Transfer #2 =D

Transfers came and went and I'm still in Derwood with my same companion and the exact same district. Love it =]. We just finished eating breakfast at Sis. Saunders house...she's basically the mission mom and always makes food for all the missionaries and gives it to us. She even buys clothes and offers them to the sisters at the VC. She's so wonderful! I wanna be just like her when I grow up =D.This week has been interesting. We don't have very many investigators because none of the ones we had before were ready for anything much less making a covenant with their Heavenly Father. So, my comp and I have been dropping people like crazy. That way we're not wasting the Lord's time with people not ready to commit, and have time to find people who are. We've been trying to focus on finding but we haven't had much success. We went tracting for 2 days almost straight, and didn't find one person. We did find a lot of people who lie (tell you that in a sec haha), and were condemned a few more times. One man was like "Jesus is gonna come again and tell everyone that he is not the son of God, he did not write all those scriptures, and he did not die for your sins!!!!!!!!!!! Obviously he's a little too prideful to understand the Plan of happiness or even the atonement, so we just testified and went on our way. Ok, so now for the people who lie. Hahahaha this makes me laugh so much! We always think of a question that is unique to our church and walk up to someone and say something like "have you ever heard of the restoration of the gospel before?" or "Did you know that Christ came to the America's?!" inevitably people will say yes, and when we ask them "how do you know?" they either make up an answer "God told me," "I read it in the bible," "One of my friends said that" or they will just laugh awkwardly. Then we tell them our message. It's interesting because I never really noticed a connection between knowledge and honesty. I always thought we needed to be honest for honesty's sake because God told us, but really we should be honest for truths sake because when we are truthful we gain light and knowledge and that allows God to give us more abundantly of the spirit and wisdom. No wonder people don't understand the scriptures when they read such an obvious verse! They lie so much in their everyday lives (not intentionally, but passively) so they can't have the spirit of truth testify to them of truth as much as they should. Sorry, that was kind of a ramble, but after running into so many people whose lives are built around fibs it just amazes me. I guess lesson here is be honest! =]. There you go.We have this old lady that we visit because her grand daughter was recently baptized, so we're teaching her the lessons again, and Peggy (the grandmother) is always there when we teach her. She doesn't want to be baptized cuz she was "already baptized". So many sisters have explained to her about authority, and I told her point blank last time I was there that she will not attain that salvation she wishes for unless she's baptized by the correct authority. She just kept goin on about her own baptism, and blah blah blah. She's just really prideful, and thinks that she knows everything. AND her apartment stinks. I almost vomit everytime I go! Now I bring body spray with me and spray it on my hands, mostly my fingertips so I can sit down with my fingers just under my nose (like a thinking pose) and smell something pleasant, otherwise I can't breathe. Bad I know, but hey whatever works! =] Sister Sankoh and I went there a few days ago to help her clean...she's in poor housing and someone a few floors up got bed bugs so the management wants to bomb the whole building at once, so everything has to be packed in plastic bags, and all the furniture has to be moved to the center of the rooms. Well, we went to help her start packing things away and OH MY GOODNESS!!! IT WAS NASTY! Was worse than anything we found in the shed. I'm telling you! She had lots of pictures on the walls, and everything was just hung with pushpins, so we would take the pushpins out and the pics were still on the wall, so we literally had to peel the pics off the wall! Most of them had old dead cockroaches (sp?) behind them. Infact I'm pretty sure their juice was what was keeping them on the wall. EWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!! This spanish guy came in (he was maintenance) and all he said the whole time he was in there was "Too many cocroaches!!!" Before he left he looked at us and said "You sisters better not leave with those same clothes on! Ugh! Too many cocroaches!" It was so funny. We just thanked him, and laughed. Even the doorjams had dead bugs and lots of old "bug juice" on the top of the jam, you know between the door and the jam. It was really disgusting, but we stayed for 2 hours nonetheless. I don't know how anyone could live in a place that dirty! Disgusting.Anywho, that's pretty much all the exciting stuff for the week. No deaf people, and no I haven't signed at all for about 2 1/2 weeks now, but whatever. It'll still be there when I need it. It's kind of part of me, so I don't think I could ever lose it.I hope you all have a wonderful week!!! I love and miss you all =]

~Sister Witbeck~

Hola!

How is everyone doing?!?!?!? Thank you sooooo much for all the emails this week! It's really good to hear what's going on with you. I am doing great! I really wish I had more time to write....but only a few fun things happened this week so here they are =]My companion and I got condemned to hell. Not in so many words, but...it was actually quite funny. She used this scripture in Matthew 25:12 where it says: "But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not." and she said "I know you think you're doing a great job, but you're not, and you're going to be surprised when you meet God and he's going to look at you and say he never knew you, and you will not live with him like I will." We were about to expound that wcripture a little because the reason it says he never knew them was because they didn't prepare, but her son came up crying because he fell on something (we were in the park) so she had to leave, but it was an interesting experience. I really feel bad for her! There is so much that she doesn't understand. She was saying (as most "christians" believe.....) that Christ has already saved us so we are going to heaven, but we do the works because we believe....a little opposite, but she'll find out someday when she's ready. Cleary she's not ready now =]The other thing is there was a chinese music program at the VC last weekend! It was so cool!!!! The reason I don't talk about a lot of the programs at the VC is because I'm hardly ever there during them. My schedule is usually such that I'm in my area when there is a program going on. Also, last week after emailing you all we went shopping and I met a deaf baptist preacher! That was a really interesting conversation. He says he sees the missionaries all the time so he wouldn't give me his info, but he had a 5 year-old son who I talked to for a little bit, and he said "Come my house, see you my house" I looked at the mom and said maybe..... so the little boy was even more emphatic "No, you come my house today! I see you later." I just chuckled and said maybe. Well as we were leaving the store I saw them again, and the little boy said the same thing! It was kind of strange. Well, first of all he remembered my name, called me by my name and said "I see you, come my house will, I see you". I guess we'll just have to see what happens =]That's pretty much it for this week. Just remember, Heavenly Father loves you, and you have a responsibility and a commandment to love each other as the Savior loves you. That takes practice and commitment. Prayers are ALWAYS answered, and when we pray with faith (doubting nothing) the heavens are opened to us. Power comes in the thoughts of faith, and when we are full of faith and love Heavenly Father's will becomes our will, and anything we ask would be in accordance with those wills and nothing could be withheld from us. So trust in God. Be still and know that He is. When you think you have that, then get off your duff and do those things you know =]. Be an example of the believers. I love you all so much!!!!! Have a wonderful week.

~Sister Witbeck~

Hello, how are you?!?!?!? =D

Ok, so I feel like yesterday was P-day. Time flies so fast!!!Right after I finished emailing you, my comp and the Spanish Hermanas were walking out of the library and met a deaf man who does Mexican sign language! He's a member and has a brother in one of the singles wards. I triesd to talk to him, and realized how much MSL I've forgotten. Things started to come back to me as he signed things that I remembered. It was really cool and interesting to try to communicate with that language barrier.Nothing really new this week according to missionary work. Just trying to find new people and dropping old people who are not progressing. Really, I have felt this whole time that something has been missing, but I didn't know what. I'm new at this whole missionary thing and I talked to my trainer about it, but she had no answer. I prayed and prayed but nothing came to me, and still I had this feeling like we could be doing so much more than what we were doing. It was really kinda frustrating. Well, yesterday we had Elder Steuer from the 70 come and speak at our zone conference. It was amazing! He answered every concern I had about doing more. Basically he changed the way we do everything here. Instead of talking to people and getting a bunch of addresses and phone numbers it's more of finding people who are really interested by peaking their curiosity. I can't really explain it, and that was a bad try, but I'm soooooo excited for this next week to try some new things and make this feeling of not using my limited time here effeciently go away. It is going to be so good!Did you know that the number of people that get baptized in Brazil is actually the number worldwide. For every 20 people the missionaries talk to in Brazil 1 person gets baptized. That's the average worldwide. Here in DC it's 35:1. We've got a lot of work to do here, and it's about time we do it.Now to answer all of moms questions about ASL. No I hardly ever get a chance to use ASL. MAYBE once a week if I'm lucky I can talk to a deaf person for 30 min. I gave a tour at the VC yesterday for the deaf Elders and one of their investigators, but the last time I used it was last week. Both me and my companion are in the English program so I don't use ASL at all in my area. In fact, never. In the VC it's a little different. We always have our mission companion but at the VC we don't stick with a companion. We greet people and give tours by ourselves. Therefore I am the only sister that knows ASL. As far as my Pres. knowing about me doing ASL....yeah, but he doesn't feel the need to have me serve as an ASL missionary when there's no other sister that knows it, and there's not enough work as it is with the 6 ASL elders here. So I serve in English and do what I can.I live in an apt (actually outside of my area so we have to drive to our area, and drive to the VC) in Silverspring MD. My area is called Derwood, but it consists of Derwood, Olney, party of Gaithersberg, and probably some uninhabited place with no name. I don't know, it's really beautiful, and VERY diverse ethnically as well as economically. We'll go from one house that's more like a castle and then go to our next appointment in a ghetto neighborhood. We actually had a question about some house as to whether it was an actual house or a church....or if it used to be a church cuz it was huge! and it had a room with a bunch of pews in it....but then it had a little cutesy crafty welcome sign at the massive doors and a welcome mat as well. So we knocked and this man came to the door just like everything was a normal home. Weird. Some people and their mansions. I have noticed here though that we don't have billboards, at least where I'm at there are none. There's so many trees that line the streets you can barely see the street signs! There would be no way to put in a billboard.2 women came into the VC this week from AZ, and one of them kept looking at my nametag, and finally she said "Witbeck, I know that name. I used to know a boy named Witbeck back in college."I said "...his name wouldn't happen to be Ryan would it??"to which she replied "YES! How did you know! Do you know him??""He's only my oldest brother!"It was quite a surprise =]. She wrote her name and address on a paper that I accidentaly left at home (so Ryan if you want her address I guess you're just gonna have to write me =]). She said she had never let anyone borrow her car before and the first person ever was Ryan who then got into an accident (she made sure to mention that it wasn't his fault), and she never let anyone borrow her car again. hahahaha I laughed really hard when she told me that story =] as I'm sure you can guess. Her first name is Kammy, but I can't remember her last name or maiden name. She took a pic of us and I gave her moms email and my old one so she could send it....not sure if you've already gotten it, but if you have that's the story behind that one. Hilarious! Now you all know a little dirt on Ryan =D I'm sure it makes you very happy. Anyways, mom also wanted to know what I do on p-days....my companion doesn't like to do anything special, so we clean in the morning (wash our car and clean our apt) get ready for the day, study personally and as companions, then we come here to the library and email home for 30 min. then go shop for food, go home and write letters till 5ish, eat and drive to our area to do some more missionary work. Really "p-day" consists of the time between 10am and 5:30pm. We have a lot of stuff that we have to get done, so we don't have a whole lot of time to do anything extra.Well, I hope you are all doing well! I love and miss you all. Take care!!!!!!!!!!!

~Sister Witbeck~

What's up in AZ?!?!? hehehe

Ok, so I'm gonna answer a few questions first for Mark. I get to go to the DC temple only once a month. We go the first day in the field (which I hardly remember cuz I was such a wreck after the midnight flight), and we just went last Friday with all the VC sisters. We only go tracting about 2 or MAYBE 3 times a week. Not too often. Since I'm in the English program I do everything in English in my area. The only time I get to sign is IF deaf people come to the VC. I went 2 weeks without signing to people and began to go into withdrawls, and last Sunday I told one of the sisters (as a joke) to pray for deaf people to come in. 20 min. later 2 deaf people walked in (hehehe). Heavenly Father answers prayers! I got to talk to them for a while. They were members and knew a person I went to school with at UofA! (Belen--for those who will read this and know who she is =]). It felt so good to sign again. The only other time I sign is when I'm teaching one of the other sisters to say something in ASL, or when I say my prayers. Other than that it's the flapping of the tongue =].Mom--I got your package yesterday. It's HUGE!!! I'm pretty sure I don't need to go shopping for quite a while. Oh, and by the way, I just found out that UPS and fedex packages usually aren't forwarded, but are kept at the mission office till tranfer day which is every 6 weeks, but Pres. Mansell comes to the VC every month so he brings the packages he gets at that time (which happened to be last night, so I got it =]). Thank you sooooo much for all your support!Ok, so Sunday (before the deaf people walked in) I saw someone from my previous ward in Mesa. Sara will know who it is.....Rustin Pierce! ...or Pearce, not sure how he spells his name. Anyways, I guess he moved here to DC last week and stopped by the VC with his new roommate and a friend to take a look around. It's really weird seeing people I know there. The world is so small! Especially here in Maryland =].So, I'm sure you heard about the earthquake in Peru about 2 weeks ago. A man came in to the VC and I started talking to him, it turns out that his son is in Peru on his mission in the area where the earthquake occured and he wrote a letter to the branch president explaining what happened out there. A while before the earthquake happened the prophet called the mission president and told him to gather all the missionaries to the temple in Lima. Then the earthquake happened. Now he told us this story quite seriously, so I believe him, but I don't know how much of it is really true. But true or not, we have a prophet on the earth today and he truly communicates with God and he knows what the people need. It's amazing! The Lord watches out for His missionaries, and His people. It's amazing to see His hand in what I do. Sister Sankoh and I talked to a Spanish man and got his address and phone number to give to the Spanish sisters who I live with, and when they went to see him he had moved, but the man living there now is really interested in the gospel and has been to Utah and seen the SLC temple, and wants to know what it's about. Even though we had talked to Louis (the first man) and expected the sisters to contact him and possibly teach him, the Lord had a different plan and led them to Mario who they are now teaching. It's so amazing to see the little miracles everyday that I would have passed over before. In everything we do, and every place we go, we are helping to accomplish the Lord's work, and it's such a good feeling to be a part of that!
Again, thanks for all you do! I love and miss you all =] =] =] =] =]

~Sister Witbeck~