Stockton

I LOVE STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA!!!  Wow.  Stockton is full of diversity and a lot of humble people who are ready for the gospel!  This ward here is a lot younger than my last one.  The bishop is in his 30's.  We have two Deaf members, but one of them is less active.  Lani, the Deaf member who comes every week, has me interpret Relief Society for her but she has other volunteers for the first 2 hours.  I can totally handle one hour of interpreting.  She hasn't had a good interpreter for a long time, so she's excited that I'm here and I can sign fast.  There aren't as many Deaf people here, so we are mostly teaching hearing people, but I love it.  Being a missionary is so wonderful and it fills me with joy.  Before my mission, I would have never approached 5 black dudes smoking a joint.  The Lord is blessing me with confidence and with safety!!

Its been really fun to be back with Sister Konou, she's such a sweetheart.  I'm helping her deal with the recent diagnosis of diabetes and we go to a diabetes class every Friday.  She's learning how to keep her blood sugar levels up into normal range, but its also been really good for me to learn about MY lows.  We even have the same blood glucose meter.  hah.  The lady that teaches the class (its a free community class) talked with me last time and she's going to give me some advice and help next time we go even though I'm not diabetic.  What a blessing. 

Remember Sister Landon (teaches in spanish) that I lived with in during my Marshallese transfer?  Shes my roomate again.  YAY!  I LOVE HER.  She's training a new baby, Sister Marroquin, who is a spunky little sister missionary from Colorado.  We have fun when we come home at night to those two.  Its a great apartment. 

Thats basically it!  It was a fun week of being confused.  Thats what happens when you dont know anything about your new area.  But luckily I have a GPS this time, so I use it everywhere we go!  We are on the search for more Deaf people...

Story time: my area had a baptism last week just before I came. Her name is Zina and she's a black lady full of energy. Zina was walking on the street and she asked two people: "Where do I go to church to feel GODS PRESENCE?!" And they must have been LDS because they said "Go to the LDS church on Brookside!" So she came. Got baptized 3 weeks later. She brought 7 nonmembers with her to church this Sunday. Talk about a MIRACLE! One black lady who came (Linda), has been praying for God to lead her to a church. She said two days later that Zina knocked on her door and they became friends then she came to our church! She LOVED it too! One other lucky thing about Stockton is that our ward actually has black people in it. In Carmichael, none of our black investigators wanted to come to the "white church" and when they did come, they never came back because they were in the minority.

Stockton is a mix of colors and cultures, so although Linda still said there were more white people than she was used to at church, she still accepted everybody because they were all so nice to her. She has been to every church in Stockton searching for the right one but she never felt like any of them had very good people in them. Linda prayed and told God if he would find her a good church, she promised Him that she would go every week. Miracle. All 7 are coming back next week because they loved it and Zina said: "Oooooh girrrrrrl! This is just the beginning! I am gonna bring you all my grandchildren and kids and you can do your bible studies with them and lets get em in the water!" She's basically going to invite everyone she knows to come to church and meet missionaries. She wants us to teach them all our "bible studies" in her home, too, which is wonderful. Maybe we should set a goal to baptize 5 people this transfer instead of one...

I love all of you and I love this gospel!  Go read the Book of Mormon!

Sister Wilson