I LOVE NEW MEXICO!!!!

Albuquerque New Mexico Misson's
newest missionaries with their trainers
Hermana Jardine is my trainer.

(The comments and or translations in bold blue italics are made by Lauren's mom)

Dear Family!

HOLA!! AWWWW Daaaaad and Brenden and Krysten I’m soooorrrryyy!!!! (Robin and Brended stayed at home an extra half an hour, hoping they would be at home when Lauren called from the airport, but alas...) I got carried away being a missionary and talking to this lady at the airport about her family and religion and stuff. She is 80 years old, agnostic, and she has a son whose a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner at Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in Oregon or Washington. She also has kids in Utah and a sister that lives in Washington. She was flying to Washington to visit her sister for the weekend and she had a layover in Salt Lake City. Just a side note, and I'll get back to my missionary experience, I'm starting to master the art of asking questions Daddy. In the MTC Hermano (translation: Brother) Nava taught us something that really has helped me here. He said that we cannot rationalize, intimidate, or persuade anyone into believing in something. The way to help someone begin to believe in something is to encourage them to experiencing it. Getting back to my missionary experience, I started asking her questions about her belief in God and she said something about being open minded and needing to be open to every new idea. It was great, I just kept asking questions like, “What do you think the purpose of life is?” I did hardly any talking, I mostly listened and asked questions... kinda like you do Dad! At one point she said, "Well you know, you still haven't convinced me of anything yet." I said, "Nope, and I’m not trying to either. You’ll only be able to know the truth of something through personal experience." Talk about a great experience.

We arrived at the mission home around 11:00am yesterday and shortly thereafter we went tracting. It was AWESOME!!! President and Sister Miller are so great! They are so loving and understanding.

My companion and I went with the English sisters and ran into a man named Margarito. He was working painting someone's roof. He said something about not speaking English when we said hello. I said, "Esta bien, yo hablo espanol!" (translation: "It's OK, I speak spanish!") ... soon after we figured out that his English was pretty good, so we began to talk to him in “Spanglish” (A mix between English and Spanish). It was awesome, he's had the missionaries come by and talk to him, but they stopped visiting him because he wouldn't come to church. Thankfully, the spirit prompted me to ask him questions that within minutes gave us a good chunk of his life story. I bore testimony of the importance of Jesus Christ and following his teachings. He seems to have a strong faith and belief in God, but he has a lot of guilt about his marriage, so he doesn't feel right about going to church. It was a great first Spanish contact experience. He said, 'he would see', when we asked him if he would go to church on Sunday. He asked us to pray for him. I challenged him to start reading the Bible everyday. I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!

I'm learning to take things slower, instead of blindly running in every direction I’m calmly taking everything in and processing things as I go. I LOVE NEW MEXICO!!! Today has been incredible! My companion is SO sweet! I love her to death. We have so many similarities its crazy; she was one of the students in the paramedic program that ran labs when I took my EMT class... so within a half an hour of being introduced we realized that we already knew each other! This is going to be an amazing transfer. My companion is incredible and this town is great! She's so loving, kind, and hard working. The work seems to be going well in this area already and it’s going to keep getting better! I love it! Oh yeah, my companions name is Hermana Jardin and we are serving in Santa Fe, yeah! There are two English Elders and us covering the area.

Oh man, I love it here! Our branch has only one young woman and two or three young men, so we need to start teaching and baptizing some youth, any ideas would be much appreciated.

In New Mexico they put luminaries on
their roof tops instead of strings of Christmas lights.

P.S. Ma! You should forget the whole Christmas light idea; in New Mexico they put luminaries on the roofs of their homes... You should do that! It’ll save you and Dad a ton of money. Except for that whole tearing down our house and building an adobe one in its place thing... but hey, it would be worth it. PROMISE!

Much love, you all are awesome and are in my prayers often!!

Hermana Perez