New Companion in Redlands

Hola Familia!!

 

This week is, in fact, transfers. All I know so far is that Hermana Bates is leaving, don't know where yet, and my new companion's name is Sister Harris. Maybe I'm training...? Pregnancy scare. AH!! (See that's a joke because if I train, then she's my daughter. So because I don't have my daughter yet, I'm pregnant... but I don't know yet. ahahahaha *awkward laughter*) Hermana Bates is freaking out next to me because she has no clue where she's going.

 

Wish Carter luck with the concert. Concerts are fun. I miss them.

 

Before I forget, with October winding down into nothingness, It's almost Christmas season! So, if you so desire, feel free to start perfecting my Christmas Jams CD. Only requests are some of the classic voices like Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby (sp?). Throw in some Michael Buble and Christmas Time is Here and it'll be perfect! Also, please avoid romantic overtones :). Other than that, have fun! Thank you :).

 

So the rest of this week was awesome. Elder Walker (First Quorum of the Seventy)came and talked to us about missionary work and all that jazz. President Van Cott talked about our future spouses twice. That was a little weird. He also said that at the beginning when we were all going through shaking Elder and Sister Walker's hands that he felt like he was at a wedding reception and he just pictured all the future weddings we'd (as a whole) have. Stop it, President. That's gross.

 

Other than that we just had a regular week. Sorry this email isn't very long but I have a feeling all my emails on transfer P-Day are going to be short. I'm a little distracted. We went on exchanges on Thursday. That was fun. Erm. Yeah. Sorry :(. 

 

How was your birthday, Mom?

 

We found out on Sunday (it was stake conference) that the youth for Youth Conference are going to Salt Lake. Lucky. I really want to go visit all the historical sites now.

 

Also, we went to the adult session of stake conference because the missionaries were going to sing. It turned into an awesome object lesson. It started with just the missionaries singing Called to Serve. It sounded awful. Then one of the first counselors in the stake presidency got up and commented on the horribleness halfway through the first verse. He then invited President and Sister Van Cott to join (they already were, and President made a comment about how terrible it was) but they then invited all the bishops and branch presidents to join us on the stand and sing. It sounded a little better... but then he interrupted us again and commented on how it was better. He then invited all the ward missionaries, ward mission leaders, then eventually all the congregation to stand up and sing with us. It was awesome. Super powerful and got the point across that the missionaries can't do it alone. 

 

Keep up the good work and keep those missionaries busy in Iowa!

 

Mom, still waiting on your conversion story.

Much love!

 

Hermana Myers

Few. Bullet dodged. I'm not training. I still have no idea who Sister Harris is. But she's not a trainee. Although I'm a little disappointed because I kind of wanted to train. OH WELL!!! Hermana Bates is going to serve in my old stomping grounds to serve with Hermana Fogg... who's still in the desert. Poor child.
 

Doing the Work of the Lord and Loving Her Fellowman

Dear Familia,

 

First off: Happy early birthday, Mommy!

Second: We got a little talking to about mail this week. Please start sending everything through the office and no longer to my direct address.(CA Riverside Mission, 7000 Central Ave., Highland, CA 92346) Thanks, you're all dolls.

 

Third: Wow, Mom. You're just having a boatload of awkward dating experiences, aren't you? (Just to clarify, I am not dating, just shared some stories I had with others' who are awkward at dating)

 

 Fourth: We've started working with someone about going on a mission. He doesn't really want to because he feels a boatload of responsibility on the family front to be the bread winner and such. If you could (and this includes all family everywhere) send me in a letter or an email including all the blessings you feel you've received from someone in your family serving a mission. Greatly appreciated.

 

Fifth: Could you send me the steps/rules to Cat's Cradle? Hermana Bates and I have been trying to figure it out for weeks but have been failing epically. (I am guessing this is another stress reliever)

 

So this week:

 

Monday: We had a Family Home Evenig with the a branch family again. It's becoming a weekly thing so that'll be a lot of fun. Currently, there are six people living in that house, Hno., Hna, and C are the original family and then there's L, P, and A who have the same last name but not related. Long story short, L was an investigator of the other sisters who had to leave her live in boyfriend so she could get baptized. Holy drama story. Anywho, she's living there now and her and her daughters are really why we go over there for FHE. Not that we don't love the others, they're great! Anywho. I don't know what I did, but the kids love me. Like, yesterday in church, one of them almost tackled me with hugs. Scary. But I'm skipping ahead in the week.

 

Tuesday: We had interviews with President Van Cott that day. It was awesome. I left in a lot better of a mood this time than last time. It was a lot more casual. Really nice. He gave me some ideas on what else we can do to help the branch. We've been working on those suggestions a little bit, trying to get everything to fall into place.

 

Wednesday: So Wednesday was awesome. We went to visit a investigator. We had planned to teach her about prayer and it was going well and everything and then I just felt like I needed to ask her why she thinks we're here. She said to talk about God. I replied, politely, with a "I'm going to be totally honest, we want to convert you to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints..." and went on for a little bit about how if she's not willing to, we don't want to force her but we also don't want to waste her time or ours. Anywho, we ended up dropping her, sadly, but it was good because we left on good terms.

 

Thursday: We have no idea what we're going to do with another investigator. We tried to have a talk with her, tell her we think she can be ready for the 27th. We thought it went well but she's been avoiding us ever since. We decided to revise the plan. Go in and basically have a weekly planning session with her about her. Pick a date she's comfortable with, map out what lessons we'd be teaching when. Yeah. That didn't happen. We got in the other day and gave a lesson with her and the kids. They said they were going to be a church and go to the baptism but didn't show up to either. We went over after church to check up on her and we distintly heard her voice yelling to one of the kids. When we knocked, one of her neices came, greeted us, then left to go check. She then returned to tell us that our investigator wasn't there. I really just want to kick her to the curb, but Hermana Bates wants to hold on. I'll trust my companion for the next week, and if no progress, I will write her a very nice letter, dropping her. I honestly feel like we have no purpose there is she's not willing to work with us and do what she needs to do. Harsh, yes. But true. There are other people out there that will listen.

 

Friday: Not much happened...

 

Saturday: So this week on there was family drama. It was intense. At least it sounded like it from what we were told. We weren't there, thank goodness. It's a mess. And it's sad because we just had a weekly planning session with our ward mission leader and we asked him where he thought we should work. He said that family. Awkward... But this leads into the awkward story for Sunday...

 

Sunday: We were able to pick up the father of one of our investigators that we picked up last week. They're friends of a member (Presidente Cuevas and his wife) and they're all sorts of helpful with that. Hermana Cuevas goes and picks up (the daughter) for all the activities, including church, and her father as well when the activity (church) applies to him. We visited them after church yesterday and talked for a bit. We already love that family so much and they love us too. We asked him what he thought of church and right away he said "I'm convinced." Awesome! We're going to try to get him and his daughter on date this week. The other two daughters don't really seem interested so we'll see how that goes. Right now we're just trying to gain their trust. Also, after sacrament, Hermana Bates and I were walking out the door and the one girl came up and gave me a big hug. I backed up a bit and ran into Hermana Bates, who the girl then grabbed as well so it was kind of an Hermana Myers sandwich. Then the other girl ran up and wrapped her arms around us. Then another girl ran full speed and hit us, full blown with a hug. We all almost fell over. It was cute. Those were the awesome stories for Sunday. 

 

I think that's all. Mom, you still haven't told me your conversion story. Ooops, I need to get on that!

 

Much love!

Hermana Myers

And Bring Save it Be One Soul Unto Christ - Her Own!

Hola Familia!

I got a sweater, a super nice pair of pants, and a dress that I now wear as a shirt because it's way to short to be a dress... even for a not missionary... All for under $15. I feel I need to start taking my Good Will shopping a little more seriously. I found some good stuff but didn't want to go overboard.

I'm super excited for Carter! I wish I could be there but eh, missionary work is more important. No offense, Carter. (Carter's priesthood ordination)

I'm happy for Brent too!( A friend of ours who is getting remarried and just moved)

Sorry Carter. No password. You'll survive without it. Don't you have a KindleFire now? Why do you need my laptop anymore? Love you :).

Tell Dad to take it easy, he is 52 now, after all. He can't use his back like he used to. (Ken could hardly move on Sunday from helping Brent move and helping someone else split wood.)

Also, you'll see a $30 charge on my card from CTR books. I bought myself a super pretty CTR ring. You can count it as my birthday present if you want. But it has a "pearl" and "diamonds" on it with CTR next to the pearl. I want to send a picture, but I'm still having trouble with these computers. (Glad she picked something out for her birthday, what do you get a missionary for their birthday anyway, her birthday is November 8th for anyone who would like to send her a card)

So this week was pretty awesome. A lot of motivational meetings. In our zone meeting last Tuesday we talked about D&C 90:24. 

"Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one with another"

It's our new mission scripture and President Van Cott wants us to memorize it. What we did (and I invite you to do this too. It's awesome) was we took the words diligently, always, be and all things and defined them with our own words. Then we broke the scripture up and talked about each individual part and replaced each of the first words with our own. It's awesome. (Chloe once had an amazing seminary teacher, me, who would feel like pulling my hair out trying to get Chloe to do this with other scriptures.  Glad she loves doing it for her mission president! haha)

We also talked about missionary work (obviously) and just what we need to be good missionaries. Someone from a previous zone of one of our zone leaders pointed out that one of the major things we need for a baptism is water. The chemical make-up of water is H2O. So what we need to get to baptism is not only two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, but also two parts heart and one part obsession. As in, this needs to be the only thing we think about all the time. They tried to talk about how we were in high school with our significant others and how they were all we thought about. Awkward moment when all 5 sisters in the room didn't have a boyfriend in high school. It was funny.

In our meeting today we talked more about motivation and why we do what we do. It was just interesting to talk about with numbers, how we need to relate those numbers back to people. Or how we need to think about, well, we want to teach this person this many times so we have a number there, but what else can we do? It was interesting. I'm excited to try and apply it tonight in daily planning.

As far as investigators go, we got dropped by L and M this week. That was too bad. But we're working super hard with E. We want her baptized at the end of this next week. Things keep getting in the way (her mother... who's a member and wants her grandkids to go on missions but she's keeping her daughter from getting baptized... I don't understand how her logic works... her and other things) but we're having a serious talk with her today about what she wants. So we'll see how that goes. It's kind of make or break at this point.

Well that's really all I had for this week. I hope all is well in Iowa!

Mucho amor,

Hermana Myers

P.S. It rained the other day... California has terrible drainage systems. It rained all day and it was ridiculously flooded. It. Was. Awesome. Nothing like cars getting swept away or anything... more like it's like when in rains really hard in Iowa for a few hours and there's rivers along the side of the street. It was like that after 10 minutes of not raining too hard at all. I love rain :).

Conference Highlights

Hola Familia!

 

I was going to spend this week talking about my thoughts about conference... but I left my notes in the car. So there won't be as much detail as I would've liked and there will be a lot of "I don't remember who said it, but..." so... just be aware.

 

First off: mind=blown. That was an awesome conference! I took 4 pages front and back and a 5th page of only front of notes. It's amazing how much you get when you're actually paying attention. I don't know why I didn't start going to all four sessions sooner.

 

I think my favorite talk was Elder Christofferson's. Women are kind of amazing. After that I was just sitting there thinking, "Does this mean I need to go home and get married?" Then put that thought in the back of my mind and said all that advise can wait a year, right? I also like that after all that praise towards women and all that, he made sure to mention that it doesn't leave men out. They still have a responsibility. It was super good.

 

I also really liked Elder Holland's talk. It was different to have a conference talk about depression, but it was super good. And all the things he talked about can apply whether or not you're actually experiencing depression. The way I see it, even if you're not, you can still take that advise and just make your life better anyway.

 

Elder Bednar's was also a favorite of mine. I've always liked him most because he was president of BYU-I, but I just liked how he talked about the significant but subtle blessings of tithing. I never really thought about it before. It's nice to have it pointed out because now when we teach people about tithing, we can say more than just, "Yeah! Tithing is great! It'll help your life so much!" I pay my tithing, but I've never really noticed the blessings. I just did it because I knew I was supposed to but after that talk, I've realized some of the blessings I've received from it.

 

I also liked Elder Hale's talk. It was a nice reminder of how important conference it.

 

President Uchtdorf's was also good. I never really realized just how much time the church takes from our lives, but it never really has mattered to me. And it's really not that much time for me anyway. I'm giving up 18 months of my life to serve the Lord. Only 18 months. It seems like forever now but in the grand scheme of things, it's really not at all.

 

That's all I can really remember for now. Sorry! Happy early birthday to Carter and Dad!

 

I've tried to send pictures the last few weeks but it's not really working. But I found a Batman onesie complete with cape at Wal-Mart! I tried to take pictures but it's probably the coolest thing I've ever found there. They also have a Supergirl (which is lame because it's pink and not red), the donkey from Winnie the Pooh (can't remember the name off the top of my head. Sad.) and Minnie Mouse. The super heros have capes, the donkey and mouse have ears. It's awesome. They also have a Wonder Woman, Batman, Superman, Robin, and Harry Potter t-shirt complete with capes. Wal-Mart is getting creative with their clothes.

 

I think that's all.

I love you!

 

Hermana Myers