East Coast meets West Coast-- California Los Angeles Mission: Happy Halloween!

Hey wonderful madre! Love you! I am doing great! Seeing all the Halloween fun, made me wish I was there. We actually had to be inside by 6pm on Halloween, which was kind of a bummer but we did our weekly planning during that time! Sister Evans looked out the window of our little casita on Halloween, once we were inside and saw some man dressed up, swinging what looked like an ax and we both understood why we had to be inside, in Bell Gardens, the crazies come out Halloween night so we were glad we were inside planning :) hahaha

Enjoying Halloween together..me Sis. Evans, and our new missionary Sis. Flake!

Halloween was great! We had a lot of great lessons and talked to a lot of cool people. We celebrated during our weekly planning by stuffing our face full of candy that was sent to us :)

This week we got our new missionary, Sister Flake! She is from Chicago and is from a family of 6, just like Sister Evans and I :) She is actually here in the LA mission waiting on her visa to go to Brazil! She learned Portuguese in the Provo MTC for 6 weeks and then comes here and is now in a Spanish area. It is the hardest thing it seems like, to have to switch from Portuguese to learning Spanish because they are so similar. She is such a great missionary! In lessons that we teach in in Spanish, we will look to her to say something and she does, no matter if she has no idea what we're saying, she always just opens her mouth and testifies! Although it is a mix of Portuguese and Spanish sometimes, the spirit she carries is so strong that it really doesn't matter which language she is speaking! We have had a lot of fun together already and Sister Evans and I have already established that she is the dad and I am the mom, based on our personalities, but training is the best. It is different having to explain everything you do as a missionary to someone else and I am starting to feel a little of the pressure that Sister Hatch felt ;)

Craziest event of this week had to have been when I ate a whole soup full of shrimp with its eyes, antenna and everything, I was dying.....but I did it! On your mission you find out that you are capable of a lot of things you never thought you could ever do hahaha

These are a few pictures of us eating shrimp....mommy, I ate a whole soup with shrimp! The shrimp still had eyes and tail and its antenna and I ate it all....well I took everything off of it and then I ate it! hahaha

We also got a car!! Biking around as a trio is fun but we were overjoyed by the fact that have a car now. Our area is so small though, that sometimes we just don't feel the need to drive so we just walk/bike. We think the main reason for the car is just to be able to get to Sister Flake's new missionary trainings that are pretty often, instead of having to get a member to drive all three of us every single time.

One of my favorite things right now is listening to the Lamb of God, during lunch or exercise of whatever! Sister Flake has it on her mp3 and I just love it! I just think back to when the Greensboro stake performed it and I am amazed at how beautiful the music is. The other sisters are also obsessed with it so we listen to it nonstop.

At the beginning of this week after transfer meeting, Sister Evans and I got a blessing from President Weidman which really helped us both prepare for this transfer. Something that President felt inspired to tell us is to work with more of our former investigators this transfer, because some are ready to accept the gospel. We have seen some really great potential in a few formers that we have gone by to see, one of them we went to visit the other day, his name is Jorge Verdin. Last night we went to visit him and his family and they were so sweet and open, they told us all about their history with Elders for about 7 or 8 years and they were so shocked to see sisters. In Bell Gardens they have had Elders for about 20 years until this past July they put sisters, the sisters are taking over the area :) Jorge's story with how he met the missionaries is so cool! He actually saw a commercial about the Book of Mormon or something while he was drunk so he dialed the number and asked for missionaries to come to his house, unknowingly. When they showed up he had no recollection of it but the Elders that came by to visit could tell that he had a drinking problem so they went in his fridge and took all of his alcohol and threw it in the street. Since that day, Jorge hasn't had a single drink. We don't completely know why they stopped meeting with missionaries but we have faith that they could get baptized. Fun fact: Jorge thought I was a native from the DR (which I was surprised he thought that) and when I started speaking English for the first time he was so shocked! Hahaha

Our investigators are doing great, for the most part, they just aren't coming to church! Our one investigator Doreen, still hasn't been able to go to church because of her work on Sundays but we are continuing to pray for her to make it because that is her next step! We have many new investigators and are continuing to find new people everyday, we have faith that they will continue to progress and that they can enter the waters of baptism!

One of the missionaries who was departing this last transfer bore her testimony and shared a scripture that I really enjoyed, its in Alma 28:8, it says "And this is the account of Ammon and his brethren, their journeyings in the land of Nephi (Los Angeles), their sufferings in the land, their sorrows, and their afflictions, and their incomprehensible joy, and the reception and safety of the brethren in the land of Jershon. And now may the Lord, the Redeemer of all men, bless their souls forever."

The best part of it all is the incomprehensible joy that our investigators feel and we feel and the members feel when they take that step and decide to be baptized! It really is an amazing work! Keep spreading the gospel to everyone that surrounds you! I love you so much family and am so glad that Halloween was so fun! I loved all your costumes and hearing about the fun you had! I continue to pray for every single one of my wonderful brothers and sisters, I truly hope you are enjoying school and everything. I love you more than words can say,really and miss you more than words can say. Know that I am loving the mission and although sometimes we as missionaries have "sufferings in the land...." All is worth it, when others and ourselves feel that "incomprehensible joy" Love you and Happy November <3

Love, Hermana Abreu