Hello family!

It was so great to see and talk to you all yesterday! I'm so glad that you're doing well, I love you all so much!

This weekend was awesome, as it was Candy's baptism! She was so excited and the service was beautiful. Candy doesn't have too much here in Aruba, so the branch stepped in to help and to make her feel special on her baptism day. The Relief Society bought her a new white skirt and blouse to wear after her baptism and went over before to help her get ready. The Primary room (where they hold the baptismal service) was full of members there to support her! And even though the majority of them can only speak Spanish and Papiamento, everyone spoke in English (the speakers and people who gave prayers knew English, but the branch president who gave the welcome and a counselor who conducted don't!), even if it was hard for them. It was so nice, because they wanted Candy to understand everything and to feel at home on her baptism day. She was so happy the entire time and just kept smiling. I've never seen her smile and laugh so much! It's been amazing to see how the gospel has changed her and made her a truly happier person.

It was really fun because Sister Cole and I, along with Sister Moore, a member, sang the song "When I am Baptized" at Candy's baptism. We did it a capella and changed it just a little...we gave it more of a fun twist! (I think Sister Moore posted it on Facebook? Her name is Diana Moore, she's from the US) It was super fun and we were so proud of ourselves! After we finished, we heard Candy lean over to the person next to her and say, "It just hits you in the heart." So I guess she liked it!

Today during personal study, I read John 6 which reminded me of Elder Christofferson's October conference talk, "The Living Bread Which Came Down from Heaven," (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/10/the-living-bread-which-came-down-from-heaven?lang=eng) so I read that too. It was awesome! You should all read that chapter and talk, I feel like I learned a lot about Christ from them. It is amazing to think about everything that Christ did for us. He and Heavenly Father love us so much and They want us to return to Them, and that's why They gave us Christ's Atonement! As we learn about Christ and His Atonement and apply His character to our lives, we prepare for the day that we will meet Him again! I love verse 35 of John 6: "And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." I know that Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life and the Living Water and that it's only through Him and that we can obtain eternal life! I encourage you all to study His life and attributes and apply them in your life.

I love you all so much! Thank you for the great examples that you are to me! I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love,

Sister Davidson

Pictures:

1. Candy's baptism!

2. Contacting

3. Chalo burger for dinner!

4. A hilarious Chinese card that didn't exactly translate into English...

Hello family!

This week was a great one, but nothing too exciting happened for me to report on.

We had zone conference yesterday, which was great! It was just Aruba again, since it complicates things sometimes if we leave the island. We talked about the gathering of Israel and the role we play as missionaries in that. It was super interesting, we learned a lot about the Abrahamic covenant and Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon's role in it as well.

I don't know if I've told you all this, but one of our investigators, Candy, is getting baptized this weekend! She is from New York and has lived here for 22 years. She's been coming to church for a long time too (most of the members thought she was a member so they were confused when we told them she was getting baptized...), but never wanted the missionaries to come and visit her. Well, one Sunday, she came up to us and said "I want to be baptized." It was so exciting! We told her that we would have to visit her and teach her some things, and she it was okay, she just wanted to be baptized! Seriously a miracle. So we've been teaching her for about 3 weeks and she is all ready for her baptism on the 12th! We are super excited for her.

This Sunday in church was district conference, which is really interesting when you live on a tiny island. The district includes the 3 ABC Islands, so they do it over Skype! Everyone meets in their own meetinghouses and then they Skype in and they have speakers/prayers/musical numbers over Skype. It was interesting, but really cool! The church felt really packed because it was our branch combined with the branch from San Nicholas, which is at the other side of the island.

I hope you were all able to make it to the temple this past week! Now make it a goal to go again this week! I love you all a ton and hope you have a great and spiritual week!

Love,

Sister Davidson

Pictures:

1. We were craving pizza, and when you're on a bike...you gotta do what you gotta do!

2. Converted our apartment into a bike shop on Friday! Sister Cole's front tire was having all kinds of problems so we basically had to take it all apart and put it together again. I would be lying if I said no calls to the elders were made for help...

Sorry, I wasn't too good at taking pictures this week! I'll try to take more this week!

Hi family! I hope everyone's week was awesome!

Sorry this email is coming so late! The end of last week was King's Day and Tuesday was Labor Day, so it's been a whole weekend of holidays here in Aruba. So basically since Friday, everything has been shut down, so we had to email today.

This past week was great! Not too many exciting things happened, just lots of teaching (our favorite!). We have been having great lessons with our investigators and focusing on the importance of praying to know if the Book of Mormon is true. Lots of them have potential and desires to know, but we felt like some were missing that understanding that everything rests on the truth of the Book of Mormon. So the lessons have been focused a lot on prayer and the Holy Ghost, and they have been such spiritual lessons!

On Saturday, we had an activity at the church. Every auxiliary organziation had prepared a little skit from the Book of Mormon and performed it. It was so fun! The primary's was probably my favorite. They performed the search for the Brass Plates, and the best part was the sunbeams dressed up as little sheep and making "baa" noises. It was the cutest thing ever!

This week I was reading an article from the January Liahona about temples (it was really good, I highly recommend it). I am so thankful for the temple, and we are so blessed to live in a place with temples so close by! I love the temple, and I know that it really is the House of Lord where we can receive revelation and guidance from our Heavenly Father. I encourage you all to go to the temple this week! Even if you can't go in, go to the grounds! The Spirit is so strong there and the Lord blesses us when we take time out of our busy schedules to go to His house.

I love you all and hope this week is great!

Love,

Sister Davidson

Pictures:

1 and 2. We had a district activity and climbed Hooiberg...one of the tallest points in Aruba! It's kind of just a steep hill...But you can see a lot from the top!

3. We had exchanges last Tuesday and I got to be with Sister Melendez :)

4. A member fed us San Coche...my favorite!

5. A traditional Aruban house​

Hello family! I love you all and hope you had a great week!

This week was really great! We had lots of awesome lessons. We have still been really busy with teaching investigators, which is such a blessing! It has been really great to see the fruits of our labors these past couple of weeks.

Three lessons that we had really stick out as great, spiritual experiences:

1. Rafael- He is a new investigator that we taught on Sunday. We brought a member with us and taught the first part of the Restoration (everything before Joseph Smith). He and the member hit it off almost immediately, which is always super nice because now he has a friend! This member was awesome to bring with us too because he was a missionary not too long ago, so teaching with him was basically like teaching in a trio. He said the exact things that Sister Cole were planning on saying...the Spirit is amazing! Anyway, Rafael understood really well, and after we explained the Great Apostasy at the end of the lesson, he asked, "If all these churches were formed during the apostasy, how do you know which one is right?" We told him that we have his answer and that we're going to talk about it next time. He really wants to know the truth and has so much potential!

2. Ephraim- We were teaching Ephraim this week, and in the middle of the lesson, two of his friends came over and joined us. Since they joined in the middle of the Plan of Salvation lesson, they had lots of questions, so we spent most of the time answering their questions and talking about the main part of our message. One of his friends told us, "I've always wondered this and love asking people because everyone has a different opinion- What was the first religion? And why are there so many today?" That's the PERFECT question! We gave him a pamphlet of the Restoration and explained a little. He was really excited to get the pamphlet and showed it to another friend and said, "This has my answer." It was so cool! He is visiting here from Canada, so we are hoping to send his information to the missionaries there because he had great questions that could all be answered through the Gospel!

3. Dennis- Dennis is a Dutch man that we have visited a few times, but haven't ever been able to teach too much because there is a pretty big language barrier. We don't speak Dutch and his English is mas o menos, so it can be hard to teach. Also, he doesn't know too much about God or Jesus Christ, which we are not used to, so we had to start from square one with him. But he has been making progress and praying throughout the week to know God! We had a lesson with him this week and started talking about prophets and the Priesthood. We had tried to do this once before, but he didn't understand it, so we backed up. But this time, we tried again, and he totally got it! He was very engaged in the lesson, asking questions and giving really good insight! He has made lots of really great progress, and next time we go, we will teach about Joseph Smith, we're super excited! The Spirit was really the teacher in that lesson because he was able to understand so well.

Other than that, this week was pretty normal. But it was good! Except for when I taking my water bottle out of the freezer and dropped it so the lid broke and shattered :( That was sad. But I'm using a spare water bottle for now until I get a new one (Mom- there's something I need!). But overall, it was a great week full of the Spirit!

I love you all so much! Good luck in everything you're doing (Dallin- fly safe to China!), and make it the best week ever! Thanks for always being my example :)

Love,

Sister Davidson

Pictures:

1. Practicing our fishy faces while waiting for people to come to a lesson

2. Pretty sunset

3. We made taco soup in the Crockpot this week! Pic of me putting cheese on top...delicious!

4. Going grocery shopping this morning :)

Hi family! How are you all doing?

This week was really good and really busy! We have been having lots of appointments recently, which is awesome and we love it! We've noticed that our number of investigators has really gone up since a few weeks ago. The Lord is definitely blessing the work in Oranjestad!

One thing that Sister Cole and I have been doing is going through the former investigator section of the area book and contacting people that we think are ready. So far we've had success! We started teaching Marielis again (I taught her a really long time ago with Sister Hardy. We lost contact because she got sick and had to cancel our last appointment, and then her phone stopped working. She lives on the very edge of our area and we almost never go out there. We should've made time to do it, but we didn't...)! She is so awesome and showed just as much interest, if not more, as she had the last time we taught her. She really wants to know the truth. We re-taught the Restoration and she is really excited to get the Book of Mormon and read it (that's our next lesson with her). Another former investigator that we picked up is Adriana. She was taught about a year ago by the missionaries. She moved a couple times and they weren't able to contact her, so she had to be dropped. But we called her number and it worked! She has lots of LDS friends and has been to church a few times and really likes it. She's awesome and wants to know which church is true!

We had a really cool lesson with a new investigator yesterday, that I told President about:

 We received a referral from the other sisters in Aruba of a man that they contacted, Rafael, who lives in our area. We called him and made an appointment for yesterday, Sunday. When we started the lesson, we began asking him questions about his beliefs in God and his background. He told us that he grew up going to church with his mom, but it was more of an obligatory thing because she made him go. Then his mom passed away and he stopped going. But he said that now, he wants to start learning about God and how He can help him in his life. We asked him what he hoped to learn from us, and he said, "Everything that you can teach me about God." It was such a spiritual lesson, and it was amazing to see Rafael's pure desire to learn about who God is and develop a personal relationship with him. We are so excited to visit him this week and keep teaching him! 

We also got to do a fun service project this week! We got a call from a sister in the ward and she was going to be putting on a BBQ in a couple days for a fundraiser and had tons of chicken and ribs that needed the skin taken off of it...so we went over and de-skinned about 200 chicken breasts! It was pretty gross but also really satisfying and fun! Plus, it was great to be able to help her with the BBQ!

I love you all so much and hope you have a wonderful week! Thank you for all your love and support!

Love,

Sister Davidson

Some funny quotes from this week:

"Did you just burp or are you saying things in Dutch?" -Sister Cole (I guess my Dutch pronunciation needs some work)

This next one needs some background: We are teaching a man named Ephraim (I think I've talked about him before). He is from Dubai and is here for med school, and let's just say his family is not lacking in money. He was telling us about how he went to high school with royal people and everything. Anyway, he was telling us that he collects watches from Omega, Breitling, etc., and then started telling us that Kate Spade watches are really nice for girls and that we should get one. He said, "They're pretty cheap too...only about $200 or something." And he was totally casual about it! Sister Cole and I thought it was hilarious. Yeah, pocket change, right?!

Pictures (warning- lots of raw chicken picture included):

1. Sister Cole and I

2 and 3. De-skinning chicken and the final product

4 and 5. Joshua, Patricia's special son :) I tried to get a picture with him, but he would hide behind the phone every time. Finally got him to smile for the camera!

6 and 7. For FHE activity, Patricia taught us how to cut fruit in a fancy way for drinks! She works in a restaurant for a hotel. Here is a strawberry rose and a lime sun!​

We heard about a song that apparently is really big right now? It's called "Machika," I'm not sure if it's big in the U.S. I haven't heard it (obviously) but apparently it's really catchy and getting big! Anyway, one of the guys that sings in it is Aruban! And "machika" is a Papiamento word! That's so cool! I hope it's big in the U.S.! Just wanted to know if you had heard it :) Love you all!

Hello family! How are you all doing?

This week was really great! Unfortunately, it got interrupted in the middle when I got sick :( I'm not sure what I had because my temperature was normal, but I threw up like crazy (sorry, TMI). We heard of a couple other people who had the same thing, so it must've been something going around. But after lots of rest and liquids, I'm feeling much better now! By the way, thank you for my Christmas and Easter gifts of the Breakfast at Tiffany's nails kit and the candle! I used them when I was sick and they helped me to feel better :)

Our investigators are doing great! One of them, Brandon, has been progressing slowly but we are starting to see some real change in him. We taught him about the Book of Mormon last time, and when we went back for our next lesson on Saturday, he had read 3 Nephi 11 and said that it was amazing and refreshing to read a different account of Jesus Christ. Then when we assigned another chapter to read, he asked if we could give him two, in case he finished the one before our next visit! He's really cool.

We also had such a fun and spiritual experience this week!:

This week, as we were riding our bikes towards a potential contact area, a car drove up next to us and started going really slowly as the passengers inside stared at us with the windows down. Sister Cole and I thought it was a little strange, but then the woman in the car said, "Do you remember Cindy?" Cindy is a less active that the other sisters were teaching, but they handed her over to us because she lives in our area. We had been trying to get in contact with her but had been unsuccessful. We said yes, and she pointed to herself and said, "That's me!" Then they pulled the car over, got out, and she gave us big hugs as if she had known us forever. She has the cutest little family and they invited us over. Since we didn't have any appointments, we followed them to their house and were able to have our first meeting with them. They love having the missionaries over and as we were leaving that day, she said, "You should come by on a Monday night and we'll do a family home evening!" This was such an amazing experience that was 100% directed by the Lord. It was such a blessing to be in the right place at the right time to be able to see and meet Cindy and her family.  

This was so cool! The Veles family (Cindy and her family) are so nice and welcoming and always tell us, "The door is always open, whenever you need anything, just come to us!" Cindy grew up in the Church and has memories of the missionaries coming over a lot, so she likes having us over to teach her family. :)

Also, the other week we had a Family Home Evening with another less-active woman, Patricia, and her 2 kids, Dallin and Joshua. We were in charge of the game, so we played Gospel Pictionary. Dallin, who's 13, was in a bad mood and didn't want to participate, but he came out for the game. At a different appointment that we had with Patricia, she said that Dallin told her that he actually really liked the FHE and the game, but told her not to tell us! He also asked her when we could do another one...so we have one planned for this Tuesday! Sister Cole and I thought that was so cute and were glad he really enjoyed it.

I love you all so much! I pray for you every single day! Thank you for the amazing examples that you all are for me! I hope you have an awesome week!

Love,

Sister Davidson

Pictures:

1. For the longest time, we only had a hand/emergency pump for our tires, so they were never fully pump up because it took forever! But we finally got a real pump this week...the difference in our tires is AMAZING! Who knew?!

2. Selfie in our new contact area...it's so cute! All the houses are new and modern

3. Sunset (Action shot, taken while riding my bike, sorry it's blurry)

4 and 5. Cindy made us Colombian arepas! They were delicious! The second picture is me and Sister Cole, Cindy, and her son Simon in the back.

Hi family! I was so happy to hear that you were able to watch or listen to or go to General Conference this past weekend! It was really amazing and the messages were all inspired and wonderful. I also hope you all had a great Easter celebrating Christ's Resurrection!

This week was really interesting. Sister Cole was sick with a really bad ear infection for most of the week, so she spent a lot of time resting. Which meant that I had a lot of time to read the scriptures! I started the Old Testament and it is so good! I am learning a lot and loving it so far! That is most of what went on this week.

We received transfer calls and both Sister Cole and I will be staying in Aruba! This will be my fifth transfer in the same area in a row! I love it!

I had a lot of favorite talks from General Conference, but to name a few: Elder Uchtdorf's, Elder Wilson's, and Elder Bednar's talks were all so good and stood out to me a lot! Also, the announcements were crazy! First of all, participating in the solemn assembly was amazing and I felt the Spirit so strong. I like the new idea of ministering instead of home and visiting teaching. And I am so excited for the new temples that they announced, especially Russia! That is such a miracle! I am praying that it will be built in a city close to Armenia for Dallin's sake :)

I love you all so much and hope you have a great week! I hope we can all always remember Christ's atoning sacrifice for us and especially that He lives today!

Love,

Sister Davidson

Pictures:

1. On Easter with our Easter candy :)

2. Our investigator just came home from vacation in Colombia, where she's from. She brought back a ton of these fruits called shontaduro...they taste like a mix of carrots, corn, and potatoes. So I'm not sure how it's a fruit, but it was good!

3. A member brought us lunch for the first session of General Conference, so we had a pretty sweet set up!

4. The Sickie, Sister Cole

5. My desk set up for the week

6. A selfie of me at my desk because I was bored​