Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Gilbert Temple Open House Pictures and Baptisms!



we've had such a fun week going to the Gilbert Temple this week and we still have tons more reservations







these are the other members that are super cool, she is from Peru and so is he. We went with a lady that doesnt come to church very often and her daughter her name is lisa :)



We went to the temple yesterday with Roxane and her family except her son, they felt the spirit so strong especially in the celestial room. Asuncion the youngest asked who that was at the top of the temple,
"the  angel moroni the one who appeared to joseph smith"
"Does that mean anything"
"yes, but i am not sure"
that is how i picture angles in heaven, all in white, in heaven, in two columns, blowing their trumps ans Christ coming down in the middle"
" have you seen that picture before?"
"no. Ive just imagined it that way ever since i was a little girl, ans i was one of those angels!"
i love her!
we soon went into the chapel when, they all saw that exact picture and felt so much joy, it was a super cool experience.


these two cutiepies have a baptisimal date for two saturdays from now, hteir mother is so spiritual and she loves the church, before she has even sought a priesthood blessing from some brethren and she has so much faith and so did her daughter at the hospital at the time did. when she asked her daughter after she recieved the blessing how she felt, she said she felt more relazed and suddenly could move her limbs better. She has had many great examples of members of the church in her life that she trusted they were servants of God.




this is my favorite picture of our resurrected Lord



i love this family to death!!  they are the most prepared people for the gospel. before we left the hosue she had us offer a prayer!! cool right??! and she wanted us to bless the food before we ate! and she dresses modestly and so do her daughters, she is such a good example to them.



here are the baptism of Blanca and JAnet! 
1st this was us at their baptismal interview..
these are all her lovely children at the service.. it was hard getting them in the picture, but its ok i bribed them with donuts ;)


these are some of the wonderful sisters in our branch that were their supporting them!! i love these women!



children of God :' )



Monday, January 20, 2014

best week ever!!

First of all i would like to apoligize for being a scatter brain today, ill try my best.
this week we taugh jessica and beatriz and we taught them the Plan of Salvation, they loved it even though they dont show a lot of enthusiasm, jessica had talked to her husband about the lessons and how she loves learning and feels really intrigued by our religion and she likes the testimonies that she hears from the members and they even knew one of the members we brought and they noticed a huge change in her and want the same. However after we committed her to come to church and she didnt look to sure, so i asked her what is holding her back, was it the 8 children that you will have to take care of? she said yes , but also she doesnt have the full support from her husband and he doesnt seeem very intrested. so, i bore my testimony  aboiut how i came to be converted and how i was living the gospel all on my own, but how much it has blessed me, i teared a little bit . But then we committed her to have a kneeling prayer with her husband and read the family porclamation with him and have a litttle talk about it. I felt so inspired to ask her that and knew they will feel the spirit so strongly if they did.

we have been having a lot more members involved in our teaching appointments. Let me tell you how much of  a drastic difference it makes in the progression of the investigators and its a lot more intrestin a nd spiritual, for their life expiriences makes them more meaningful plus they are usually the typical challanges that we all face in life and they,t horugh, the gospel have the tools to overcome them, and that is a living testimony of how the principles we teach are true and bring many blessings. we invited hermanan toledo, a blind lady, and wow she makes the ground shake beneath her, she is on fire spiritually! she has such a tender heart and she even offered one of our investigators that doesnt know how to read to read and is so concerened for the spiritual well bieng of others. I admire her, the outlook she has on life and the pure knowledge that Heavaenly Father loves  her.
We taught one of our favorite families,( i kow we are not supposed to have favorites, sorry) her name is roxana and her children victor, asuncion and perla they invite us over all the time to make hot chocltate or whtever so we can teach her family a lesson and enjoy eachotehr company for a little while,  One morning about 10:30 am after raking leaves and putting them in bags for a lady in a neighboorhood , we went over there and prayed that she willl be there, my companion said" please Lord if she is home i will behave this weeek" Sure enough the Lord answered her prayer after the second time she let us in, sh had just wokedn up and we read the Book of mormon with her and then she invited us to have lunvh with her so we helped her prepare a meal and we ate, it awa the best, she is like our mom.   we had 8 investigators come to church, not as much as last week it was  a little sad. This week we have seen the difference we are so HaPPY........ and are so ready to work! i enjoy everything we do and my companion and i love eachother!


we  went over to blanca and her seven children's home to help them with a yard sale, no one came for the longest time so we helped her clean the house, after a hwile we decided to excersise our faith and pray for  people to show up, so we did and threee minutes later people strted coming! the girls were so excited and hope that that strengthened their testimony about prayer.
 we had a little ceasers dinner ar a less actives family's home and after that we asked if the uncle was around becaue he went to church and is not a member, he came over and we had a lesson of coarse "how to begin teaching" as he walked up to us smelling like an ashtray/homless man, has a prickly beard and was covered in tattoes, and was sort of confused, we greeted him and at first i was kind of in a whatever attitude about talking to him, hey i am not perfect, anyway as we started gettign to know him and saying how the gospel can improve the quality of  his life and how, throiugh the gospel he can overcome anything, he started to really listen, he siad he loved learning about God and how said that he knows that he is probably one of his worst children and how he needs to change a  lot. he even said that "i've done some htings htat i want to tell you, just so you can know what type of person you are dealingw with, i hvae so many problems"  Something came over me and my companion. I didn't see a dirty sinner, who i saw was an innocent child, a child of God, all he needs is a little direction and His love. i felt compassion towards him.  I testified that through the saviors sacrifice, non of that past matters, it can all be wiped away and he can truly feel a load off and forgiven and he will learn the meaning of love and express it to his family better. My companion touched his heart as she said, "do you love your son? what would you be willing to give for the life of your son? you'll give anything right?" his facial expression showed how much love he had for hima nd that he would give anything for him, he even said "hermana.." as he touched his heart. That is only a portiion of what our Heavenly Father feeels for you and me, he wants you to be happy. He told us something extra nice, he said he felt super comfy around us and he hasnt' felt that same with other missionaries, and that he sees us as his friends we all giggled and had a fun lesson.
After that amazing lesson we went over to  a members house, we were suppoesed to meet them there , and they were in charge of bringing blanca and her family to watch The Testaments, we sat and ate popcorn, let me tell you, those little ones sure can eat, they attacked like 8 bags of popcorn and still ate chips and goldfish. It was so fun, Blanca was teary eyed when the Savior visited the Americas, especially when he healed Jacobs father.
on sunday we went over to blancas an hour befoe churhc to help her kids get ready for church, it was fun. they also came to a  fireside that night to hear the testimonies of all the recent converts, by t he way Blanca and her daugher Janet are both gettting baptized on saturday!! :D  the rest of her family will follow shorty after, if they are good examples :) which they will.  well the whole week was paked with tiny beautiful miracels but  here are some pictures.






Monday, January 13, 2014

Mission Confrence and Another Tranfer in Phoenix

Hello everybody! how are you? :)
this week was wonderful but it went by way to fast.
Now for the fun part!! WE found a new investigator , it was a refferal from a recent convert and she came out to teach The Restoration with us, her testimony flooded the room with the spirit, my love for her grew, she said something along the lines of the happiness God brings is the best, it is not what the world wants you to think is happiness like having a great job, a good body, a mega good looking husband, money, no it doesn't come from all of that. It comes from becoming more like chirst, and even tho i make tons of mistakes and i am mean sometimes, i know i can repent and refine myself  little by little and eventho i am a single mother with a lot of problems and i sometimes get depressed for dumb things like financial things i think of the plan that God has for me and it gives me strength to keep pressing forward with hope and faith. "I love to pray because my heart is just so filled with gratitude for the blessings i recieve from heavenly father gives me, i am joyful and he gives me the peace that i could'nt find anywhere else. then when i ask for something, without me noticing it, it comes to pass, so i know he answers my prayers, those simple things testify to me that he lives and loves me"  Would'nt hearing that make you love her? well after all the fruits of the spirit are love, peace and joy. We know that the lessons go ten times better when we have a member share their testimony, for it motivates them to try it.
we had another lesson on tuesday and it wa with our eternigator, he is a really mature 14 year old, who is very polite and funny, we brought over a middle aged married couple. We read alma 36 about hen alma was sharing his conversion story with his son heleman. We all read and analyzed the story, my favorite part was the testimony of hte sister we brought and how she came to know it was true. At first she did not believe, and one day out of curiosity she opened the book and read a little then she prayed about it, yet doubting that she will recieve and answer. this reminded me of this scipture alma32:27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than adesire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words. and how she felt it in her heart that it was true and how she has never felt so intuned with god before than at that moment, after she got baptized she always felt super happy and she explanied to him that whenever he feels happy out of nowhere that that is the spirit. He wants to be baptized, but wants to be super ready.
 You can apply it many things, like in memeber missionary work, sometimes all you need is a little bit of faith to share the gospel , you don't need to be a perfect spiritual person, you just have to have the faith that H.F has prepared the gospel for All of his children, to help us resolve difficuilties and live happpier lives here and forever, knowledge that has been kept so it can be of benefit to us in whatever issue we may face.  When tou art converted strengthen thy bretheren. I have come to learn that more fully on my mission. the Book of Mormon is so awesome, God wrote it through his prophets for us, to comfort us during the most difficult times, to remind us to change for the better, to serve and not let our weaknesses weaken our ability to love and serve Him with all our mights and love and cherish every single moment of learning. I dont want to use this short time that I have casualy, i want to allow Him to make of me, the best missionary I can be, and most importantly like his beloved son Jesus Christ, and with a portion of his strength and power given to me i can serve his children my whole life, because it truly brings more happiness into my life and who cares about your problems when you are focusing on others.
I want to tell you a funny story. We went to help a family get ready for church, They werent home but as we were about to leave, she called us and invited us over for breakfast, so we went and helped the kids and had some breafast, then had to leave to go to chruch, they promised to meet us there. We waited and waited and i called them and they said they werent coming becaue she had to go sell some stuff. I was bummed. THis isn't wasy, i love her and we love serving her, but we dont know what to do anymore, i just have to have faith.
I  dont have very much time left sorry but love you all and pray for you, please pray for us and all the missionaries. take care.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Hi

Hi everyone!
Interesting week this week
so we prayed for inspiration on what to teach one of our investigators, she is the one with 6 children and a husband in jail. We went over to help her clean the house and then taught her about tithing and read Elder Bednar's talk on "The Windows of Heaven" and it was a bit strange. we thought that it would strengthen her faith and she will have the desire to live it, but she isn't putting her trust in God as much as she should , plus she would talk over me and  talk to her daughter as my companion bore her testimony, and towards the end of the lesson she went out to answer a call, we waited and waited, turns out she ended up watering her plants outside, leaving us inside. we know she has a lot on her mind and its sort of hard to focus, we love her but sometimes we feel she is not interested. She did however, said she wanted to wait for her husband so they can get baptized together, but she isn't coming to church, she is still going to the catholic one and after she goes to sell things. We did invite her daughters to come to church and she said that she wanted to so we will have a member pick her up and hopefully through her kids we get Erica to come and really see. ( i am also realizing that we cant do this alone the member need to go and offer a helping hand as well) I am learning a lot from this women. just how simple gospel principles bless our lives and how we need to put God first above all things and that faith will keep us strong and dedicated to work hard for a brighter future, plus showing children to love Heavenly Father and live his commandments, under any circumstance, is super important so we may receive those blessings poured out from heaven.

We are starting a Preach my gospel class every Thursday night that we are all super excited about. We need to prepare these members to know what the lessons are and how to be more involved.
WE had the best lesson in the whole wide world!!!!!!!
we have another family that we are working with they are perfect the mom always invites us over for food and loves us and we love her, her two daughters and son are so reverent during lessons and they loved church, they went on fast and testimony meeting and those testimonies we so powerful! i loved loved loved them.
there is a blind sister in our branch, she talked about how imperfect she was and how she is so grateful for the gift of repentance and the atonement because through that she can take off her loads and be happier, and she i will one day be able to see her Father in Heaven and hug him, she knows it takes a lot of work to be worthy for that honor. I think she had everyone crying. before sacrament meeting started we asked her kids how they liked class, they said they loved it and looked so excited, momma loved it too and she even offered to come clean the chapel on Friday! and she also saw our other investigator at church with her 7 children her name is Blanca and she was moved with compassion towards her, she told me that if she ever needed anything that she would love to help and even come out when we visit her, wow she is already feeling the missionary spirit. her charity impressed me!
anyway about he lesson we taught them all The Plan that Heavenly Father has for the Salvation/happiness of his children and her husband was there because he works a lot so that was a miracle. The Orozco's came out with us he is the young mens president and she is the Relief society president , the lesson was so sweet, they did a great job. i loved what that brother said at the end, that if if the sisters say that what they are teaching you comes from God, who better to ask if this is true than God himself? i loved how eager they looked and the spirit of gratitude that was felt in the room. We invited them to follow the example of the Savior by going down to the waters of baptism. she looked at her husband and then looked at us and responded "well don't we need to be married first?"
we all giggled and the family  that came with us talked about how after his mission he went to go pick her up in Chile and two days later on a  Thursday picked out a dress and got married on Saturday at the Mesa Temple. she said that all she want is her loved ones there and have a simple wedding, we told her that can be arranged, so we are feeling a wedding coming on soon!!! she did look really excited. the one thing that planted a seed in her heart about the church was the example of a friend and how she is so strong and she wants to be like her. What a blessing ! 
I love you all thank you very much bye