Sister Riley Dorrance's California Arcadia Mission: Week 32 - Someone's baptism, a terrible church tour, and IKEA!

we biked up a really big and really steep hill and then our appointment cancelled,

but we needed to document for posterity or something.

You guys. Missions are seriously the weirdest and most amazing thing ever and I don't think I truly understood that until I came out here. But it's all good.

On Monday we had a miracle! We finally met the Flores family! The elders were working with them forever before we got there, and they all told us to keep working with them and they're so ready and so we stopped by a ton but they were never home, or all of their cars were there and we heard people but no one would come to the door, but we were tracting a couple streets over and it was super unproductive and so we said "this is dumb, let's ask god" so we asked him what we should do and he said to try by the Flores family so we did and they were home! We talked with them for a while, we met the whole family, they said we could come back, it was great! Dad Flores (I forgot his name) said he was always bummed because none of the elders could work on cars, so were buds because I can help with his truck. Probably won't because I'd get mg skirts dirty, but it was cool.

This week was a lot of visiting people and a lot of people saying no, or not being home, but we gave Hayro a church tour! (We gave two this week so stay tuned for the bad one.) This church tour was fantastic. We did the whole thing started talking about the whole church and how everything runs, hayro was super interested in everything and he said everything makes sense, it was great. At the end we were talking about everything and answering a couple questions and he was asking about how it all gets paid so we talked about tithing and then he was joking about alcohol and asking about that so we talked about the word of wisdom, and then he said, " but do you guys have any more rules?" So we just taught him the law of chastity right there too and it was wild.

Hayro came to a baptism on Saturday! There was a baptism in the Rowland heights ward and his name is Darrin and his story is really cool but I don't got time for that. But Hayro came! It was awesome and Darrin bore the sweetest testimony afterwards, and it was the greatest. And Hayro came! Its the best when people do things that make them feel the spirit. I love baptisms. They are just the sweetest experiences in the whole world.

Alright. So our second church tour. Not as good as the first. It was with Anthony and it was rough. He was an hour late to start out with, and he was being a grumpy Gus which doesn't really add to the spirit, but we decided to work with it. The Chinese ward was having a sports night that night so there were a ton of people walking around and lots of things going on in the gym but it was all good, we could handle that. Then we found out that they were cleaning the church as well. So we were in the chapel and this wonderful member that had great intentions to keep the beautiful building clean started vacuuming in the middle of us talking about the sacrament. So we figured we could move on and save it, and it got worse. Not only was our good friend Anthony grunting every time we would move and laughing a little bit at the doctrine we would teach, but we got to the baptism font and he said it looked like a "Jewish holocaust shower." So he asked to move on pretty quick from that one. awkward. Then at the end we were talking to him and asking if he had any questions, and he asked, " wait, are you trying to convert me?" And then we asked him why he wanted to be baptized and he said he liked the rebirth aspect of it. But he wanted to stay Catholic and doesn't ever want to go to church. Them he started yelling and saying that we were teaching/asking questions like we had an agenda and we were being too pushy and then it was over and he left and we were there and we still don't really know what to think about it, but it happened so I hope you found the story humorous!

To end on a lighter note, we went to the swap meet today and IKEA! Sister Robinson and Sister Bullock hadn't ever been to IKEA! And Sister Bullock and I had never been to the swap meet! It was a great p day!