Hermana Ella DeMordaunt's Mission: 17 Months ?! 🫢

Hola hola!! HAPPY NEW YEAR! This last week has been a great start to the year:))

Okay I promise I'm staying focused here... but yesterday = an exact month from the day I fly home! AAAHH! And tomorrow I hit my 17-month mark! So yep, that's super crazy.

I hope you all had a fun New Years celebration!! We sure did. We drank a martinelli's and went to bed at 10pm haha. But hey, it was technically already 2025 New York so that counts. If younger me heard that I didn't stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve I would have been extremely disappointed in myself. But I was tired. You just have to be a missionary to get it.

We had to get an oil change for our car one day this week. Car dealerships are intimidating places to me haha I have no idea why. Maybe because I know nothing about cars. Anyways, we had a gap of about an hour and a half where our car was getting worked on, so we could either hang out at the dealership or go walk somewhere closeby. We stayed at the dealership for a few minutes because there was free hot chocolate:) While we were there, a woman came up to us to give us her card because she was looking for a housecleaning job. Her name is Ruth and she is so sweet! She spoke Spanish so we started talking to her for a little bit, and then she asked us when we had church! It was a super cool experience because we were in the right place at the right time, and it's not too often that we have someone come up to US and then ask US when we have church. After we talked to her, we decided to walk to a store nearby and talk to people there. We ended up finding a lot of really amazing people! It turns out that oil changes are a good finding method ;)

The friends we've been teaching have been doing pretty good, keep praying for them! Sadly we've had to stop teaching quite a few people who aren't making progress (for now). When we were making goals for the week, we were talking about how we needed to trust that God would put new people in our path who needed our message.

One of the best ways to find people who are interested is through media referrals. We get referrals when someone sees an ad on Facebook and signs up for missionary lessons, to come to church, or for English class. It's basically like they're knocking on our door instead of us knocking on theirs. We haven't gotten a lot of media referrals here in Simi Valley, but we've found some really cool people each time we do get one! Juan Carlos, who was baptized most recently, was a media referral. As we were planning for the week, Hermana McAllister said, "We're going to get a referral every day this week!" Well guess what?! Almost every single day of the week, we got a referral. Sometimes 2 referrals! Which is crazy for our area!! So that was a HUGE miracle! I'm thankful for Hermana McAllister's faith and for God's tender mercies.

On Wednesday we had MLC! Usually it's at a church building, but President and Hermana Rodriguez had it in their home this time. The Spirit was so strong in the meeting and it was fun to see people I hadn't seen in a while! We talked about asking good questions and showing love. I got to drive to and from Oxnard with Sister Hayes. She is soo much fun!!!

On Thursday I had an exchange with Sister Ferre in our area! We laughed so hard together. She and I came into the mission at the same time and we're leaving at the same time, so we could relate with each other on that a lot. :,)

On Saturday, the Sisters' friend Johnny got baptized! They asked me to play the piano at the baptismal service, and it was so fun to be there! It was funny though because one of the songs that they had put on the program wasn't in the hymnbook or the primary book, and they didn't realize until right before the baptism. They found some online sheet music, so they had me read the music from a phone. I have never squinted so hard trying to play a song hahaha. It was rough. Also one of our friends, Armando, came to watch the baptism! That evening, we taught English Class and two of our referrals showed up, Diego and Jony! They are AWESOME!

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

I read a quote this week about questions. Questions are important. I think sometimes we mistake questions for doubts, and we worry that our testimony isn't strong enough. The truth is, it's okay not to know everything. We aren't supposed to know everything! If we did, we wouldn't need to have a mortal experience.

"Questions asked in an environment of faith unlock the power of God to answer them."

What matters isn't that we have questions, but that we are looking for the answers. When we go to God for answers and have a sincere desire to find the truth, we will find it!!