The Lord's Way...

Hey there Fetchers!  (from that weird dog show...not the way my cunado says it)

First things first:  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOOUUUUUUUUUUU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOOOUUUUUUUU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MARYJAAAAAAANE.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!  happy birthday we (I) sing to you, may your dreams and wishes come true.  May your hours be filled with happiness! and all your days with love be blessed!  Tis love brings us (me) here.... Tis love brings us (me) here.... happy birthday maryjaaaaaanne.  Tis love brings us (me) here!  So what are you now, twenty two?  hahaha jk Maryjane!  you are twelve.  That is cool.  Beehives or bust.  haha  I hope you have a good day today and know that I am thinking about you and talking about you to my companion.  No more primary!  that's always a good day.  Not that there is anything wrong with primary but...you know what i mean.  So this makes twelve years since we moved in to HOLLAday.  that is weird. I love you janey.  and I'm sending you a car for your birthday.  A mexican one, which means it will be two toned truck with really loud speakers that you can blast your mariachi music from and crazy blades/ rims/whatever they are and a smokestack and at LEAST a six inch lift.  you should be excited.  you're going to look great in it!

We had such a cool experience this week!  We had a day where EVERYTHING fell through.  I'm talking like seven appointments and all of our backups and so we ended up knocking doors on the spur of the moment.  We even had someone call and full on YELL at us over the phone for a misunderstanding they had, so I wasn't feeling too pumped up, but we did a "let's go right here" and "how bout right again" until we got to a good street to knock.  We got off the bikes and I started walking into the first driveway I saw, which happened to have a mom and kids out playing in the yard.  As soon as we got within her fence, she stood up and walked inside.  I was thinking in my head, "nice.  real nice." and then (even better) she sends her husband out to deal with us.  I was feeling like "of course.  of course you send him out to get rid of us."  Until I introduced myself and shook his hand and he immediately invited us in. It was all royal treatment from there - he's getting us chairs to sit on and asking if he can get us something to drink... the whole shebang.   Turns out, she originally thought we were jehovah's witnesses (i HATE it when that happens.  almost as much as i hate it when they think we're menonites.. no.  actually, i'm just a normal young girl wearing a really ugly skirt.)  but that's why she went inside.  She told her husband "you better go talk to them because if it's anyone but the church of jesus christ of latter day saints, I'm going to say something mean to them." what? haha how often do you hear that?  Her mother and grandmother are both members, but she was raised catholic because of her stepfather.  She and her husband have NINE kids and they were taking the discussions but then they moved and haven't been able to get in touch with the church since then.  She said that the other day she was having a really hard time with some of her kids and she wanted to read the "mormon book" so she started looking for it and realized she lost it!  She didn't know what to do or how to get in touch with anyone from the church so she was pretty desperate.  She said,"my husband doesn't even know this, but I knelt down that day and pryaed that if I couldn't find the Mormons, that the Mormons would find ME."  what?????  i know.  It was incredible.  The only thing wrong with this whole experience was that they speak english.  but that was so cool!  The elders for the english ward are basically kissing our feet now.  "Hey elders, we have ELEVEN golden referrals for you!"  But I just think Hermana Killpack and I were lucky to be a part of answering that woman's prayer.  And it was a good reminder for me that God's plan for our day is ten billion times better than OUR plan for our day.  Welcome to the fold, Cardinas Family!

Fernando update:  We've put his baptism on hold until he can change a few things.  As of right now, he's just not doing it for the right reasons.  I think he feels a stronger desire to join the church than he does to have his sins washed away.  He knows he needs Christ to cleanse his sins, but it's almost like that BUGS him or something.  I dunno.  But he is still coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon and he even went to a fireside last night without us knowing it... but he's still got a lot of pride.  He was pretty disappointed though when we told him he couldn't get baptized yet.  He told us he'd pray about it - so that is a good sign.  A few weeks ago we would have been the ones asking HIM to pray, and he would have had a huge problem with that.  so we'll take whatever progress we see. 

Anyways, life is good.  We saw a live possum walk through our headlights while we were recording our milage at the end of the day yesterday.  Welcome to Texas.  ROUS. 

oh yeah, and Hermana Killpack's bike broke.  Her tire has something wrong with it but we're too independent to be needy and call the elders so we've basically wanted to rip our hair out for the past couple days.  It went flat one day while we were out in the very far corner of our area so we ended up walking a bit until (miraculous tender mercy) we saw a kid on the side of his trailer pumping up his bike tires and he let us use his pump!  so then we were able to ride to a member's home where she gave us a ride home. But we now know how to change bike tire tubes!  every cloud has a silver lining...(and we did have young albert insured!)  nobody will get that but us Tingey's - we're odd like that. 

I love you all!

have a great week!

love,

becca

PS. Hey I forgot!  The cutest thing ever happened to me yesterday. 

We have a sweet little old lady who just recently converted who lives in our ward and she is almost 100% deaf but she always gets up to bear her testimony and so the whole time she just gets louder and louder until she's just about yelling into the mike. haha.  it's so cute.  but she is so sweet and I went up to her after Relief Society and told her thanks for her testimony and she gave me a big 'ole hug.  I saw she was wearing this funny sparkly necklace so I told her it was pretty and she said, "do you like it?" and I said yeah, so she said "I'll give it to you." and she took it off her neck and put it around mine!  It was so nice of her.  I felt bad... but it taught me a good lesson about being Christlike.  How are some people so good?  I need to be more like that. 

anways, pass it on.

love

me again