Some Highlights:)

Some highlights from this past week, we had 2 investigators at church. 1. Melissa- she will be baptized on August 1st! She is a nurse, about in her 40's, we just started teaching her. She dated a Mormon guy and they broke up but she still loved the church! So perfect:) Then 2. Lindsey. She is Jeff's fiancé. Jeff is the one that reactivated himself after not being active for a while and then we ran into him when we were walking down the street. Anyways, so we are teaching his fiancé now and she is gorgeous! They are such a pretty couple,and they have a son whose name is River. haha different name but kinda cute! We had 2 exchanges this week, I was with a baby missionary names Sister Watson and with an older missionary named Sister Skelton. Sister Watson was so cute! Its so fun seeing new missionaries experience new things:) and I learned from Sister Skelton how to really show love for people. Exchanges are exhausting! I don't know what it is, I think because your trying really hard to be really upbeat the whole time. Sister Lafortune and I are doing good, she's a good missionary!

It rained this week which was pretty cool! Californians don't know what to say when they see us out in the rain so they say "try to stay dry!" which is funny because.. we are already sopping wet! But we were able to find a lot of people, blessings!!

Fasting Brings Blessings

Picture 1. Sister Santos gave me a pair of shoes!!!!!!!! They are a little too small for her and so she gave them to me! They are Malano brand?? I dont know but she used to have a really high end job and thats when she bought them. Arent they cute!! They are my trunky shoes haha iIwear them while I study....

Picture 2. When life gives you lemons.. make lemonade!! We picked lemons this week!! It was sooo yummy. We had like half a bag of sugar in it haha it was so good:) Fresh lemonade is the best!!!

Picture 3. Spencer Obrhen played John the Beloved in the Bible videos. So we took a picture with him today. He came and talked to our zone about his experiences. Mormon celebrities:) 

Ok so last Sunday there were a few people at church that we didnt recognize. I had a list of people that we needed to talk to after church to see who they were!! One guy we met briefly, but then he left right after sacrament. Then yesterday we couldnt find a place to park so we were far from the person we were going to visit. Then we talked to this nice asian lady and she said we could come back! But then we needed to go the same direction as her but we didnt weant to appear like we were following her so we went a different way. Out of no where I saw the guy from church! We stopped and talked to him and it turns out that he and his wife have a 6 week old baby and that he is trying to get active in the church again. His wife is not a member. This guy started crying in the middle of the street when we were talking to him because he knew God loves him. He said there were so many things since his son was born that are helping him come back to the church. He showed up on Sunday in his work clothes because he was on call but he didnt care, he was so happy to be at church.! It was so so good! We are going to visit him and his wife this week:)

Then, on Thursday night, Sister Lafortune wanted to fast (which means we go without food and water for about 24 hours and pray a lot. This way we get more in tune with our Spirits as we put aside our physical desires. You can fast for specific blessings and it shows God you are willing to sacrifice for the things you desire.) Anyways, so she wanted to fast to find people who are prepared. I was like.. our area is doing good but ok lets fast! So we did and 5 minutes before we went inside we decided that we would try to get a return appointment with someone. So we are walking along and we see a guy walking his dog, he is dressed in all black and he has a big long cape on and really long hair. It was dark outside so of course I hesitated a little but I felt like Heavenly Father wanted us to talk to him. So we did:) And he said we could come back the next morning, we did and he is totally interested in learning about the Gospel! He is so so cool. But he is in the Singles Ward so we passed him off to the Singles Ward Elders. But it was really cool that Heavenly Father answered our fast with a miracle!

Sister Lafortune and I are doing pretty good. We are complete opposites! Like completely!!! haha She is very "by the book", strict, doesn't get super excited, driven, determined, intellectual. which are all good things! But it is so funny being an STL with her!!! Because if the Sister Missionaries come to me for advice they will get completely different advice from her! For instance, when new missionaries come in there is a program that gets them adjusted to being a missionary that is called "12 week." It outlines week for week what the new missionary needs to do such as starting off the lesson, teaching the lesson, leaving commitments with people, inviting people to be baptized. all those kinds of things. So we had a Sister that was really over whelmed with being a trainer so I told her, "Oh dont worry about it, that book was made for Elders, not Sisters! Just as long as your greenie does all of those things by the end of the 12 weeks, it doesn't matter what order you do them in. They learn more from your example than anything else." When Sister Lafortune heard this she was like "No! 12 weeks is so important. you need to follow all of 12 week!!" hahaha ...We also debate over when to set a baptism date with people. She thinks that if they can come to church three times, then that is when the date should be set, three weeks, and then she says we can adjust it. But I am like.. "No we need more time to teach them all of the lessons. Most people can only meet like two times a week. They need time to understand the Gospel before they are baptized and I dont want to feel rushed when we teach them!" haha...So we go back and forth, back and forth. Before her mission she liked to read for fun and to talk about philosophy... I liked to jump off cliffs and hang out with my friends. Its just so funny how different we are!!!!!!!!  But I know I have so much to learn from her:) sSe is so sweet and loving!

So that's my week! I love you all!!

This is a picture of Spencer Obhren, the one without a beard....

 

 

Happy 4th of July!!

SO I have a new companion.. her name is Sister Lafortune, she is from Haiti:) She is pretty great! Sorry I dont have a picture of us together yet. She speaks really good English but we have been working on helping her pronounce the "r" sound. For example, the word "browse" when she says it sounds like "bwowes"...haha its so funny! She claims she is quiet, yet every time I turn up the music in the car, she wants to talk and she is the only one of my companions that likes to talk after lights out...haha...but she really likes to work hard and I like that about her!

The best part of my week was on the 4th of July. We have mission culture that we must teach someone every night. And if we cant find someone to teach, then we teach our companion. And if our companion is sick and sleeping then we teach the dog. (Which is supposed to be funny because we aren't allowed to have dogs.) But the point is that we are expected to teach a lesson every night. So the 4th of July is a BIG deal in Huntington Beach. Everyone goes to the beach to watch the fire works, so the beaches are packed with people! Which means.. no one is home for us to teach them. So we texted our Mission President's Wife and said, "tell President if he wants us to teach tonight..we have to go to the beach." haha...anyways, we ended up finding someone to teach which was a huge miracle! Then after that, we only had about 20 minutes left until we had to go home. I told sister Lafortune we have to find somewhere up high so we can see all the fireworks! Then we saw a big parking garage and thought.. that will work! So we park and we saw this security guy. He looked like he was going to stop us so I asked him if we could go up and watch the fireworks, he said yes!We ran to the top since in was blocked off to the cars. We saw all the fireworks across the whole city! It was so beautiful! There were 2 people standing up there so we Gave both of them pamphlets and told them that God created all of these beautiful things just for them! I couldn't have had a better 4th of July!

There is a couple we have just started teaching, they have a cute story. They both grew up in a small town in Utah and were both raised Mormon. But they didn't really go to church when they were growing up. They just recently decided to come back to church and to prepare to get sealed in the temple for time and all eternity. We are going to start teaching them to help them learn and understand the basic doctrine and to help prepare them for the temple. They are around the same age as my sister, Emily and her husband, so I feel extra connected to them. 

One thing I have learned on my mission that I wanted to share: Heavenly Father cares more about our growth than he does about our comfort. Sometimes the hardest times are when we grow the most. It must be hard for a baby to learn how to walk they fall over and over again. But then they get stronger. Its the same for us, never feel hardened because God has given you trials. Just rely on him and He will help you grow into the person you need to be. :)

Ok well that's all, I love you guys!

Just some Picutres:)

Ok so heres a few pictures! 1. From June 29, we went and walked by the beach (obviously not in the sand) 2. The little girls are a less active family we teach and 3. The Miller's! The blonde next to me is mini me, mini Sister Miller! She puts her mission papers in this week!

Sister Santos's Baptism!!!

I just got done seeing Sister Anderson and she is done with her mission! She gets released tomorrow night. Her family drove out to pick her up and she was unable to go to the beach with them and Disney Land but they still went without her and she just hung out with her mom. :) It was so fun to see her! There is a place here called Bubba Sweets that make gourmet cupcakes and they give free ones to the missionaries! So we went and we sang to the girl that gave us the cupcakes, it was fun:) The Spirit was so strong she was almost in tears.

Yesterday we stopped a guy that was walking his dog, we do this often. Most of the time people just keep walking and arent really interested but sometimes we will find someone. So we stopped him, his name is George. We offered to share a scripture about Father's Day and he said yes. We asked if we could start with a prayer and he said yes. Then we asked if there was anything we could pray for and he asked us to include his parents in our prayer, we did and then Sister Culala shared a scripture. I was then able to testify to him that God loves him and that he is a son of God. I told him that God has a plan for his parents and he was also most is tears too. It wasnt so much what I said but I could feel the Spirit so strong and I know he could too! It took me a long time on my mission to be able to feel the Spirit testify through me, but now I feel like I can and I strive for that everyday!

Sister Santos was baptized this week! It was a great experience. Of course it is always stressful and never flawless but she was indeed baptized and that is what matters the most. She bore her testimony, she told her experiences when she was first diagnosed with cancer, on the first day, she was given a "first day of chemo bag" with a picture frame in it that had a poem written on it. the poem was called "Things Cancer Cannot Take From You", this was the beginning of her faith in God and Jesus Christ. Then she found a book called "Jesus Calling", that helped her feel the love of Jesus Christ. Then the third book she held up was the Book of Mormon and she told how much happiness the Gospel has brought into her life. I feel so grateful to be able to teach people! I think people give missionaries too much credit because its not us its Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and the Gospel that the happiness comes from.