Transfer News

Well, I'm going for a record. My longest companion is now Sister Hartvigsen. We are going on three transfers together. Huh. The only one who is leaving is Elder Isom (really sad day). he's Headed to a Liahona 1st. One of the stakes got dissolved so a lot of the ward boundries (and zone boundries) have changed. There is a lot of change happening. Sister Cottrell is training the sister we are getting from Kenya and Sister McKenna is training the sister from France this transfer. Exciting! Let's see, what other changes, The VC is doing a new schedule, so instead of doing 2 shifts of 6 hours, we are splitting it into a morning shift (9-3) Mid (3-6) and Night (6-9). They are doing this for a few reasons: To have more time in our area. To cut out dead time in the VC. To have us eat more with members (we won't have any more meals being brought to the VC). And so it will be interesting. It will force us to be more diligent in the things that we ahve to do. So that schedule will stay for Christmas Lights - Because stakes don't want to bring us dinners anymore so there had to be a solution for that... We are so loved.   We've been having a busy yet not busy week. We had the opportunity for someone from teh 1st quarm of the 70 to visit us, Elder Chai  and his wife (he gave a talk in conference a while ago about noisy boys or something like that...). It was an interesting conference. One would think that we would get talked to about Preach My Gospel and Missionary work, right? No, We got marriage prep. Actually, it started off about how to develope our relationship with God thru prayer and how to feel more of his spirit. But it very frequently turned to Marrage adivice. His wife was there and so it made it even more funny. But there you go. It was a good inpiring conference. Sister Chai took us aside and talked to the sisters about how the Elders are Simple and Young, no matter how old they are. She talked to us about how we can support the priesthood and help the elders live worthy of it. Sister hartvigsen got pulled into an interview with him (random selection) and she was very confused ast to the purpose of the interview. I wasn't there so I have no more details on that front. :)   On Wednesday, Sister Hartvigsens 23rd BDay, So we played Soccer. The elders got her a Bismark Donut (i'll have to tell you about the transfer long joke about that when I get home). We took her to Jamba Juice cause that's what she wanted, and eventually smashed her head into a cake. She will deny it to her dying day that that is what she wanted, but when she brings it up in every conversation about her upcoming birthday, well, I can put 2 and 2 together. We had district Meeting, and I gave a talk on love and charity. I described charity in levels, Friendship, Discipleship, and Charity. It was a good talk. I learned something so that makes it successful, right? (district picture included - Sister Arias (shortest one) and Vause are going full field this transfer. EXCITING!!   We've had the wonderful opportunity to bike in the rain ( i enjoyed it anyway...). WE had a meeting with the bishop which was just frustrating as he put everything onto our new WML shoulders. Hno Magallan doesn't know anything about missionary work so we are going to have to start with the basics with him. Bishop gave us a lot of less actives to go and visit. So we did, and some of them aren't intersted in the chruch, or stand us up for appointments, or whatever, take your pick. Slightly frustrating.   I've had some awesome people come into the VC. one kids is called JD. He's working on changing his life around. He comes into the VC and likes to talk about various principles. He's got a long ways to go but you can tell that once he gets committed to the gospel, he'll stick with it. He's a fun guy to talk to.   Myra and Maria are still progressing. We are just working on keeping Myra with us, because she is prego and has no hubby. She feels very alone. And so it's hard to help her want to committ to anything. But we keep at it. We got an appointment set up for tonight with her.   Overall, it's been a good week. We've been working a lot and hard. I'm enjoying my mission and can't believe that I am hitting my year mark! dang!!! it's gone by too fast already, and they say it only gets faster! bah.   I love you lots! emily

Mormon.org is hitting the PHX area!

Hello one and all. I hope your week has been treating you well. I have had a pretty busy week. Most of it has been at the Visitor's Center and that has been an interesting thing in and of itself. As I have said before there has been a lot of disharmony in the VC about being dedicated to doing our jobs, where ever they may be. I have been talking to various sisters about it and we all have decided that mianly it comes from us, the leaders, and that we are the ones who have to lead by example and help the other sisters stay on task. If we really want the VC to grow and be the tool that it is supposed to be, then we are going to have to work harder and be more dedicated.   We had a prep meeting on Friday and we talked about how we are the salt that helps other people with their savor. It started with us talking about Ice Cream and what type of ice cream we are (ben and jerry's half baked - just so you all know) and then talked about salt and ice and the chemical story of that. It was pretty funny. But it was true that we have to be the salt to help others be better.   As for our beloved Liahona 4th ward, we are working hard. A lady from chruch came up to us and asked us to start meeting with her husband who has no desires to come back to chruch. She is an awesome lady that wants the best for her family. We started teaching them the member presentations and alked about how important the family is. We had a really good lesson with them. And he ligit just told us that he doesn't want to come to chruch because he wants to watch Football. American Football. Strange for a mexican... but we have started working with Familia Alvarez!   Maria is still progressing. We've worked on bringing some members to lessons with us so she can get to know more preople. We had a really good talk about tithing, mainly because she needs $400 for her divorce. So we invited her to pay her tithing and that god would bless her with the way to pay for the divorce so she can get married and then baptized. She has known about tithing but didn't know that she could pay it before she was a member. yep yep.   We had a lesson with a lady named Eva. She is a basket case. We talked about why we had trials. We go in with a game plan about what we need to teach but it never happens. Right now all she want to do is complain about her life and how horrid her kids are and her husband is. Midway thru the lesson I was thinking, why are we teaching you? So odds are, if she dosen't start doing anything, we will stop visiting with her. It's really sad to me, because we really do want to help this family, but we can't unless they are willing to do things to improve their life. I can't do anything for them but teach the things that the need to do.   We finally found Myra again. I guess she did not go up to vegas like we had heard, but just to phx. Tha'ts all good. We too had a discussion with her about tithing. She ligit has no way to pay, because she does not get money, but we talked about how important it is to be willing to serve in whatever way. We also talked about what ward she would like to go to. She likes both the english and spanish ward and so it's hard to figure out what she wants. She likes the people in the english ward but understands more in the spanish. Imagine that. But we went and watched the Joseph Smith movie with her with a member from the english ward and she really like that. I think. She was crying anyway.   Friday and Saturday we had Hermana Arias with us for exchanges. We kept busy and work hard with a lot of the LA people that we have in our ward. We visited Ivonne, who has the 4 boys, one with down, and talked how she needs to help her kids learn about God because they know Squat! we really did get down to it and her problem is that she just doesn't have the energy too. I can understand that. 4 boys under the age of 8. I would be exhausted too. But hopefully we can get some people to help her. Friends. She needs them.   On saturday we had our useless stake correlation. Really, all it is is breakfast (For which I am greatful) but lets not call it a meeting and not discuss anything. We know that the stake is pretty limited in being able to help us but really, there is more to life than how many people we have with a baptismial date. And I was on day 4 of my headache that day so i was moody anyway. But life goes on.   Sunday was completley crazy. The english wareds were getting trainin on Mormon.org and that messed up everyones schedule for the spanish ward. my poor ward. but we had morning sheft in the VC (i take laps in the art exhibit when no one is around. good exercise. and we showed the special presentation of music and the spoken work for 9/11. pretty cool). Correlation was with bishop this week. and he just want to shove us off to the 'ward mission leader'. So that is getting frustrating. WE have a meeting set up with him to hopefully get on his agenda and figure out what he wants us to do. For the rest of the night we just went out and visited people. Our numbers are getting better, but we've been working hard at it.   So, for Mormon.org. What's going to happen si that october 3, the phx mesa area is going to get hit with back to back 10 second tv spots, billboards, and advertisments all over the area for the 6 months after that. It's going to be awesome. They have already done this in 9 citis and they tested it out there, but now they are doing this for reals and warning the members (something they forgot to do last time). but the purpose of doing this is to help pleople learn that mormons and lds are the same, to dispell myths and help members do missionary work and take iniative. so that's what district meeting and the chruch meetings have been all about. it's pretty exciting. so on saturday, we had time to go to the library and update our profile or create on if we didn't have one. So we are working on helping the members get ready for that. I'm pretty excited. Saddly it wont be in spanish until february but we can work around that. lots of hispanics speak english too. Anyway, that's the newest big thing. We've been talking about it a lot with the members and people that come into the VC. I was talking to a lady in the exhibit that hadn't heard about it and was super super excited and was pretty grateful that i talked to her about it. so there you go. it was awesome.   So that's my life this week. I love you a lot and hope you all have a good week. emily

Hello!

Well, this transfer seems to be going by fast. And everyone says it only gets faster which just gets more frightening. I've had some great company in the VC this past week. I did run into Patriarch Thomas's Son. My comp told him that I was from SD and so the connection was made. he told me a little of his story and how he is now on the road back to the temple. But It was good to be able to visit with someone from home. I also found Garrett (or elder Hamby for those who care). He seems to be doing good. He's in my greenie Zone, MOuntain View. His comp is the DL. Elder H. has grown up a little bit and is happy. At least he seems so. And he is on bike, so that is funny. He works close to where I used to be in my greenie area so all will be well with him. He has yet to have a comp for longer than a transfer tho... And i found....Jaron and Devin Clayborn! They live in Maricopa (which I figured out is south of Chandler which is south of Mesa, so in the Tempe mission). They came to do baptisms and I was starting God's plan and I saw this kid and he looked familiar. So i was like, "Jaron?" He said, "Emily?" WHAT... so we had a happy reunion and talked to them for a while. They seem to be doing good. Life is different here than it is in SD, but that's okay. I got their number just incase I ever needed to leave junk her for when I go home...call in a favor or something....:) Sister Brox called from BYU and i talked to her for a little while. She's doing good. And sister Dewitt came back in. She brought her family. HOw nice. ONe day last week we got locked out of the VC. A rule that the church has is that as sisters, we can't open the VC unless we have Mel. Preisthood there with us. So the senior couple that was supposed to open the VC forgot and so we didn't open until and hour later! luckily the security from the temple noticed us hanging around outside and unlocked it. But we couldn't open it to the public for a while after that. WE finally had someone come to help us around 10:30 or so. So funny. Today was temple day, which made life really nice. We had a pretty good week too. We've been trying to work with the members a lot more, which is what Pres. Ellsworth wants for this mission. We found a new family to teach, who actually has a lot of member friends. THe member that we had out with us that night fixed his computer before his mission (he got home about 6 months ago). So that was a little miracle. We have been having better success. Our numbers still aren't that great, but we are having more quality ones. Myra we are still teaching, but she has been faithfully been going to an english ward for 3 months, but doesn't speak english. Lots of members speak spanish tho. So we talked to the elders and decided taht if she felt more comfortable there, then we would continue to teach her, but she would get baptized into theri ward, (and become their number). Slightly discouraging, but whatever makes her happy then that's what we will do. She is awesome and amazing and we are now working with the members with that ward. We gave a tour to a spanish ward for our ZLs and other elders in that ward. So we prepared what they wanted us to do and then decided that they wanted to change the itinerary. So i'm pretty sure that I didn't make myself better friends with one of my zone leaders when i told him that if that was what he had wanted he should have called us earlier and changed it or come in earlier so we could get it all done. We are more than just tour guides here. But overall, it turned out well. It has been a good week. The other sisters finally moved in. That was a bit of a challange. Its diffenent with roommates now. but that's okay, we can adjust. And life goes on. We have a good week already planned with a lot of lessons. Reward for getting at least 4 member present lessons is a trip to bahama bucks. We haven't had 4 MP in a long time. So we are working hard. Lord really is blessing us with the time that we have in oura rea. We played soccer the other morning. I love it when sister Arias and Vause come. Sis Arias is from El Salvador and is a little firecracker. She cracks me up and is so funny when you play. She gets possessive of the ball. Elder Santos runs in circles around everyone because he's got the energy, sister Hartvigens scores the goals and sister Vause is the goalie because she has no energy to run around. While elder Isom and I play somewhat more competativley because we are the ones with the skills. But overall, we work on having fun and building district unity. Things are getting better between the sisters and the elders. They initially didn't get along, but things are better. Sister Arias loves comeing to play soccer. I love my district. :) Next week, i'll have pretty exciting news for you regarding MOrmon.org. It's gonna be big.... Love emily