Lauren's Mission in Los Angeles: Friend Pictures

June 6, 2016

Hey folks!!

Glad you all had a good time this week. As you know I sent Sister Perez home and got a new companion. Her name is Sister Syu, and she is from Taiwan. She has been out just over a year, and this is her first English area. She said she was/is super nervous, but she went to BYU-I before her mission, so she speaks pretty well. President Weidman leaves on June 29, and we have "Meet the President" and a special Mission Leadership Council meeting the next 2 days. I am sad to see him and Sister Weidman go, but I know Heavenly Father needs me to have 2 mission presidents for some reason.

Sister Syu has definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone several times throughout the week, but then I remember that its okay and I need to just handle it. She also does conversations a little differently, which is also not bad, just different. I'm working on being humble enough to let myself become better through doing hard things.

On Saturday we went to Chick-fil-a for dinner, because we had been out all day and it was too hot to go home and cook something. So we go and order and while I am waiting I go use the restroom. When I come back, the lady hands me my food and another random guy walks up to us and starts asking us questions. I was only half listening, because we were in the middle of all the other people waiting for their food, and the trash can, so it was a little hectic. I gathered that he had met missionaries, or other members and talked to them briefly about the gospel, and wanted to know what gospel we were preaching. After I spilled my shake on myself and almost dropped the rest of my food, he let us go so we could eat. As we are finding a place to sit, we ran into a member family from our ward. Then we turned around and there were the South Bay YSA sisters. Remembering that we are not supposed to eat together, I turned so we could go find a place outside.

I sat down and began enjoying my food and trying to relax after a long day, and as I was finishing my food, out walks the same guy who started talking to us inside. He asked if he could join us and we said sure because he seemed to be genuinely interested in hearing what we had to say. By the end of the conversation, after I had reached the end of my rope with him, he was trying to prove us wrong based on whatever different version of the bible he was reading from, and told us that he was genuinely concerned for our eternal welfare. He said "Either one of us is right and one of us is wrong, or we are both wrong". After our charity study that morning, it took a lot for me not to say something stupid.

I was so frustrated with him and also more so with myself. Why didn't I have more patience? I could have said this better, or that differently, and maybe he would have agreed to meet with missionaries in El Segundo!! Sister Syu kindly reminded me that he wasn't prepared, which is why he didn't receive what we had to say. I'll say though, he sure knew his bible and was strong in his faith! After this incident we went out with one of the recent converts in the ward and she is a HOOT! That helped. But then the investigator we had a lesson with and invited to be baptized earlier that day called us and said he was not comfortable with the Book of Mormon and is not going to become Mormon. That one hurt a bit more than it might have under different circumstances. Oh well. He said he needed some time to read and that he would get back to us. So there ya go.

We don't really have any investigators right now, which is stressful. (As sister training leaders we are supposed to "Maintain a vibrant proselyting area") But its all good. I know and am confident that we are doing the best we can with the situation, and are going to be blessed somehow, sometime. We have set some return appointments for the week that are promising. We'll see how it goes. We talked to a lot of people throughout the week. We have been able to meet and set return appointment with new people, so we are hoping for those to go well and become new investigators.

Me and Sister Perez had the opportunity to go out contacting with the new missionaries that came in last week. It was fun! It was a warm day, but we had some good conversations and the sister I went with is super cute. We got 3 new Visitors' Center sisters and 1 full-field sister, who is under our stewardship as Sister Training Leaders. We have both of the Chinese sisters companionships this transfer, so that's going to be new. I have learned how to roughly say who I am, and that's about it. We don't really run into any straight Chinese people, but one of the ladies in our ward is from Sister Syu's home ward.

So that's the raw version of my week :P It has been good, and things are great here. I know my email sounds bad, but it was just a bit of a rough week is all :)

Love you!!!

Sister Hatch

Sister Risenmay, who was in Sister Hatch's cousin Nicole's YSA branch in Hawaii. They were together while their companions were at their departing temple trip.

Sister Risenmay is with Sister Moli.