Felicidades!
You are now receiving my weekly email. Sorry it's a bit later today then usual, we just had a lot of things to do this pday and didn't get to a computer at our usual time :) But, here I am now, so that's really all that matters, right? It's also been rainy and cold for the past 2 days so sitting here (a language lab, not the laundry room for once) is such sweet relief.
This week, yet again, has flown by. I'm getting anxious to get out in the field and start teaching real people. On a happy note, Carmen - our new investigator - is getting baptized! She accepted the invitation and we set the date for October 23. On a sad note, Hermana Edwards got a new job too so she (and Carmen) will be leaving us on Monday ENTONCES we will be getting a new teacher, Hermano McKinney, starting next week and subsequently a new investigator as well. It's slightly frustrating to have our teachers keep changing on us like this and our investigators keep leaving us while they're progressing so nicely, but at least it gives us a chance to have a bunch of different teaching perspectives, right??
Conference was AMAZING. I watched it here at the MTC and while I don't much like sitting in hard plastic bleacher for 10.5 hours, I really enjoyed it. I wish I had remembered to bring my journal with me to share my thoughts, but I didn't so let's see what I can remember: Pres Uchtdorf's talk during the relief society session, the one talk by the Japanese member of the 70 on Sunday afternoon, the other talk by the member of the 70 about teaching with the Holy Ghost, and of course President Monson's talk! And that THEY'RE GOING TO BUILD A SECOND TEMPLE IN PROVO!!!! That's so exciting! Hopefully it will be just about done right when I come home to that I can go to the dedication once I'm back here at school :) On Sunday after the afternoon session we still had a fireside at 7:00, which, honestly I was not excited for. I had been sitting in that gym for what felt like a MILLION hours and was not looking forward to the prospect of sitting for another hour. BUT it turned out to be really great! I don't have my journal so I don't quite remember the guy's name, but he played in the Superbowl for the....I wanna say Eagles....and because he served his mission in Taiwan and is the only person in the NFL who speaks Mandarin, he is the official NFL ambassador to China! Yeah! It was pretty cool. It was a nice....break? from the serious nature of Conference while still being uplifting and spiritual. And not too many sports metaphors, so that was nice too ;)
Other than that I'm doing well. I'm healthy, I'm happy, and I'm a missionary :)
Tuesday night's devotional this week was really pretty awesome. I don't usually go too in depth about devotionals, but since this week was a little on the 'same, boring old stuff' side, I thought I'd share a story that Brother L. Lionel Kendrick (an emeritus member of the 70) shared during his talk this week.
While he was a 70 he worked a lot in the Philippines and he told us that when he went to visit once this story was told to him by a ward mission leader: The was a 'commercial' fisherman in the Philippines (and when we say commercial, we mean that he made his own boat, ties a string around his finger with some bait on it everyday and goes fishing to sell) whose biggest dream was to take his family on a 3 day boat ride to the temple in Manila, however they didn't have the money. One day, this mission leader who was a businessman from California, found him selling his fish in the market for 20 pesos and thought he'd give him some business advice on how he could better sell his fish for a competitive price and make the money for the temple trip faster. However, as he was starting to give him tips the fisherman stopped him and said "Thank you sir, but I don't need your advice. You see, you don't understand the arrangement that I have with God. I told him that if He have me fish everyday, that I would feed his poor children in the village just over there. And they can only afford 20 pesos a fish. These are big, good fish and I know that I could get more for them, but then, how would these people eat?" The ward mission leader was astounded and apologized, etc. Sometime later 2 marine biologist from the United States came to the Philippines looking for a very rare type of sea turtle. They were walking all up and down the beach where this fisherman worked with photographs asking the villagers if they had seen this turtle anywhere around. When they reached the fisherman he said "Oh yeah, I think I caught one of those in my fishing boat the other day, and I'm keeping it over at the dock. Let's go over and see if it's the right one" The marine biologists were SO excited and when they went over to the dock they found that it was, in fact, the turtle they were looking for and asked them man if they could buy it from him. The humble man refused but these were honest scientists and so they kept insisting. Finally, they just dug in their pockets and gave the fisherman all of the cash that they had on hand for the turtle. It wasn't very much, they said, but they wanted to leave him with something. When the fisherman went home that night and counted the money, it was the EXACT amount, to the peso, that the family still needed to make the trip to the Temple. So they made the arrangements and were able to take the 3 day boat ride to the Manila temple.
The "moral" I guess of that story, as told by Brother Kendrick, is that the Lord honors those who honor him. I know that that is so true. As we are obedient and strive to honor the responsibilities, blessings, and covenants that we have made with the Lord, he will honor our righteous desires. I've already started to see it in my life here at the MTC and it has barely been 6 weeks.
I love this Gospel and everything contained in it <3 and I love you all and love hearing from you! (ESPECIALLY FROM MY LITTLE BROTHER!)
Have a fantastic week and until next time!
paz y amor,
Hermana Hensley
Well well! The work here in Torrance, CA has been moving along this week. However, I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been hard. It has been. Being out in the mission field is so very different from anything you expect, and in some ways I feel like I didn't learn anything in the MTC! haha 
I'm in an area south of Los Angeles called Torrence and.....IT'S AN ENGLISH AREA!. Yup. I was the lucky person in our group that was assigned to be trained in an english-area. That means that for my first 12 weeks, I will be teaching and attending wards that are English-speaking. It's ironic because both my trainer Sister Johansen and are are Hermanas, but since we are serving in an English are if we do come across anyone who speaks spanish and wants to be taught in Spanish and go to a Spanish ward, then we have to refer them to the Spanish elders. IN fact, my whole Zone is english-speaking. Of the 9 zones of my mission, only 2 of them have spanish-speaking sisters in them. Hermana Deskins went to one, and I am here in Torrence speaking English. It's weird speaking in English - especially the teaching because I didn't learn how to teach anything in English! In fact - sometimes I'll be teaching/practicing teaching and only the spnish word pops into my head and I have to stop and think about the English. It's odd. But I still have one hour of language study every day and my companion speaks it (not a native speaker, so our levels are about the same) so that's how we get our practice in. Crazy, huh?
