febrero 21

Mucho gusto en escharles esta semana. Estoy alegre que todo este bien alla en Texas y Utah. Todo esta bien aca en Liberty tambien, gracias a Dios.

Pues....

This week was actually somewhat humbling in the # of lessons dept. We sadly were not able to teach 20 lessons. However that does not dampen our hopes or plans for this coming week. :) The Lord still blessed us last week with 2 new investigators, M and G. They're both amazing and very ready. :) We had a really good teaching day yesterday, though. We went to the IVC with J and the O's (his fellowshipping family) and it was really good. He relates much better when we teach with personal stories and examples than conceptually...which you're probably saying, "Well duh! Most people do better with that!" But J IS very conceptual and theoretical so we've had to learn to actually go a little against his grain in order to reach him better. It has been interesting. He's still not there yet, but he's made unbelievable progress. And he came to church on Sunday again. :) So did V. Our Spanish investigators are doing well. :) I am going to miss them so much. We got V one of those children's Book of Mormons and she was breezing through it the whole lesson and I'm sure afterward. Yay! I am praying that a Spanish speaker replaces me to help Sis. R. learn the language and to take care of these 5 Spanish investigators. Ju, D's nephew, also opened up big time to us last week. Something clicked with him and the Restoration. (!!!)

This past week I read an article in the Aug 2009 Ensign by Elder Kikuchi of the 70 about "Opening the Heavens" with basically having a daily devotional with the Lord. I strongly recommend reading or rereading it. We were able to share it with some LAs and it was powerful. It's definitely something I will take with me after the mission.

Unfortunately, G wasn't able to go to the temple. His daughter A got pink eye! (and that LA that we taught had it too, yick) so he of course stayed home and took care of her. But he HAS A RECOMMEND and plans on going next month and definitely going through the open house--probably bringing people with him. He's bringing his friend to the Jail this Sunday and wants us to take him through. :) He's already a missionary! Love that man. I am so thankful for technology and how it makes keeping in contact with these people easier. I think of Elder Groberg and other missionaries who go to 3rd world countries that won't be able to keep in touch with the people they knew and/or taught.

Thursday will be my last training at the Jail. It'll be good, though. We have some neat things planned around Elder Holland's talk about Lessons from Liberty Jail and testimonies of departing missionaries and musical #s and such. On Sunday we had another awesome President's devotional where recent converts share their testimonies. They're always so good! And all the missionaries at the Jail made me play If You Could Hie to Kolob by Marshall McDonald for it. Phew! I hate being nervous. But it's always good to perform and keep up your skill.

Some honest-to-goodness miracles happened last week on Thursday. Man. Like HUGE. But they're not the type you send home in an email. Just basically I feel privileged just to learn of their happening. Suffice it to say, this temple and this area...... are significant. Miracles, big miracles, are happening around here in preparation for that and the Savior's Second Coming. Things that happened literally have made certain scriptures come alive to me. It's very hard to explain so I think I'll just stop.

Well, I can't remember anything else that I was going to say so I will end this by saying that I hope this week is an amazing one for all of you and that I love you. Thank you for praying for our investigators. We all need your prayers. And they truly do work. Thank Heaven for a Father in Heaven who hears us and CARES.

Tengan cuidado, mis amores, y yo anticipara` escucharles el proximo lunes. :)

Cha-si-si (my comp and I love to mix English and Spanish)

febrero 13, 2012

So good to hear from you. :)

I absolutely love it. Every week.

The work is going well here. :) Hermana R and I are loving working together, we love our investigators so much, and we love missionary work and the people with whom we work (other missionaries and the members). It was a pretty productive week this week, but next week will be even better. We have a goal to teach 20 lessons next week. To normal misisonaries that probably sounds pretty average or even low, but when you have less than half the proselyting time of other missionaries, 20 sounds pretty dang good. :)

Exciting news...

G is going to the temple this Saturday to do baptisms for the dead!!! And he's also getting his patriarchal blessing soon. I love him so much. And I am so excited for his future. In answer to you question, Mom, I am sure that his roommate has seen differences in him. He himself affirms that he is much more calm and doesn't react to stressful situations the way he used to. His sister said she has noticed changes in him too. We recently referred basically his whole family to the missionaries in their respective areas. I hope something comes of it. That would be so neat for him to be joined in this gospel by his family.

Also, E came to church again! We were able to teach her this past week and answer her questions. She is an honest seeker, we can tell. She wasn't feeling well the day of out appt but she got out of bed and had us come anyway. And then she was up late Saturday and was on call for her volunteer job on Sunday but wanted to come to church and did. She ended up getting called out early (sad) but it ended up being ok that she did cuz the last talk probably would have freaked her out a little lol. We love her so much. She wants to know more about the temple. :) It's naturally something that everyone is talking about right now so she hears it a lot. We're excited for our upcoming appts.

Other than that, our other investigators are doing well and progressing. Our focus this week is setting baptismal dates with everyone. We have quite a few progressing investigators but none with a date. We're also going to find new ones!! I love that in missionary work (and hopefully LIFE) we're always doing, evaluating and improving. This week we're going to study and focus on inviting for baptism and teaching according to those needs. I definitely want to retain this skill after the mission. Evaluating and improving... that's essentially repentance (change), aka use of the Atonement, which is exactly why the Savior did what He did--so that we would have this opportunity.

We are also going through a lot of conference talks trying to broaden our knowledge and library in order to be able to assign investigators reading assignments that are especially catered to them. Of course, nothing replaces the power of the Book of Mormon, but many times conference talks are very needed. Thank Heaven we have modern apostles and prophets.

So you had snow there eh? And "snow" in Austin too... well, guess what? I get to join the club too. We got 4-5 inches last night. :) :)

It is sad that I will miss most of the temple excitement. The open house is April 7-21 and the dedication is May 6. I AM going to try to make it back for the dedication. I've had a couple invitations from ward members to stay with them if I'm able to come back for that. Super nice of them.

Have a very Happy Valentine's Day for me and I will hear from you next week!

Con mucho amor

febrero 6

How nice to get an email from each of you!!

I'm glad to know you're all doing well.

So recap of this week...

Yes, we did see E and M again! And J, and D and V and G. :)

E is doing well! We taught her this week after doing service for her (Thursday) and found out she has so much pain inside and no consolation or closure with regard to her husband's and son's deaths. She has a lot of questions and is surprised at the peace that she feels around us. We took her on a church tour Saturday and she came to church yesterday! She had a good experience and I'm sure was surprised at the friendliness of the members, especially considering the coldness she's used to feeling at church. What made it even better was watching a corny seminary video (made in the 90s) in Sunday School. It was awesome. You just have to laugh at them, but I love this particular one because it explains agency really well. Yesterday was also my last Fast Sunday on my mission... So I got up and bore my testimony.

M! We saw her again too and she loves us! Kind of a big step that she loves Mormons other than her brother now. We're doing some service for her today (and we'll sneak in teaching her doctrine as we do so) and we're warming her up to the temple open house idea. Her son is a preacher at another church so she has a strong tie to that one, but she has no doctrinal answers, which I feel like you have to feel a void when that's the case. And J, her brother, is ecstatic that we're in there now and is so hopeful for her to one day join. She's going be a long haul, though, we think.

D and V ... oh I just love them. And Sister R is trying to learn Spanish as quick as she can so that she can take over teaching them in Spanish.

G is doing AWESOME. And yes he still lives with the roommate.

The E's sadly are not doing well. We haven't been able to actually teach them for a long time and they're always "dealing with sick kids" now. :( Breaks my heart.)

I love Sister R so much. She is going to be an amazing missionary. She makes me look good as a trainer, but really it's not anything I do lol. She's adjusting well and loving being a missionary. She isn't homesick or boyfriendsick, but loves talking about both those subjects haha. She's written a list of people for me to go see after I come home and one of them is her brother (going to byu)....

Thank you so much for your love and support.

enero 30

This week was a very good one. We worked hard (always try to) and were able to see and teach quite a few people.
Some new people we met and/or saw were
E - helped her move in, lost her husband and son, finding it hard to maintain her faith. Was the daughter of a JW preacher. Single mother of a 16yrold son. Looking forward to our return appt with them.
P - Also a single mother of a teenage son. She softened a lot to us (the Spirit is so crucial!) and we hope to keep teaching her.
M - sister of a somewhat-recent convert. She used to be pretty hostile toward the Church and its members but, thanks to the Spirit, she was softened as we met and talked with her and her brother. She wants us to come back!
S, V y D - Yes, they are still investigating. It's just looking like a slow progression because of their work situation combined with transportation. The economy over here is really struggling and people have to bend over backwards for their jobs--especially Hispanics. But they keep their commitments and we love them to death and are seeing them again tonight with a Spanish-speaking member.
E's - ...... have stopped progressing. It's heart-breaking. The dad jumped off the bandwagon and everyone in the family follows his lead in basically everything so it has been so sad to see the miracles stop because the faith has basically ceased. He doesn't want to give up his habits (this church demands quite a bit more than the ones he's joined in the past), whether those habits be smoking or spending money irrationally or whatever. :(
B - also not progressing
St and Sa - beginning to progress again :)
J - came to church yesterday! and then came to the Jail and we had a very interesting lesson with him. He just really needs to open his heart and mind to the Book of Mormon.
G - Looked sharp as ever yesterday in church! Blessed the Sacrament again and got it spot on the first time. :) And he keeps astounding people in Gospel Principles. He's picking up this gospel and running with it. I think the Lord increases the learning capacity of His RCs..... They pick up so much so quickly.

it's cool that you've gotten to work with such diverse patients lately. The people you described at work remind me of....guess what? --Missionary work!! lol. You meet crazily-diverse people all the time and your perspective on life IS changed constantly and your eyes opened.

enero 23

Como estan?? Pues, tengo companera nueva y ella es buena and yo disfruto trabajar consigo. :) I got a new companion and it was been fun working with her! She is great and I wuv her. Sister R is from Vancouver, Washington (Portland area) and she's working on becoming an Hermana. (I am SO lucky that I was initially called Spanish-speaking. I am also lucky that I LOVED the MTC, all 10 weeks of it) She is light-hearted, nice, runs marathons, is a dental hygienist, is in love with her boy back home, is excited to be here, to be a missionary, to be in Missouri, and she thankfully supports me as her trainer. The Lord truly answered my prayers. I was praying for someone who'd be nice, humble and ready to WORK. And she is all of those things.
So the other highlight of my week was witnessing G pass the sacrament!! And his daughter was there to witness it. :) She is such a doll and the ward members are so willing to give. A family just donated a bunch of dresses for her to wear to church. I'm excited to see how G's membership in the Church will affect her life for the better. He has her every other weekend so that's kind of a sad situation--the inconsistency--but we're secretly on the lookout for a wife for G haha. I think Ab is too lol. She always draws pictures of her dad with a woman in the picture so you know she longs for it. Sad... But they're doing really well. The members are inviting him over for dinner left and right. It's awesome.
Well'm, my time's up so I must be off! Sadly, nothing significant happened this week with our investigators. We went to the Inde VC with the Ss and had a really good experience so that was good! And Sister B (Inde stake RS Pres) said she wanted me to come stay with her when I come back for the temple dedication. Super nice of her. And I lost my SD card that has the pix from the first year of my mission. SUPER bummed. Anyway, my time is running out!
So as mom would say I'll say adios por ahora. Have an awesome and spiritual week.

Enero 18

Wow. I spent like all my emailing time READING my emails. I LOVE that! hahaha So HI everyone! SO good to hear from you. I have SO much to write in SO little time. Oh bother, as Pooh would say.
So quick update...This week was nutzo. Thoroughly. Like I can't even tell you. The Es threw us for a loop with.... Just know that the kids were not baptized on Saturday and that we haven't seen them for a week now, but we'll hopefully see them tonight. And reset baptismal dates. Thursday morning training went so well! The Lord truly helped us with this one. We had everyone train this time. We assigned each person a principle from Lesson 1 (Ch 3 in PMG) and to give a 3 minute training on the doctrine and how to incorporate it into a tour and then to take us to the place in the tour they'd apply it and do a 1 minute role play to show us how to use it (eg. train on "God is our loving Heavenly Father" and then role play how to teach this doctrine to a visitor in front of the Jail after the 3rd narration). We all got so much out of it and the director wants us to do it again for all the lessons. Wednesday was exchanges with Sister B in her area. We were able to teach an awesome lesson to one of her investigators (we were thankful he kept his appt because we prepared a lot for him that morning in studies) and then talked to some very interesting people later that day. One lady investigated the church for a year and a half. She used to be possessed. And she wrote a book about it. But now she's involved with another "unorganized religion." Then this guy came out of an apt to tell us off but ended up wanting us to come back in because what we were saying was interesting.

This week and this last transfer I'm focusing (one thing among many) on really likening the scriptures (BoM especially) to our investigators (and myself). We had a practice with this on Friday at District Meeting and it went surprisingly well. Another instance when the Lord really took over. The connections that came out of Sister L's and my mouths were connections we'd never made before. So neat. God is Great.To answer one of your questions, Mom, we DID have a baptism on Saturday! The kids may not have been baptized, but G WAS! And it was perfect. We may not have had 5 baptisms like we'd planned for, but the 1 we did have is a true convert. G had a really neat baptismal service Saturday afternoon. Brother H, his fellowshipper that we'd picked for him, baptized him. And then he was confirmed on Sunday in front of the whole congregation. And the bishop had met with him earlier that week to talk about receiving the priesthood so he was able to be ordained a priest that day in priesthood too! He was so looking forward to receiving the priesthood and being able to have that responsibility and privilege and to eventually bless his daughter with it. And then he got to be taught by the stake president in priesthood cuz it was ward conference. :) Then that night it was President's devotional for recent converts and he bore his testimony there! I get to put those devotionals together and they are truly amazing. That's something we're very deprived of in Utah. So in answer to another question, Mom, the one about "Maybe you'll be transferred out and train a greenie! What do you think about that?" Well here's my answer.... I WILL be training a newbie my last transfer. :) Her name is Sister R. I got a call Thursday night (after the craziest day ever) from one of the assistants. I thought he was going to tell me to add someone to the President's devotional program but instead he said, "Sister U, the Lord has called you to be a trainer." HUH?? hahahaha So the morning before G's baptism was at the mission home at the training for new trainers. But I had to leave early. Cuz we had a baptism. YAY! Anyway, it's interesting to notice my spiritual sensitivity increasing lately and I'm sure it's because of the coming responsibility to help another missionary, not from anything I merited. Sister L is being transferred to somewhat open an area. Some elders have been triple covering (covering 3 wards/branches) and apparently that area has baptisms with missionaries being there only once a week! So it's exciting that they're going to be sending more missionaries there. And when we met with G today he gave her a referral for his friend who lives up there that hopefully they'll teach! AND...... the missionary vehicle they'll be getting is a TRUCK! Hahahaha. And that's completely hilarious because Sister L LOVES trucks--had one before the mission--so it just fits. You totally need 4-wheel drive out there. There were so many times driving around the Junction City area in the dead of winter that we needed 4-wheel drive... So she's excited and nervous and will do great. I actually got to meet my new comp today when all the new missionaries came into the Jail. It was right at shift change so we didn't get to take them through :( but Sis. R was the first to come in and she is beautiful and nice and it was so hard not to tell her I was going to be her comp haha.
Hope you all have a wonderful week. I'm excited to report on next week's experiences with the newbie. I can't believe I'm training. lol
Love you,
Pray for missionary opportunities,
Take them when they come,
And I'll do my best to do the same.

Enero 9

Well this week was--- Whoa. Back up.
Hi! Hope everyone is doing peachily!
Ok. So this week was a roller coaster. We have about 4 people set to be baptized this coming Saturday. G, JD, A and Am. The E parents are still struggling with smoking (although they've cut back a ton) but the 3 oldest kids we believe are ready. Hopefully the rest will be baptized the next week. G is also ready. We got to go with him to gospel principles yesterday at church and he commented in class and his comment might just be called his testimony... it was powerful and he teared up. It was so neat. And the guy sitting next to him asked him if he was getting baptized and he happily responded that yes, he was, this Saturday. I think it really hit him then. We were super blessed yesterday at church. When we have the Es come it's QUITE exhausting. We were prepared to have 9 kids there again plus some... but as it turned out their cousin was put in the hospital and they all went to see him. So we just had G, his daughter Ab (who was oh so happy to see us. ), B (an inactive's wife whom we've been trying to teach and doing a lot with), S and Sa (another part member family--Sa is inactive and S isn't a member but we've been teaching her) and V is back from Alabama so she came too! She is also very ready to be baptized, but her mom is hesitant. We're meeting with them tonight and will hopefully find out the full concern(s). For the mom there is a language barrier (but we could get translation) and her whole situation is up in the air so I think she just has a lot of fears about joining something when the rest of her life she's trying to get pinned down... but we're trying to help her understand that having the fulness of the gospel helps clear your vision and that the ward becomes your family. She's already had really good experiences with the ward so she can't deny that they would treat her as family. But yeah. We just love em and it was so good to see V again. And it was AWESOME to have B and S in church too. They've never come before! B, I haven't really talked about much but we've spent a bit of time with her and her husband to built a relationship of trust to be able to teach her and we've grown super close the 4 of us. They're people that I'll keep in contact with after the mission for sure. So this coming week I expect to be slightly crazy. Sister L and I have to plan the baptismal service (and tonight we're going to gauge who's actually ready out of the E family, so pin down who's getting baptized for sure and who will baptize them and who'll give talks, etc.) Sister C and I have to plan for the weekly Thursday morning training AND President's Devotional. Three big meetings to plan this week so please pray for them to go smoothly. . . It's Sister C's last Training meeting too... Sad day. Yeah, she goes home at the end of this transfer, which is Jan 19. I love her so much.
There are SO many other things that happened this week but the details slip my mind....or else they're details that I'd rather just write in my journal because no one else understands why it's significant lol.
In response to your emails...Yes, about the sports on pdays. Actually this morning we played a good hour of ultimate frisbee at the church with the elders and other sisters at the jail. SUPER FUN. It was good to just run for an hour. Yes, I have another transfer in me hahaha. I have a feeling I'll be getting a new companion, though. I love Sister L so much. And I have learned so much from her. My work ethic here has been a bit different than it was in other areas, which in some ways has been good but a lot of times I feel like we're not working hard enough. Anyway, I'm a little afraid for my new comp if I do get a new one. I worked poor Sis T into the ground in Hays and I fear I'll want to do that here too, especially with only 1 transfer left. We are teaching people with so much potential. Not to mention if we've been able to find this many with this much potential, there HAS to be more out there! But you're right that spending 24/7 with another person not of my own choosing has given me huge opportunities to chip off and smoothe out my rough edges. Naturally I still have many, but I have definitely changed. I'm so grateful to the Lord for those opportunities to change, to see other ways of doing things, to appreciate many personalities and strengths in different people and to choose whether or not I want to incorporate different things into my own methods or personality. My communication skills have gone WAY up. Hopefully I won't lose that! haha. The Lord really knows what He's doing, though. Every missionary is in the area they're in for very specific and miraculous reasons.
Well'm, I gotta go email Pres but I hope everyone is having a marvelous week and that the scriptures are getting lots of your attention. :) If anyone's up for it, take the 90-day Book of Mormon challenge. It requires you to read about 6 pages a day. Anyway, I LOVE you all muchisimo and thank you for your emails and your prayers.
Smile! The Church is true!!