Love those Packages!

Hello!
I got my package! Thank you thank you thank you!!! The candy, movies, letters, everything was so perfect! And thank you to Aunt Sheri for helping you send the packages. They get here so quickly! It was so much fun to see all the pictures from Christmas.
The whole family looks great and I loved seeing all the pictures of the cousins, aunts, and uncles! Mom, you should send me that one of grandma and grandpa Goedde too! I will for sure bring some guava jelly for grandma :). Please send them all my love.
Warning: I will not be writing to you next Monday because we have changes. I’ll write on Thursday though just like the other times. Just so you know :). Almost positive that I will be transferred this time because Pres. Callan hinted at it to me and my companion in our interviews so we’ll see what happens. Who knows though, I am usually
wrong with those kinds of things.
This week was really great and one of a lot of learning. We had zone conference which was just excellent. I always learn so much and have SO MUCH to improve. Our mission president and wife are so amazing and I learn a ton from them. I really do believe that we are called to specific mission presidents. At the end of the conference, they gave us
a calendar that they had made for all of the missionaries. It has all of our individual pictures (when we had just stepped off the plane...yuck) but it is so great. I found 2 elders from West Jordan who are in my mission! They probably won’t remember me but I want to be able to see them and say hello before they go home. One is named Craig Bowers and the other is Alex Velluto. I think Alex did track with Bax and was a student body officer the year after me. Anyway, such a small world.
The work throughout the week was really good but this weekend (Saturday and yesterday specifically) was tough. We had only one lesson on Saturday because a lot of the references that we had received had false addresses and phone numbers. Same with a lot of contacts that we had done in the street. We weren’t discouraged though and tried to work
harder and look for people that we could teach. The heat was killer though and the more people we looked for, the more rejection we faced. Heard some really ugly things about the church. A teacher from another church treated us very rudely, criticized the church, told us he didn’t want to hear our message about Jesus Christ. He was a lawyer and
proceeded to list off all the worldly degrees he had obtained. We asked him if we could share our message about Jesus Christ but he told us he busy and was about to get ready for church. It was so interesting to me and I thought a lot about what the Lord had said in the Bible and also to Joseph Smith that "they honor me with their lips but their
hearts are far from me." I am also reading the New Testament right now and it is so interesting to me when Jesus calls the scribes "hypocrites" and "generation of vipers." There are many who profess to be "Christian" but are anything but followers of Christ. I hope that I will never be one of those who profess to follow Christ but whose actions are anything but Christian. We are not discouraged though and are just happy to be here seeing all the blessings that our
Heavenly Father is giving us. He just wants to test us a little bit more.
Yesterday, the sisters didn’t make it to church. Only the 8-year old came. We are going to try to prepare their baptism for the 30th now. We had some great lessons with them though this week. They had gone to the fast and testimony meeting the week before and wanted to practice bearing their testimonies to us. The 8-year-old bore the sweetest,
simplest testimony. She told us simply that she had asked God if she should get baptized and that he said yes. She then told us it was really important that we asked God’s permission first and then our parents. Her friend had told her earlier in the week that our church wasn’t true, but she asked God again and He said yes, so she decided to be baptized. She is such an example to me and it has been so sweet to be able to teach a child the gospel.


Well, I gotta go to the store. I love you all so much and am so grateful for you! Keep up the good work, keep being faithful, go to the temple a lot!
Love,
Hermana Edwards
Until next Thursday...