Baby Megan is here!

Megan Elizabeth Burgess
Born 12/8/2009 @ 7:06pm
5 lbs 15 oz
18 inches
...and happy as can be!

This is Kathryn's mission address:

Sister Kathryn Duque
California Anaheim Mission
2500 N Bristol St.
Santa Ana, CA 92706

Her e-mail address is:

kathryneduque@myldsmail.net

missionary letter

Kathryn Duque

show details 12:29 PM (21 hours ago)

Hello Everyone,
We're going to try to send out Christmas cards, so could you email me some addresses? If you email them this week, I'll get the email next Monday, and then I can send the cards out next Monday. Here's the people whose addresses I need:
PapaKen, Lola, Julie Calderon (is she still planning on serving a mission?), and all Mom's and Pop's brothers and sisters, if you have their addresses.
There was a picture in the Church News this last week of the youth from our ward (Anaheim 2nd). It's in an article called Sacred Sacrifices, and the picture is at the Newport Beach Temple. We were just around the corner! We were there for an outside temple tour with the mission president, and we watched them getting their picture taken.
I've been having a hard time feeling excited about teaching inactive people, and we do a lot of that because one of the apostles said that a happy missionary teaches 20 lessons a week, and we can't get that many with investigators. Also, Sister Cooprider doesn't think knocking works. She says it works in Spanish-speaking areas, but not English, and it is true that we haven't gotten inside any door we've knocked while tracting since I got here. Of course, that doesn't mean so much since we hardly ever knock. But! We had a really amazing lesson with an inactive woman this week, and we're really excited for her. A while ago, someone from church asked her to feed the missionaries, so she's been doing that once a month. The last time Sister Cooprider was over there, she read Ether 12:27 to her, about weakness being made strong. Then, this last week, the ward council prayed about her and decided to invite her to take the missionary lessons, which is what the ward council does; they call it the 15 name program. They pick people to invite to take the missionary lessons. So the woman, Patty Spathes, accepted the invitation, and we taught her for the first time last week. At the very beginning, she told us that the only reason she agreed to take the lessons was because Sister Cooprider read Ether 12:27, and that scripture really made an impression on her. Afterwards, Sister Cooprider told me that the only reason she read that scripture was because the DVD she had meant to show wouldn't work! Patty told us that this is it: after these lessons, it's going to be all or nothing with her. She says she knows the devil is freaking out right now, and her life has suddenly gotten a lot harder since she agreed to take the lessons. She hasn't been to church in ages. She's probably in her fifties now. She had lots of "plan" questions, so we taught her the plan of salvation, which is lesson 2, instead of the restoration, lesson 1, like we had planned. She knows the Bible, but she apparently has no knowledge of the Book of Mormon. She had so many good questions, and she took notes in the Book of Mormon that we gave her while we talked. She was just amazing! When I asked her to read 2 Nephi 2:22-25, about the fall, she read the first couple words (it was "now behold," or something else meaningless), and then she couldn't finish because she started crying! So we read the rest of the scriptures for her that lesson. It's amazing how scriptures that don't seem that touching to me can have such an effect on her. That scripture is good, but I think of it as being more informational. But it's scripture from God, so the spirit could witness to Patty that it's true.
We were teaching another inactive named Bev. It's amazing how little most inactive people know about the gospel! I assumed if they were once a member, they must still know at least the basics, but so many of them don't! They don't know anything!
Anyway, we were at Bev's house, and her neighbour Avery dropped by. Avery is seven, and a non-member, and she is so receptive! She just wants to know everything, and she's so interested in religion! And she asked for a Book of Mormon! Afterwards, Sister Cooprider said we probably shouldn't have taught her or given her a Book of Mormon since we didn't have her parents permission. They've tried to talk to her mom, but now she's avoiding us. Avery has a rather morbid obsession with crucifixion, probably from her Catholic upbringing, and she has the attention span of a squirrel, but she's so open and receptive, and so interested in everything! We gave her a Book of Mormon and she immediately opened it up to a random page and started reading out loud. Then she looked at the pictures and wanted to know who everyone was. Why can't everyone be like Avery? :)
Love,
Sister Duque

More Thanksgiving pictures

Here are all of the Adams grandkids that went over the Sacramento River and through the Yolo bypass to Grandma and Grandpa's (Lito and Lita's) house for Thanksgiving. From left to right and top to bottom, they are: Daniel, Victoria, Elijah, Tytus Andrew, Isaac (who turned 1 year old the following day), Belén, Danny, and Tomás (Tomy).

Well, this posting pictures from one blog to another is not as easy as I thought it would be. I managed to get a few on to my last blog, and now I'll try for some more. The one on top of the previous blog was Michael building towers out of Jenga blocks. He built several neat towers, then we had fun watching him collapse them like dominos.

Here is Karen holding Amy's baby,

Danny

Here is Tytus and Sharon:



Here is Alisha helping Daniel and Belén make placemats

Here is pensative Nathan,

and there is cute Amy in front of our house.

Amy and Kenneth took some more nice pictures, but this is all I can manage to put on this blog right now. (I gotta get to school!) Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving, like we did. Maybe some of the rest of you can post your pictures here.

Love you all.

Mama Jayne

Fun Thanksgiving Pictures

All of the Adams kids and grandkids (8 + one on the way) were able to come here for Thanksgiving, and we had a very nice weekend together. Amy posted some pictures of it on her blog, and since pictures say a thousand words, I am going to try posting some of them here. (I hope I can figure the technology to do it!) Okay, I got some pictures on, now how do I label them? There's me in the kitchen on the left and Pa A relaxing on the right.

letter from Kathryn

Querida Familia, First of all, could you send me my address in Anaheim? I, um, didn't bring it with me. And a couple of friends have asked me for it. So, Sister Hardy and Sister Thomas and I moved to the advanced class last week, so we're in a new district. We love the class, and the teachers are great (a lot better than our last ones). But we miss our elders. There's eleven people in our new district now. Six sisters and five elders! More sisters than elders! There was a trio in the advanced class, so now each of the sisters has a new companion. It's good for our Spanish since we each have a native speaker companion. All the people in our class are native speakers except for us and one other elder who's sort of from Brazil. My new companion is Hermana Castillo, from Guatemala, but she's lived in Orem since she was ten. Her first name is Dameter, but at home she goes by Afro. Her middle name is Afrodita. Elder Shumway (Adam?) is in my zone, I think. I see him around a lot. My favourite thing to do at the MTC is the Referral Center. We can make phone calls to make sure people got things they ordered off of passalong cards, or we can answer phones from passalong card calls, or we can answer chats from the ask your question place on mormon.org. We've only been twice but both times it's been a kind of overwhelming experience, because I care so much about each of the people we talk to (only one each time), and I want so much to be able to help them. The first time I went, I was trying to make phone calls, and no one was answering. I accidentally clicked the button on my computer that said I was open for calls, and someone called me. I was so confused and pretty much panicked. I read from the screen on my computer, in Spanish, asking to talk to the man I had been about to call. A very confused woman answered me in English. A very confused missionary (me) repeated herself in Spanish. The woman said something else, and finally my brain began to work, and I asked her, in English, if she had just called me. A long conversation ensued in which we both tried to figure out who the other person was. Eventually I figured out that she wanted a BoM and she figured out that I was American, and not foreign, even though I started out trying to speak to her in a different language. She said her dad was a preacher, so she had grown up with his religion (some sort of Protestantism), but now she and her sister were exploring in religion, and she felt she had a hole in her life that she needed to fill. At the beginning she said she didn't want anyone to bring her a Book of Mormon, she wanted to get it in the mail, but by the end, she had talked to me for so long that she agreed, and happily, I think, to let the missionaries bring her a Book of Mormon and answer her questions. Well, I'm really happy about that, but those missionaries have their work cut out for them. Tina, the lady I talked to, is from Tennessee and she has such a strong southern accent I couldn't understand her when she said her name, and I had to get her to spell it out for me so I could put it into the computer. She said she had some friends who were Mormons, and I was really happy about that, but then she started going on about how my religion wasn't legal in most states besides Utah, and what a shame that was. I was really confused, but she wanted to know more about my religion, so I gave her a brief overview of authority of God, apostasy, and then I started to tell her about Joseph Smith, but she already knew all about Joseph Smith, and could give me numbers and dates. She talked about how it would be impossible to be openly Mormon in states other than Utah. I was so confused, and tried to tell her otherwise. Suddenly it all came out. Her friends are polygamists. So then we had a long conversation about how my church doesn't do that anymore, and why not. She loves her friends and thinks people should be allowed to do what they want to do. Never in my life have I thought that I might have to explain to someone why we shouldn't have polygamy now! In the end, I just told her that I didn't have all the answers, but I bore my testimony of continuing revelation and prophets, and she agreed to read the Book of Mormon and talk to missionaries. I'm leaving the MTC next Tuesday! I got my flight plans this week, and I'm leaving early Tuesday morning. I usually get DearElder letters the day after you send them, I think. So start writing to me in Anaheim at least after this Sunday! Tell Linda and Brittney thanks for their letters, and thanks for all of your letters! My companions (I think of all five of them as my companions) thank you for the chocolate chip bread! Guess what? Sister Hardy loves Mendocino too! And she goes there every year! Love, Hermana Duque

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Sharon and Jennifer on Table Rock

We took this 14-mile hike on Labor Day Weekend. You can see the Grand Teton right behind us to the left. Did you notice the snow right next to me? It was cold up there!