September 23, 2013

Hola Familia/ Amigos
  Mi Semana fue muy bien. Nosotros hablamos con muchos personas porque no tenemos mucho investigadores. Esta bien si yo escribo en espanol? Porque no van a entender. JaJa
    Ha ha well there is a little Spanish for you all to try and figure out! I know Abe and Makaul will understand, because i keep getting letters from Makaul in Spanish! Even though i know she is using Google translate i love that she is trying! Maybe Abe could help her out a tiny bit!
    Well this week has been another amazing week! I had to say goodbye to Elder Ashton, and Elder Garity, as they got transferred! They truly are studs! I cannot believe how good of friends you become after only being around 2 guys for 6 weeks! They will be missed here in Sonoma, but i know the Lord has called them to another area because people there are waiting for them to come offer them the gospel!
   This week we had a few rough situations come up concerning some less actives in the ward and also a few of our investigators! This might be long if that's okay? If not you can just stop reading right here and ill understand... But anyways!
   So on Tuesday night i got the feeling that we should call one of our Less Active who we teach on a regular basis, and see how she was doing, also to see if we could come by real quick and talk with her! She said that would be great. We hopped on our bikes, and ran down to her house. She is struggling right now with the money being tight, and we have talked to Bishop about trying to help her out! He said she had to be paying her tithing which correct and so she agreed to begin paying her tithing! But when we Knocked on her Door, she grabbed a slip of paper and came outside immediately before her Daughter Maya had the opportunity to
to see us... She began to explain that she has 3 days to pay her rent or she was going to be kicked out, and that she owed $290 dollars and only had $25 dollars in her bank account. She began to tear up, and we expressed to her that everything would be okay, and we will help figure things out for her.
   Wednesday morning we went into the Real-state office where she pays her rent, and I translated for her, because i understand Spanish very well. We left with her in tears again, and so we decided we were going to call Bishop and explain the situation to him, and see what we could do to get her through the end of the month than try and find a new place for her to live, that might have a cheaper rent. I left Bishop a message before he didn't answer! Just stating that we had some news for him and would love for him to call us back so we could explain as best as possible!
    We got a call from Bishop on Thursday night while at the church, i decided i would explain to him, and talk to him about what we might need to do to help her out as best as possible before she goes homeless. As i was talking to Bishop on speaker phone, so that Elder Payne could hear the Conversation, Bishop kept interrupting me trying to say she needs to figure it out... Long history there, but Bishop does not like the Spanish group we have her in Sonoma. But That's okay cause Hermano Moreno, just got put into the Bishopric and he is our Strongest Spanish member! So now we are hoping the Spanish members will feel more included.
   Come to find out he doesn't like me any more either! He thought i was yelling at him, because it was on Speaker phone, and he kept interrupting me, and i politely asked him if i could just explain the situation, than we can visit about what need to be done. But with my Loud voice as is, and on speaker phone, i kinda tend to yell at the phone. I must get that from my mom. She is always yelling at the phone! ;)
    But anyways, we have it all figured out now, and Bishop had to come to realize that it is his job to help the members of the ward, when they are in a tough situation. But there are still hard feelings i think between Bishop and I which is Okay though, because his son Lucas ( Who i think has Down syndrome) absolutely loves me! Because Tennis is his favorite sport!
    We also had a weird situation with our Investigator Angel this week, where we scheduled a time for to come by, and teach him with Hermano Moreno. We had also planned to talk with him about how to help him with his Legalization papers. We showed up at 6:30 he said he was eating dinner to come back at 7, so we did, and He was gone. This was not the first time this had happened to us, so we decided to drop him. That was the hardest thing to drop him, but if he is going to drop our appointments, we have to drop him, and continue to focus on those who are ready and willing to accept the Gospel.
    Socorro is another wild story. Holy cow this week has been busy! We went over to see Socorro, and when we knocked to ignored it, but we knew they were both there, because her car was there and also the boyfriend Alejandro's car as well. So we knocked again a little loudly thinking they might not have heard it, and than she yelled.. (Quien?) Who is it? We said it was the missionaries than like 3 minutes later she answered the in a robe, and tried to explain to us in a frantically way that she was getting into the shower to go to a party that she was late for.... Were not so sure if we should believe her, because she has Struggled with Chastity, and Alejandro was there... She also told us we were not allowed to come over anymore sense school has started unless we call her first and let her know, so we are a little worried there might be things going on while the kids are at school! Not so sure what to do about it, but Elder Payne and I have decided we are not going to baptize her until Alejandro is completely out of the house. In an Ideal situation thats what would be best, but we are aloud to baptize if there still living together as long as there in separate rooms. We have decided we are not going to allow that though, and that she will have to wait until Alejandro is out of the house! We think this will spark a little bit of Serious in her to get him outta the house! We will see where it goes though!

Anyways i love you all! Hope you enjoy your week, and enjoy Reading the email! We will see what next week brings us! Love you all so much! Love getting packages and letters!

Love,
Elder Albertson