Six months gone in a blink!

Hola familia,

I can't believe that I hit my six month mark this week. I can't be in the middle portion of my mission. They say that the middle year is the best year. I hope that's true because the first six months have been better than I would have expected. I have loved every minute since arriving in Redwood City. I have even better news you won't believe how good it is. I would make you wait until next week to read it, but I just can't contain myself...... Drum roll. Ok, the big news is.............................Mexico lost! I know I shouldn't be excited, but it will do wonders for the work. The only thing better than Mexico losing will be when the whole World Cup is over on the eleventh of July. Please don't misunderstand me, soccer is a wonderful sport and Mexico is a team made up of find children of God, but soccer isn't conducive to missionary work. I don't know how Dad survived in Spain when they hosted the World Cup. The first six months of my mission have been more than I would have ever expected.

I also can't believe that I am rounding my two year mark since I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. It's been an interesting two years. It's amazing to contrast the feelings from when I found out I had Hodgkin's to the feeling I've had in the first area of my mission. Baptisms have really proved to be one of the best experiences of my life. We are excited by the continued work. We continue to find new people and have another man set for July. He is really solid and began coming to church even before we started teaching him. With any luck, July and August should be a repeat of May. Each interview, President asks me how I like the area. My response is always a fervent "I love it." Unfortunately, things can't stay the same forever.

Elder Tidwell and I have a feeling that next Monday (transfers) will bring change. I have a feeling he will be a Zone Leader in San Jose to finish his mission. This means I'll get a new companion and will have what we refer to as your "breaker." I'll adapt. It will be good for me to see other ways to work; although we've enjoyed every minute of our time together in Redwood City. I'm pretty sure that I'll be here until late August when they bring in sisters. This will put me at a total of four transfers in Redwood City which tends to be the average for an area. Usually if you are doing well and working hard President will leave you relatively unchanged. The only reason he tends to change things around is to help spread the good work around. Tell everyone I love them and wish that I could be at the family reunion. You'll just have to have another one in two years when I'm back.

Love,

Elder Badger

Goal!!!

Helooooooo,

Once again, we have had a great week in Redwood City. It has been well into the 90's and hot. The work has been about the same. This week we've really been concentrating on contacting everyone. We're running out of supplies from all the contacting we've been doing. As the week has progressed, we've gotten bolder and bolder. One of the things I have begun to apply in my street contacting is extending the baptismal invitation on the street. Amazingly, it's not a bad contacting technique. It's yielded a few appointments and some church attendance. Five months ago, I would have never tried to invite somebody to be baptized after meeting them thirty seconds before. I realized that once I began trying this, a lot of the fear I have had about talking to people on the street has evaporated. I try to talk to everyone. As I get better at talking to people I begin to notice little clues that help to strike up conversation. Things like soccer jerseys, mops on balconies, imagen, and all sorts of things have made it a lot easier to identify clues about everything from religion, work, kids, and school.

At times these clues have been deceptive. One mistake I made this week was contacting a Filipino man in Spanish. He was wearing a jersey from a Mexican soccer team and looked like he was rushing home to watch the world cup. Turns out he spoke Tagalog and a little English, but absolutely no Spanish. My greeting was lost on him. Anyway, we still contacted him in English and referred him onto the English elders.

Speaking of the World Cup, we're a little afraid what that will do to our work. Already, we find people sitting in their front yards with their TVs watching the latest game from their team. It may make this week very hard because we'll be contending with the largest religion in Latin America, outside of Catholocism, futbol!

With our added emphasis on contacting, we've still managed to baptize this week. Gloria Castro was baptized on Saturday. It was a very nice service. Our recent convert Dina shared her testimony and we had several members comment that the spirit was strong. Gloria had been preparing for along time. She began attending church back in March when we first arrived in the area and hasn't missed a week since. She loves the emphasis that the church puts on the family. She also likes that she can really feel the spirit without any excessive show ore pretenses.

I hope all is well back home.

Love,

Christopher Badger

Voy a ganar!

Hola mi familia,

Once again, greeting from Redwood City. We have enjoyed another wonderful week filled with future stories.

My favorite story of this week is in regards to our recent convert Dina. This week Dina gave one of the simplest, but most heartfelt testimonies I have heard since starting my mission. Her testimony was centered on the promises contained in the Book of Mormon. She talked about how she knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet because she had read and prayed about the Book of Mormon. It was so powerful we have asked her to share her testimony at next weeks baptism.

We were also pleased to see the ward thank her for her sweet testimony after the meeting. They were touched as well. We were glad because it resulted in referrals after church. Many ward members have recently been very eager to introduce us to their good friends. It has helped bless some of the the other elders as well because many of these referrals happen to be in their areas, so we get the opportunity of passing them on.

I have been healthy and doing well. A few elders in our Zone have been hit with a small bug. Fortunately, we've been spared from any illness.

Also, this week Elder Tidwell and I have made a competition between us to try to talk to more people. We keep a simple tally each day. The loser has to share the spiritual thought at the next dinner appointment. If there is no dinner appointment, the loser is required to make all of the phone calls the following day. We find that we try especially hard on the days when it would involve phone calls. (Phone calls are not our favorite thing).

I hope all is well back home. I hope Grandpa is feeling a little better. I have a CT scan today and a doctors appointment at the end of the month.

Hasta Luego,

Elder Christopher Badger

85 Degrees and Hot!

Hola family,

Once again, we have had a pretty good week. For the first half of last week we had to host another companionship of elder's in our apartment. We have one of the larger apartments, but still found it quite crowded. Fortunately, they left a few days ago and are now in their own place. It is nice to have the place back to ourselves this makes it much easier to practice our Spanish and prepare for lessons in our own space. It also makes it easier to keep clean.

I'm sorry to hear that Grandpa isn't feeling well. I hope he's feeling better. One thing I also learned this week is that there is a Dr. Badger in the Menlo Park Stake. I was a little dissapointed to learn that I won't be the first.

I also learned through exchanges, that no one can tell the story of Joshua having to fit in the shoes of Moses like Steve Young. We heard him talk about how he had to fill Joe Montana's shoes. It was probably one of the best sunday school lessons I've been in.

I'm sorry, but I don't have a lot of news for this week. Elder Tidwell turned twenty-one yesterday and we celebrated with a rousing game of Monopoly City. I happened to win. After four hours of playing I decided not to make any missionaries cry so we put away the game and finished Preparation Day. No baptisms this week, but we should have one on June 12, 2010. I hope all is well.

Love,

Elder Badger

One Fine Day

Hola, una vez mas

I'm very glad to hear that all is well with the family. It sounds like you had a good time with the entire family gathered together. Once again I had a wonderful Saturday. Saturday can be a very tough day for finding and working because people tend to be "busy" with all of their relaxing.

We have decided that a way to make Saturday's better is through baptismal services and sealings. This last Saturday we began the day by attending a sealing in the Oakland Temple with some of Elder Tidwell's recent converts. It was the first sealing I had been too and really enjoyed the Spirit that was there. It was amazing to see and entire family sealed together.

We then concluded the day by having the Baptism of Dina and Ashley Pena. The baptism went very well and the Spirit was very strong. Dina's husband, Santiago, attended and told us that he felt something different at the Baptism. He even attended their confirmation the following day in church. We are hoping to begin teaching him. I would love to see them a year from now in the Temple when they get sealed together. It was the best day of my mission thus far.

I also have some good news about transfers. Elder Tidwell and I will be staying together, but will lose more than half of our area. Unfortunately, all of the area we have really been focusing on will go to some Spanish elders on bike. I really wish I was on bike so I could stay in that area. Most of our people who are progressing towards baptism are in that area. I didn't realize how attached I was to the people in that area. Also, I didn't realize how stressed I get around transfer times. We will also be turning over every single appointment in our planners. This leaves us with one appointment for the week. It is very frustrating. We also have the two elders staying in our apartment until the mission finds an apartment for them. We will make do, but feel as if we're really the ones white washing again. It takes a lot longer than I would have expected to bring an area up to speed. The new elders will be blessed with an area that should yield baptisms in the next transfer.

Anyways, all is well here. Mi espanol esta progresando bien. Con tiempo voy a hablar sin miedo. Espero que ustedes esten bien en Washington. La obra continuara. Tengan una buena semana

Con Amor,

Elder Badger

As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good 'ol way....

Querida Familia,

Tuvimos un bautismo. Estamos muy agradecimos por Oscar y Marisol Buendia. Su mama estuvo contenta cuando los dos fueron bautizado. Tuve la opurtunidad bautizar a Marisol y su amigo, Hermano Olsen, bautizo a oscar. (forgive me, but I can't figure out how to change the library keyboard to spanish, so some accents are missing). Vente cinco personas estuvieron ahi.

It was an amazing experience to have our first baptism. We were surprised when President Jackson showed up to watch our baptism. Luckily, there weren't any complication. Everything went the way it was supposed to. There mother, a recent convert, was especially happy that her family can be united in one church. They are all planning on performing baptisms for the dead in the Oakland Temple in three weeks when the ward takes all twenty-six of its recent converts.

We are also blessed to be able to witness the baptism of Dina and Ashley next week. Both are very excited and have adapted well to the ward. We began teaching Dina two weeks ago. Already she is in Alma 15. I won't be surprised if she has finished the Book of Mormon before her baptism. Her daughter Ashley is eight years old and is more eager to be baptized than her mother. She asked me if she could be baptized this weekend. We told her that it would be best to wait one more week just to make sure that we had taught her everything she needed to know.

It's amazing how the Lord has helped us this transfer. Through prayer we set goals at the beggining of this transfer. We also sought the spirit as we decided how er were going to achieve these goals. As we did the things we promised to do to find these people the Lord put them in our path. In Dina's case, She called US. This rarely happens. We feel so blessed to have been worthy of witnessing these blessings. I realize how little I actually do as a missionary. We simply try to bring the Spirit so that the Lord can go to work. This seems to be the most effective way. Amazingly, it isn't something they teach in the MTC.

I hope all is well at home. Things are wonderful in Redwood City. We're in the sixth week of the transfer so we should find out about transfers next saturday (say a prayer that Elder Tidwell and I are still together).

Love,

Elder Badger

Translation:
We had a baptism. We are very grateful for Oscar and Marisol Buendia. Their mother was very happy when they were baptized. I had the opportunity to baptize Marisol and her friend. Elder Olsen baptized Oscar. There were 25 people there.

Miracles Make my Day

Hola familia,

We have had an amazing week once again. We found an amazing new investigator this week. Her name is Dina Pena. The ironic thing about finding her is the fact that we did nothing; she found us.

We were in a teaching appointment a few nights ago when we received a phone call from her. She said that she had been reading the Book of Mormon over the last year and wanted to meet with missionaries. We set the appointment for the next day and were very excited to meet her. Our excitement grew when she called us back and told us that she wanted us to bring a Book of Mormon in English for her daughter.

We visited her the next day. She explained to us how missionaries had given her a Book of Mormon a year before and how she was unable to meet them because she was paralyzed. After much physical therapy she is now able to walk and function normally. She had been reading the Book of Mormon. Surprisingly, she is the type to read the last chapter first (Moroni 10). She then began reading from the beginning. She knew that what she had read was true. She also understood that because she knew the Book of Mormon was true that Jesus Christ is the savior, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and that we had the true church. Shortly after this, she saw four advertisements for the church on her television in one day. She took this as a sign that she needed to call the number left in her book and meet with missionaries again. We were blessed to be those missionaries.

When we arrived we began talking about what she knew. We asked her what she thought she would feel like if the Book of Mormon was true. She described the peace, calmness, and assurance that accompanied her prayers. She then told us that because we were there she knew that she had received an answer. She told us that everything she read seemed familiar to her; although she had never read it before.

Interestingly, she was a practicing Jehovah's Witness for thirty years. She left the church when she received a blood transfusion that saved her life. A few of her questions were related to the questions she had about our beliefs. One of the things that helped assure her that we were the answer to her prayers was the fact that we believe in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost as three separate beings. Our appointment got better as she used an analogy we often use as missionaries. She talked about how, like a family they work together to achieve the same thing, but are distinct and separate from each other.

As the lesson progressed we learned a great deal from her. We could feel the strength of her testimony, a testimony rooted on a conviction that the Book of Mormon is true. She did as Moroni says; she read in the Book of Mormon, pondered its words, and prayed. She knew everything she needed to accept a baptismal date. She will be baptised three weeks from that first lesson. We hope to teach her daughter and baptise her as well (she's eight). They both attended church yesterday and loved every minute of it. She has an amazing fellowshipper that has already befriended her. They talked about all aspects of their families and background. Her daughter loved primary and sang some of the songs to her mom afterwards.

It was interesting to hear President's response as we told him the news. She had been prepared and knew it. I feel blessed to witness this miracle. Elder Tidwell and I are reminded that we have no claim to a baptism. The Lord has prepared people to be baptized.

Love,

Elder Badger