I will miss it here so much!

Nov 19, 2012

Bill and Rosa
are the ones in the middle
from at his baptism
two months ago









 this is Summer at her baptism!                                           The amazing Pam and Bishop
     I LOVE HER SO MUCH                                                        at her baptism

  

                            



   Kelsie, she is so awesome.

 Jessie (Jessica) and Jeremy have the sweetest testimonies I have ever heard.      








     This week has been pretty cool. I don't know if I told you before but China has been opened. It is not officially announced but there are many people receiving calls to go to China. This is such an exciting time.

     We also got an amazing new investigator named Stefani. She loves the church and she feels the spirit so strongly. Its amazing, we will just get a feeling to say something and after we say it she gets really happy and excited and talks about how true it is. She is so prepared. Also Rosa who we were working with for a long time before we passed her to the Spanish missionaries now knows the Book of Mormon is true! Its so exciting! Her testimony is growing and knowing the Book of Mormon is true is the biggest and most crucial step because if you know the Book of Mormon is true, you know that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind, that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints is Christ's restored church once again on earth. She has a witness of the spirit that the Book of Mormon is true, it took her a long time, and it may take her a while to understand and receive a witness of the rest but she will get there because the Book of Mormon will get her there. The Spirit and the Book of Mormon are the two most crucial tools in conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she has both working for her.

     We also were led to visit this one family, the mother has a heart problem and had surgery a month and a half ago and we were visiting to see if we could help but she immediately started talking about how much she wanted to share the gospel with her neighbors who she loved. We helped her figure out what she wanted to say and how to say it and Sister Fine felt prompted to suggest she go over right then and that wonderful woman did and her friends want to learn more about the Church. I am amazed at the willingness of the people here to serve and share the gospel. They have such great faith.

     On the funner side of things we were able to help out a member by dipping truffles for Young Women's in Excellence. It was really fun and Sister Fine made them really pretty with drizzling some chocolate lines on the top. Also I got a haircut, my hair is short now, well longer than shoulder length but it feels so short. Its really cute though. I am also getting transferred  after being in the same area for 6 months I am being sent to another place. I will miss it here so much! The people will be sad to see me go and I am sad to go but I know the Lord has other work for me to do. I just found out this morning, hopefully I will be able to see everyone else before its too late. Luckily I was already able to see Chelsea last night and we have plans to see a bunch of other people we love tons. I felt like I received a lot of revelation of things to do to help those I care most about here, I suppose I should have known that I was going to leave because the Lord was giving me His last messages to give them before I moved on.

     Also just a while ago I saw an Elder Shorter. No kidding. And there is an Elder Bishop and Elder Cash and Elder Money. I am finding the coolest last names here on my mission. Lots of cool names period. I really love my mission, the people here are amazing. I am getting transferred though, that makes me really sad to leave these people behind but I have faith that the Lord knows where I am needed most and that I will meet many new and amazing wonderful people as time goes on.

The Fate of Googly

 Nov 13, 2012





what happened to Googly








            Poor Googly

     Sorry we didn't have P-day yesterday, instead it was today and so I didn't get a chance to write until today. Instead yesterday we had an amazing Zone Conference where Stanley G. Elis of the Seventy spoke to us. He is amazing and I learned a lot from his talks. I want to be a better missionary. I have a long way to go still, especially in faith. I need to grow more in faith and be more earnest in prayer and ask for more and more and more. As it says in the scriptures, ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you. I need to do more asking and knocking. Sister Fine got a lot of revelation as what we should do for our investigators. It was fantastic. She is truly an incredible missionary.

     The end is hastening. New signs especially being the HUGE increase of missionaries, they are predicting that 35 thousand new missionaries will go out between the time of conference and the end of the year and when I went out there was a total of 56 thousand out in the world so in just a couple months the number will almost double and though it is unannounced China has been opened for missionary work. There are a lot of people here who were or know people who have been called to a mission in China. The Lord is hastening the work and also how the General Authorities asked all the names to be released, all those who have found names in Genealogy and have them reserved are to release them to temples, get the work done as quickly as possible. How incredible! The time we have is drawing to a close. The Lord has heard our prayers and is hastening the Second Coming  now I often pray that we will have the strength to do our part.

     We had an amazing week, we took three of our recent converts to the temple on Wednesday to do baptisms for the dead and each of them brought names of those they loved and had been close to while they were alive. One girl was even baptized for her mother and Jeremy for his father. He was shaking during the confirmations. The spirit was so powerful you would not believe it. I really love you and miss you. I hope you are doing well. Write me when you have some time. Our recent convert Pam has recently returned (Though she is leaving again soon) from New Mexico. She was confirmed on September 30th and we hadn't seen her since, and while she was in New Mexico she gave away over 30 more Book of Mormons and was holding cottage meetings with all the ranch families in her area. There are no missionaries out where she was, its too podunk, so Sister Fine joked that God just said, "well I cant get any missionaries out there right now so I guess I'll just send Pam to bring them the Gospel." Its awesome. She is amazing and she says she has to mark at least one copy of the Book of Mormon every day just to keep up with how many she gives out. Pretty much everyone she comes and talks to and they pour out all their troubles to her and she shows them something that she knows can help. As she says she can't be so selfish as to keep this to herself, it is too wonderful and she wants to share it with everyone she comes in contact with. She is an excellent example for all of us.

     It suddenly got cold on Friday  freezing cold. Sister Fine is super cold but the Lord has blessed me and I am still going around most of the time in short sleeves and not feeling overly cold. Also we got to help people clear a tree that was downed in a windstorm, it was an Eucalyptus tree and so we smelled really good and it made me think of the wind storms at home and it always feels good to work with my hands.

     I do tend to keep Sister Fine laughing so hard she can't speak sometimes. For example we were walking the other day and we saw a driveway with grass coming up from every crack and most definitely orange, so we joked that it was a plague. I said it was Para-Auto-Insured Nomenclature Typhoid, also known as PAINT, basically making up any words that would fit. She laughed so hard. Then later that day we talked about it again and she said it needed to have something after Typhoid, it didn't sound right, but I said that would mess up the letters and then, and only then, did she realize that I had set it up to be an acronym and laughed so hard she could hardly drive and certainly couldn't speak. It was awesome.
    

Our friend Googly

Nov 5, 2012

     Missionary work is hard, it really drains you. It is so wonderful though. This is the best thing anyone could ever be doing with their time really. Not just teaching those who aren't part of the church but strengthening those who have become weakened, just helping people and teaching them of Christ. The Lord has really blessed me that I do not suffer too much from the summer's heat or from the sudden rapid cool down. Its now about 50 degrees in the mornings and in the seventies for the high point with cold cold wind. Sister Fine has a hard time with the sudden chill but I am still walking around in short sleeves for the most part, outside anyway. I think its because I don't try to fight the cold that my body is adapting so much better. The Lord is truly blessing me.



 I got a bit of a taste of home this week. We went to this lady's house and when we asked her if we could help her with anything she had us help her in her garden picking inchworms and hookworms and killing aphids on her plants. She has a nice little garden in her backyard an the hookworms were huge and amazing and eating all the leaves. They hang on upside down and as they grow larger they are harder and harder to get off, they have little suction feet thingies like geckos. After we helped her she gave us an eggplant from her bush. It was nice and since it was Halloween that day we glued little googly eyes on it, so it had a cute little face. We named him Googly and he was our mascot on Halloween in our trunk at the trunk or treat.



     Halloween was fun, we volunteered to do a trunk at one of our wards and handed out candy. Some of the candy we had stuck pass along cards to with our number on it and we tried to give a pass along carded candy to each of the kids who we did not recognize (so probably not members) but we couldn't make enough cards. There were so many people at the trunk or treat from the ward and from the neighborhoods. We probably gave away 200 or so pass along cards. We had high hopes of getting calls, we put a lot out there in faith and you never know how the Lord will work, but as yet it has not yielded anything we can see, only time will tell though, it might not yield fruit till years later when some mom is cleaning out her garage and finds a card with a picture of Christ on it all old and battered and feeling pricked in her heart picks it up and calls to get a free video about Christ or calls the missionaries just to see if the number is still existing. That's another thing I have learned on my mission, from Preach my Gospel actually, No effort is wasted. Even if we do not see the good that comes of our actions the Lord knows our works and He is the only one that sees all and knows where the ripples will be felt.



     The trunk or treat was really awesome though. Sister Fine and I dressed up as each other (switched hairstyles and clothing styles and name tags, and I even gave her my old pair of glasses with the lenses out) being about as extreme of costumes as you can do as a missionary. The Trunk or Treat was actually just a small part of one of our wards' Halloween party which started with a chili cook off (with at least 30 entries) and pie contest (tons of pie) as well as plenty of rolls, corn bread, some cake, soda, hot dogs  and popcorn. Then there were tons of games near the trunk or treat area and face-painting and karaoke and a picture booth (pictures to be developed and delivered to your home at a later date coincidentally by missionaries) and a table about emergency preparedness and food storage and also, because the Beverly Glen ward does nothing halfway, pony rides. Basically we had everything plus one at the party. It was wonderful but exhausting. Really really exhausting. Our trunk was awesome though, we borrowed some decorations from one of our members and made it really cool looking (going to try to send you a picture) with a witch and cool Halloween garland things and battery powered candles that flicker like a real candle and of course Googly. We also were given tons of candy by different members to pass out and we still ran out, kids kept going through again and again though. It was really fun and we did meet a few people and it helped some of our recent converts and less actives and others we have been working with. I didn't get any candy though really, not that I should be eating sugar anyway.

    
     Life is good. Missionarying is hard but worthwhile. We only have two investigators at the moment so we are really focusing on helping solidify our recent converts. Some of them are weakening so we are trying to strengthen them so they do not fall away. Right now one of our big pushes is getting them started on genealogy. There is this really cool statistic. If you get a recent convert to the temple to do baptisms in the first two months after their own baptism the lifelong retention rate is something like 20% (don't remember this number well) but if you get them there in that time and have them do work for some of their own names the rate goes over 80%. Its awesome, we are trying to infect all of them with the spirit of Elijah. And it seems that I am being inadvertently infected also. I want to seek out my ancestors, too.