept my distance, but poor my dear little companion was not so lucky, although she refused his hug he grabbed her hand and gave it a big grubby kiss! 

More kisses followed that night, at the quaint home of Hermana Lohrmann. We ate empenadas, flan, and apple strudel with a divorced sister and her mom. It was simple and sweet. We didn't want to leave them alone, so we played "No comas a Pedro" (aka Don't eat Pete) and sang Christmas hymns together. Sorry, Family. Best Christmas Eve dinner ever. 

When we got home, a Christmas miracle was waiting for us - Pizza! We had a HUGE box full of freshly made and frozen and massive pizzas from The Pie in SLC! Thank you, to Hermana Paulsen's brother. We will now return home as large up recognizable blobs. :)

Christmas Day we ate lunch with a crowd of Brazilians. When we arrived, samba music was filling the air. One of them, a handsome and talented banjo player, played for us poolside while we waited for other people to show up. We conversed, tried our best to learn the common lingo, and ate Brazilian BBQ with cheesy garlic mashed potatoes. For dessert: cinnamon sugar papaya. Have I mention that Brazilians make the best food?

After that we rushed over to Margaritas and Sergio's to share a Christmas message. When we got there we shared some Hillshire Farms cheese and sausage with bread and painted our nails with Margarita. After that we got to call home! It was so great. I loved talking to you all. 

We ended the night by going to President Gazziro's house and sharing the video He is the Gift with some non-member friends of theirs from Argentina. They were so sweet and gave us two boxes of chocolate, yup I'm still not eating chocolate so with the extra box of chocolates we snuck back over to Margaritas and Sergio's gave them the chocolate and heart attacked their house mwahahaha.

We went on our first exchanges as STLs (this is the sixth time for me but the first time for Hermana P) to Venice ITALY! It was a long flight but writing this email in a gondola is definitely worth it! I wish. We actually just went to Venice, Florida. Hermana P went with Sister Skeem to their area to do some family history missionary work while Sister Johnson and I remained in Sarasota. We had a blast and taught a ton of people. 

One experience that will always stick with me is going over to one of our members homes, asking her for referrals and then watching her pound on her neighbors garage door to introduce him to us. It was great! She said, "This is the Lords work, so I'm going to knock hard!" I will forevermore "knock hard" and try harder because of that woman. 

The District

This is just a side note but Sarasota has been ablaze with Amish! Our new goal: convert an Amish person! 

We've tried lots of new approaches on missionary work this past week. We did caroling with members (so much fun), just asking for referrals from every breathing creature, and going to yard sales. 

Our week was full of laughs. Mainly due to the fact that I was a little deaf, haha! The other day instead of hearing the Spanish equivalent of, "All of you are together" I heard, "All of you are a cult." I ended up asking our investigator if she really thought we were a cult. Hahahaha! Also Hermana Paulsen wanted to know why the phrase, "He is hot" doesn't translate and our investigators spent 20 minutes trying to figure it out. 

For Christmas we went to everyone's home and made ornaments with them and asked them what they were going to give Jesus this year. 

There you have it, our goofy Christmas week. We had so much fun and really enjoyed the spirit of Christmas. I hope that you all enjoyed it too and will continue to celebrate the Lord in your daily lives. He makes every minute of being on the earth so much easier. May you all have a great new year! 

Con mucho amor y cariños, 

Hermana Mathis 

Two Baptisms and a Move

Queridos amigos e familiares,

Merry Christmas!
I'm so excited to speak with you all on Christmas Day! Well at least my familia that is, to the rest of you I hope you have a great Christmas full of lots of good memories. I will be calling home at 4
o'clock MST.

This past week has been super busy. We haven't had much time to do any finding, so sorry for the lack of cool finding stories.

Big things that happened this week:

Portuguese lessons! We had lots. We have a family in our branch who is on fire as far as missionary work goes. Yesterday they gave us 8 Book of Mormons to give out to their Portuguese speaking friends with all their addresses! We contacted a few yesterday and we ended up having good lessons with them. One of the families we met even invited us over for Christmas Eve dinner with all their friends! 

We're gradually starting to pick up more words. Hopefully I can learn it before I go home! It's been really fun, I feel like I'm a new missionary learning the language again. We have an RM from the singles branch who had been helping us out, it's like being in a trio, it's great!

We moved apartments. Yes, we are now the newest residents at Huntington Place. Our WML and his daughters (our BFFs) helped us move. It took a while but we're finally in! We're super happy in our new place. Cleaning the old apartment took a while but walls that I never thought would be clean of scuffs again are now a brilliant white.

One of our members died of a heart attack! Tuesday night after getting in we called our WML to do nightly follow up and he told us the tragic news that one of the less-actives we had been visiting had died. First thing the next day we went over to provide support to the husband and daughter. The funeral was yesterday. It was very beautiful. 

Being a missionary has changed my view on death so much. I've always known that this life is not the end, but having learned what I have on the mission it was easier to feel that Patricia really wasn't gone, just progressing on to a new life. Her presence was very strong during the whole service.

Due to the death, one of our baptisms for Saturday got pushed back to this week. However we did have two baptisms Saturday! Allan Bizzaro and Emily Chuc. They are both really happy to be baptized. It was fun to have so much family around to celebrate.

We learned that we are the sister training leaders for this transfer so you can expect lots of exchange stories to come, it should be great! It's Sister Paulsen's first time being a leader.

For Christmas we will be giving out gifts and visiting with everyone we know. Lots of people here are eager to have the missionaries over for the holidays. I love this branch so much, it will be a lot of fun!

Cariños,
Hermana Mathis

Christmas Parties and Walks on the Beach

Queridos amigos y familia,

We had our mission Christmas party. It was basically a flop and kind of good. We went to Bradenton Beach (first mistake. Everyone knew it should have been siesta). It was crazy windy and super cold. We tried for beach volleyball. That didn't work. It just resulted in us running in our ugly sweaters in what felt like the Sahara Desert with sand in our eyes. But, you know. 

Hermana Newbill (who's going home this transfer) gave us homemade pumpkin cheesecake. That was probably the best part of the day besides buying matching (go comp unity!) cat onesie pajamas. Yup. We went to Walmart on our way home from the party and bought matching onesies and a can of Christmas popcorn. When we got to our apartment we had a movie party and watched Jonny Lingo (the one movie on our iPads that isn't the restoration or the testaments). Basically, the greatest thing ever.

The rest of the week was chill. On Thursday we painted a member's living room with Oscar (our recent convert). We listened to Spanish Christmas music for the first time (huzzah!) It was fun! 

Friday we had another Portuguese family home evening. They made us stuffed mashed potatoes. Yes, it's as good as it sounds. It was a mound of creamy mashed potatoes the size of the plate STUFFED with cheese and pork. We watched the same classy 70s seminary video about agency and had a great time! We want to learn Portuguese so bad! 

Saturday... Was spiritually exhausting and one of the best days. It started off with a tender mercy. We found a present from God in the most unexpected places: the library. Haha, we saw a basket of lame Christmas CDs you could check out and in the mix was... The David Archuleta cd with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!! We love it and listen to the one song in Spanish over and over and over and over again. (Los pastores a Belén!)

Also we received our transfer emails. I'm staying with Sister Paulsen in Sarsota, yay! 

We had a really hard day that day. We went and saw Danny (one week before his baptism!) and his parents said they didn't think he was ready to be baptized. We had a solid lesson with him anyway and asked him to pray for a confirmation of his date (December 20th) so he did with us. The spirit was overpowering and dispelled all the darkness that was in the room before. He said after his whole body just became warm and knew he wanted to be baptized. It was cool to be part of that experience with him. 

Then, we crashed the Sarasota ward party and got tons of referrals for Spanish work. After that legit party (we were just happy because they had salads with lettuce in them!) we went to the relief society activity for our branch. It ended up being a huge party too! They had a white elephant and we got nail polish, shampoo and conditioner, and a mug with hot chocolate mix.

Sunday was good. It was hot! We were sweating which makes us feel a little weird to go around showing a Christmas video. I'm pretty sure it's still summer. 

Right now, we are driving around with the windows down, breeze going through our hair, trying to decide if we should buy us a little baby Christmas tree. We just went out to siesta beach to get Christmas gifts and we walked along the white sand. Haha, I love Florida. Also, we have listened to Los Pastores a Belén three times so far. :)

Con Amor,

Hermana Mathis