To explain, the Napa and Fairfield stakes here organized their "Mormon Helping Hands day" for the same day(s) helping with the same event. What they helped with was a free Dental Clinic organized by CDA (I'd never heard of them before Friday...?). As missionaries we were asked to participate as well. What I didn't realize until basically Thursday (mostly because they didn't really tell us until basically then) was that we were going to be there from 5 am to 5 pm! And in order to get there in time we had to get up at 3:45! Needless to say that Friday was a long day, and that I'm still recovering somewhat from the lack of sleep I had... But that's all good because I had a great time. Most of what we did while we were there was to "escort" the patients, or groups of them sometimes, from place to place, from registration, to evaluation stations, to differing procedure stations, etc. Anyways, it was a lot of fun, even though it was a long day. I even had the opportunity to do translating work occasionally! It was a lot of fun and I had a great time!
We also had the opportunity to teach Dulce more and help her deal with the death of her friend. She seems to be dealing with it alright, although lessons with her often are a lot of comforting and not as much teaching as a normal teaching situation, but we understand what she's going through, and that she needs a lot of comforting at these times. We also were able to teach Iesica Sanchez and we set a baptismal date with her! She said that if she received an answer by May 24 she would be baptized then! We then explained to her that the way she'd receive her answer would be through reading and praying about the Book of Mormon and committed her to start reading it, hopefully she does! We also picked up two new investigators, Roberto and Veronica, a fairly young couple. Roberto is the son of a member and he went to church as a small kid, but Veronica doesn't know much at all about the Church. They both came to Sacrament Mtg. yesterday and so we set up an appt. with them for that evening. They explained to us that neither of them have been very active in a church, although they both know deep down that they should be. They decided to start looking for a church to go to because they want their son, about 1 or 1-1/2 yrs. old, to grow up with a strong faith in God. So we explained to them the reason we are there as missionaries, that we present to them and share with them what we've found to be true, and then ask them to study and pray about what we share to be able to receive an answer from God. We left them with a Restoration Pamphlet to read and they seemed really excited to learn and to truly be looking for the truth. Hopefully they are committed enough to put forth the effort that's necessary to receive an answer for themselves.
I love y'all a lot and hope you have a wonderful week!
-Elder Whitaker