War Zones, Rest Homes, and Dedications

I seriously cannot get over how awesome my trainee is. She is so adorable and fun. We had a project this week in which we had to cross reference three area maps (keep in mind we cover two and a half missions in the north area) so we had to figure out several investigators/members/less actives. The entire time Clarke would get very excited and be like, "We can contact that person! And this person! And them! And her! Oh! And them too!" We area going to be working our tails off, and that is going to be good :)

Happy 4th of July!!!! I wish I could have been at the farm celebrating, but even more, I bet you all wish you were here celebrating with us. We went over to the Shields' home (Sister Shields is our hearing Relief Society president). Wow. Talk about a party. Their ENTIRE neighborhood celebrated. Each house had a party going on and fireworks going and BBQs and sound systems and family and friends from everywhere. All the parties added up to one huge parties as people roamed from one party to another. This is a yearly thing!!! And I think the most interesting part was as we were walking back to our car (which was several blocks away due to NO parking), there would be fireworks going off around us on the left, right, forward, back, and above. It was like walking through a war zone. It was so pretty! :) Also, a huge tree caught on fire down the street from us and it was completely burned to the ground in under five minutes. Gotta love the California drought!

Bragging time again: Like I said, we have not had a single lesson go wrong or even fine since Clarke got here. She just brings this aura of success! We had so many awesome lessons this week with different people. One of my favorites was with Monica. If you remember, Monica is a recent convert. She is so awesome. She and her sister, Annette, who is also a recent convert, moved up to Pomona this week to their own apartment. She requested that we and the elders come up and dedicate their apartment. We went up there and dedicated it and were able to have a really good lesson with them. I had never been a part of a dedication besides a couple of temple dedications, so it was really cool to do that. It really helps me understand more how the priesthood is an integral part of our lives.

We also had a sweet experience with an older member of our branch. She was very active until she became too old to leave her bed. It had seemed everyone lost where she was because she had moved to a resting home. We were able to find her address last Sunday and went to visit her on the 4th. She cannot communicate very well, as she is limited in her movement. However, our encounter with her was so amazing. She seemed to light up as we promised to go back to visit with Sister Thexton. I had gotten on my knees next to her bed to help her with her blanket and as I touched her hand, she flexed in a way of trying to communicate. I put my hand in hers and with whatever strength she had, she squeezed my hand. That was when I almost started crying. As we were leaving we signed and said to her "We love you!!" She hadn't been able to even lift her hands enough before then to move her blanket, but in that moment, she lifted her arms and signed "I love you" back with both hands. We are going back to visit her every week now. She deserves it.

I hope you all had as good of or better week than I did! You all deserve it too!

Sister Crawford