Baptisms of Two Wonderful People

these men were men i taught in my last area. One is named Roberto, he is 14 years old, but he is mature and is such a good kid, he actually helped fellowship an 14 year old investigator we were teaching, and he loved to serve and go to church, but he felt that he hasn't gotten an answer untill now. He went to a fireside with the new sister missionaries and he heard a choir of elders sing a song that touched his heart, he started balling and felt the spirit tell him that he needed to be beptized, so he did and his father baptized him. I know that the Lord can do miracles, even by small and simple means. He is going to be a great missionary.
 

The other brother is named Noel, we taught him twice and took him and his family to the Gilbert Temple Open house. He was so ready for the gospel as much as his family then, he even reminded his wife to pray with him everynight, but due to tons of work we never got to teach him consistantly. but we kept teaching his family and his wife Rossana and his daughters were baptized while we were there. This is the crazy part. Rossana prayed that her husband will be able to come to church with her, becaue she loved how the churhc was very family oriented and she wanted the love of her life to be by her side and to learn the gospel in Elders quorum and come together and go tosacrament meeting together, it was so sweet hearing her express her desires and she prayed so much so that that can happen, and he answered her prayer. He had somthing go wrong with his stomach, i cant really remember what is was, but he couldnt walk or eat  much and has to get surgery, therefore he couldnt go to work ans rossana was by his side f\during these times of affliction for him, it was sad for her to seehim suffer so much, but at the same time she was so greatful that he was now able to come to church. During her time of despair while she was at the hospital waiting, she decided to say a prayer, and this women has so much faith in her father in heaven,it is truly amazing. As she prayed, all of a sudden a peace came over her, she was able to feel tranquility and a hope that she knew everything was going to be ok, she was so greatful that her father in heaven gave her that peace she needed, after that she was normal again and was able to be at ease. I admire her faith I am glad Heavenly Father doesn't take away our problems, but gives us the strength and peace to overcome them. WE are so blessed to be able to call down the powers of heaven to help us during diffficult times. Now this family is almost complete now we are just waitng on Victor, the son to accept the gospel too. I am so excited to come back with one of my companions and to witness their Temple Sealing!!!!

 

me and my companion enjoying some treats from the "Elotero" or "Corn Man" it was yummy

So back to the updated with my area, i am staying in Paradise Valley and finishing up hermana Baros' training, she is so good, she came pretrained.  We have been working on more inpsired planning these past two weeks, we decided that we are going to serve and teach the members more, although they are active in church, sometimes we see that we need to strengthen them more in the gospel. We have been doing a lot more service for them and teaching them the basics, to rekindle the joy they felt at their conversion, so hopefully they have a desire to come out to teach lessons with us and also give us referrals to go teach their friends and family. It's fun being in a spanish branch! We have a lot more motivating of members that has to be done first before we can have a chance to have us help them with their missionary work.

this is erenesto & he is so much happier & also is
reactivated in hte churhc, he even bought churhc clothes!

 Well Ive never met so many nice people, and ive also never met so many freaks. Funny tti story, well that stands for Teach Testify Invite :) that is what we do when we talk to people on the streets. we met a man named MAteo and he was super f\drunk and he kept saying that he had god in his heart, and he was also pretending he was flying, it was wierd, then we met up with him when he was sober, we chased after him when we saw him walk by as we were talking to a lady who was waterinmg her plants. HOpe he wants to change his life around. WE have another investigator that we met at a trailor park, he is actually the coolest person ive meet on hte streets, he just asked us what we were up to  and we told him we were preaching the word of God and we started making conversation and said he will love to learn from us but first we need to establish trust between us, so he asked us get to know you questions, so i got to share my conversion story with him and how much the gospel has blessed my life, he is super friendly so we are super excited for him. Please pray that we will have consistant people, we meet many but some arent ready yet. WE know they are out here we just need to find them!!!! :D

here i am going to send some pictures weve been wanting to send a loomg time ago from the zoo, 5 de mayo, mothers day and so on.

love you all!

Success starts with the Companionship

Hola amigos!

I asked my companion during companion study a question. how do i know God loves me? do i always feel his love, therefore i have nothing else to compare it to? sometimes i just want a really hard trial so that i can rely on God more deeply and pray and trust him more fervently, so that when i teach and testify that GOd loves us and comforts us and answers our prayers, i can say it with more meaning and power, i want to be able to tell them they can get through it with His help, becaue i did or went through it most recently.  My companion feels the love of God more because she has made a complete 180 in her life and she can feel that difference, and i feel normal or averagely loved sometimes. I am happy don't get me wrong. i Guess heavenly father is is giving me a break, because i have gone through so much in my past already. And when i did have a tough life and found the gospel i felt more loved and more converted becaue i felt that great difference, that love and support from God. Then my lovely companion made me see something that i haven't rally thought of before. We remembered how we didn't super get along at first or just didnt understand or communicate as much, and  how much we tried looking for people to teach, but no one was progressing and we didn't feel like we werent gettting very far in the vineyard. Well as soon as we had companionship inventory and made up and decided to improve our companionship, the blessings started coming, becaue now heavenly father was able to trust us with his children. Success in every phase of missionary work starts with hte companionship. We have 4 new progressing investigators this week and have had many great lessons with them. 

the first Jorge: he is a man that we almost missed, but we felt that we hsould walk back and talk to him and shout "hola como esta!?" becaue he was up sitting on his balcony.he was really nice and he even came down and  we had a nice conversation with him and we told him that he was loved by his father in heaven and that he has  a plan for his happiness and  that our message can bring him more joy in his life. He agreed to have us teach him more. Later that week we had a lesson with him outside in sidewalk under the street light at like 8 at night. We taugh him the restoration, he had a real sincere desire to know and really htinkkng about everything we said, he agreed to pray about it and will be baptized when he knows it is true.

Pepe and his family: We had a lesson with them and they were a referral from members and they came to church becaue their friends invited them, after that we strated teaching them. We felt so special because the member set up  the lesson and invited her recent convert friend and the family was waitning for us, we all got there around the same minute and introduced ourselves to one another, Pepe came out and welcomed us in, the crazy part was how many people showed up, it was the sister who referred the family, her r.c friend and her husband and her daughter and her daughters friend, then us, so a total of 7 people went in there to deliver the goods and we were in  charge of teaching, they were in chrage of testifying and i felt sort of  a lot of pressure to be perfect , they mustv'e felt  some presssure to understand everything or to knot sound dumb by asking a question i don't know but it went well. The lord answred our prayers and calmed me down and gave me confidence. The during the part when we were going ot explain the first vision, my companion and i sang "Joseph Smiths First Prayer" it was glorious and we loved it. He is the type of man that overanalyses things, which is good, but he feels like he needs to have a perfect knowledge of things , our next visit will defenatly have to be about faith and how all we need ot do is have a willlingness ot serve the lord. They are so great and they came to church again.

Azucena: We met her through trackting, the old fashion way of finding. That is considered the hunting part of missionary work, it is slower and you only get one at a time, but it is so worth it, then fishing is working with the members because it is more effecient and fruitful. Being a hunter or a fisher are both very awesome ways to do missionary work.  We knowcked at her door and she is just a super sweet lady that is filled with faith and loves the scriptures and consideres them such a gift from a loving caring father in heavcenthat left her with instructions for  a successful life. We did how to begin teaching with her and introduced her to The Book of Mormon and was so excited to have it for free. We are so excited to teach her. We had a lot of people promise us that they will come to church this week 7 but only 1 came grrrrrr, people and their agency! i hate it.

well i love you all take good care, and Happy Mothers day, thank you all the ones who have been like  a mother to me in my life :) have fun.

Good Week

so i have been learning a lot, just how to have more charity, its hard. 

ever since me and my companion have been working on this by  talking more openly and adressing concerns promptly and just serving eachother more has helped us love one another more, we have already felt the difference in our unity when we teach, and feel more peace we. We have seen some tiny miracles too.

WE were coming home from dinner last night and we were thinking to come home and finish out studies, but for some reason i thought it was important to go see this one person before we went home, he wasnt there, but his mother in law was. We asked her when he will be back and if there is anything we can do for her, she said she was ok but we were welcome to come in. We entered with the purpose on starting with "How to Begin Teaching." She opened up a lot and shared all her life story with us, heartaches and current deaths in the family,  and expressed how it made her feel, she feels vengance and hate, sorrow, sadness in her heart and vengance for the people that have wronged her. My companion and i were just listening to her. After we just knew what to say, we testified of the Saviors love for her, and because of him she has the ability to be healed and to replace those feelings of hate and anger with peace and happiness, even in the midsts of her difficulties. My companion did such a great job with her spanish and listending to the Holy Ghost to know what to sayso she can to comfort her. Since this women got her sons name tattoed on her arm, desiring to have his memory always with her untill she died. Hence,  we testified of the plan that God has for the family, and how we can be together forever, these circumstances have given her the humility she neede in order to accept the Gospel. My companion and i were on the same page and that was thanks to the Spirit, we felt it and we know our investigator felt it. This reaffirms and strengthens my testimony of why speaking with kindness and serving one another and praying for one another really invites the spirit of God into the lives of individualls and makes our homes stronger, because we center it on Christ. I love it.

Well allthough we have  huge area, we have decided to ride bikes during the day instead of driving all of the time. Thanks to that we have been meeting tons more people willing to hear our message! I am really excited for teaching all these new people!!!!

well i neeed to do better at writing bullet points on what to write ya'll because i forget sorry!

love oyu all

Hermana Salas 

A Miracle Story

Hello how is everybody?!

this week was nice we have a miracle story

so we called this man that is a member who doesnt come to chuch ever. He answered, we said hi and asked how he was doing, also asked if he wanted to come to church with us on sunday, he said no thanks. we asked why not. He told us that he doesn't want to and started laughing, so we laughed with him. So we asked if we can visit him and he agreed. He invited us out to lunch and we brought an awesome member with us, hermana Canales, she is so spiritual and fun. She made the lesson a whole lot better.

He opened up to us a lot, It turnes out that he has been a member of the Bishopbric and has been in the young mens presidency and has gotten sealed in the temple, so he knows alot and he knows the church is true, but he and his wife were divorced but still live together he feels that he is not ready to go to church becaue he feels unworthy and like he is not being true to the promises he had made with GOd. I can tell that he was truly humble and that he needed the lords help.We shared some scriptures with him and bore our testimonies about the saviors help and love for us. The best thing about it is hat he is feeling godly sorrow that works repentance, for he wants to reconstruct his marriage and be active again, becaue he loves the chruch. We dont know why they divorced but all i know is that he can fix it and they can be a happy family again with the saviors help.  Do any of you have any good advice for us to help him, or maybe just for him? (you can share some talks, scriptures etc..) this is a difficult challange for us. He knows what is right, but just needs a good reminder. Anyway he came to church yesterday with his whole family! It was os GREAT!

today is my birthday and i woke up to a great surprise my housemates made some cupcakes and lit them up with candles but before that they ding donged ditched the door and filled the proch with balloond and then i saw them runn away. haha it was fun, they are so sweet, we just got back from the Zoo, it was fun :) thank you for those that wrote me letters for my birthday, it made me really happy and i loved the beautiful pictures!! you know who you are!!! :)
 
We are teaching a lot of less active members and we are working iwht one to get him ot progress more, by getting the Priesthood and going through the temple. WE also have another young married couple we are working with , he is a returned missionary and they are semi less active, his wife Liz has doubts about everything, but slowly the other elders helped her undestand that temple work is important, even for the dead, because there is an after life. As we we were teaching her the plan of Salvation, she had a question about baptisms for 8year olds, she felt that it is too young, although that at that age they already know right from wrong, she thinks it is a great committment to put a child under.I read the scripture that says "learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God" and that as a mother it is her job to help him live up to those commandments. Well she is a slow working progress, but we love her and will love her and help her through that journey to get married in the temple.

love you all gotta go!

Hermana Salas 

Easter Pagent Day!

Hello everyone!

Hello everyone!

this week has been good. We finally got to meet a few members at the chapel this sunday, after conference. We have been finding more and more less actives to work with, there is so many!!! we need to help them. and we are excited but athte same time we feel overwhelemed. we have a huge area to cover and looking for new investigators should be a priority but we feel that reactivaiton is more important, so that we wont be a burden to the branch in adding new members."When converts are baptized and confirmed, they make sacred promises to obey and serve God and others for the rest of their lives. They become candidates for salvation in the celestial kingdom. To receive the promised blessings, they must endure to the end with faith in Jesus Christ. Church members are essential in helping new converts remain active and faithful.
President Gordon B. Hinckley said: “There is absolutely no point in doing missionary work unless we hold on to the fruits of that effort. The two must be inseparable. … Every convert is a great and serious responsibility”  I know that there was once a missionary that cared dearly about these people who accepted the gospel,and worked really ard to get them get to that step and they have pleaded with the Lord that they will never fall away, and they still do. I know that as i care about these people, that i will be an answer to another missionaries prayers and that the ones i have helped make it to the waters of baptism will be taken care of.
My companion is awesome, can't complain, We are really looking forward to the Easter Pageant!!
WE enjoyed conference, although i have to admit the last one was my favorite. I did really love Elder Bednars talk, and President Monsons, about love. I learned t hat i need to rely more on my saviors help to progress. Okay cool expirience, we met a returened missionary sister and she is so cool! She invited her friend to join her for conference, she even took her to seee the dedication of the Gilbert temple, and she felt the spirit so strong there! more in hte instruciton room, she said she cried.she loved the conferencea and her friend was telling her all about the Book of Mormon and her friend ( the investigator) made a pact with her that if she read the book of mormon in spanish she will read it in Japanese. I though it was a great idea. Too bad hat she is english so we cant teach her. :( But she is so ready and so humble i am so excited for her bright future in the gospel.
Hmm, what else happened this week.,m well it is going by sort of slow, besided we do study for four hours then have an hour for lunch and so we are in the house for five. Its ok though.
i love oyu alll and i hope i maybe see some of you at hte Easter pagent!!

White Washing and Training

Hello Amigos!

as you all know I got transferred and am now serving in Paradise Valley, and i am white washing, which means that both of us are new to the area and dont know anyone.We have a huge area it covers the stake. we are in car full time. i hope my companion could get her bike soon, i  like bikes better because we get to meet more people. What we have to do now is read the area book, meet the bishop and Ward mission leader and get to know all the members, recent converts especially becaeu we have to make sure they get to teh temple and stay active, we also need to look for new people to teach. I am so excited!!!!! I am also TRAINING a new missionary!!! She is so adorable and is from Utah she is 21 and went to the MTC in Mexico. I feel more equipped for training now, I've learned so much and i am so eager to share it with her, and also help her with her spanish :)

 I would love to send out pictures of my goodbyes with the branch that i grew so close to, but i dont have my cable. next week.

 

We got told that we will get to be hostesses at the Easter Pageant year!!

info:  april the 9th-11th; 15th-19th in english and april 12th in spanish at 8pmhere is the adress:525 e main street  mesa arizona

just in case any of you crazy people want to come down here :) it will be fun!

love you all, cheerio.