Another week

Well, I don't have much to write this week. I have had a lot of evening shifts, which leaves us about 3 hours in our area. And because we ride bikes, we don't have much time for anything. Our numbers were really low, but we tried doing what we could when we could. Myra came to church and so did Jose. Some one that we have been teaching but can't get baptized because of various reasons. He came up and talked to us afterwards and asked us if we could come and talk to his wife about being a better wife. Um, that's not our job, but we will talk to her about the gospel of JC. Hows that sound?

 

It's been hard readjusting to the VC. There is no trust or unity there. I am having a hard time talking to the sisters. I can talk to the people who come in just fine. They aren't complicated. It's figuring out the politics of those that are in authority, or those that want to be in authority. As Administrative Assistant in the VC, we come up with quizzes or other random stuff to do in prep meetings to help the sisters learn more about the vc or how to apply it. But because of the lack of trust and unity, I got the idea (or inspiration, take your pick) to have the sisters work on getting to know each other more and then talking about the things that we have learned about each other at the prep meetings. Hopefully this will start getting the ball rolling on this. 

 

On a happy note, I finished reading the Book Of Mormon in Spanish. It's taken me about 8 months to do it but i got it done! Let's see if i can do it again before I get home. As for my other goal of reading all the standard works before the end of my mission, I'm in 1st chronicles in teh OT. Oh dear goodness, plain and precious is long gone. I am so greateful for the book of mormon.

 

We had zone conference yesterday. It went really well. A lot of it was talking about obedience and how we need to work with the members here in Mesa. That's the vision that president ellsworth has for us. We are few in numbers reagarding missionaries, but when we get the members on our side, things will go a lot better. So that's what we are going to work on.

 

I want  you all to know that I am grateful to be a missionary. I want you all to know that right now is time of refiners fire. It's hard. And all i got is my scriptrues and My Savior.  I love you all a lot. 

 

Have a good week.

love

emily 

LIfe at the VC

Well, Life goes on. We have less time to spend in our area, don't get much food because we the members don't want to bring it for dinners, and I have no idea what I can do for my area. We have such little time in my area. But regardless, I still find the fun in situations. For Example, the last time I was in the VC (long Long ago) we had some All-stars that would come i the VC all the time. One was called Jeremy. And he came back the other night. But he wanted to borrow a wheel-chair so i took his ID (collateral) and called security. He's on the 'call security if he ever shows up again' list. So they watched him. But apparently he was re-baptized that day. yay for applying the atonement!

 

We had transfers, Elder Isom's new companion can be best described as a very excited new puppy. Which is good unless he starts talking because you cannot follow his train of thought. Poor kid. He's been out the same amount of time as Sis Hart, but has been in Phoenix pretty much the whole time. Elder Isom was having a rough couple of days so we made him brownies and after a few days he's talked to his companion and things are getting better. It's hard readjusting to a different comp especially after you became best friends with the comp you had before.

 

Yep, we are kinda on bikes. We have limited limited miles. And I am pretty excited for the bikes. And my companion is not excited at all. She loathes them. But she gets on them. And takes forever. I'm guessing patience is a quality that is good to learn in this situation. From our apartment it takes us a half hour to bike to the VC. it takes the elders 10-15. Sigh. But we got to do it so she is gonna have to learn. Or i'm going to have to be more patient. Take your pick.

 

I played the piano at chruch on sunday. It went well except that every song was a song I had never played before! luckily i've gotten over my stage fright and just laugh at myself as I screw up. It doesn't help that they sing slow too. So that makes it more difficult to play. Oh the Joys of a spanish ward. We had the ward correlation that sister Arias and Hart went to. It's nice that we were finally invited to come. Because we need the auxiliaries help. Half the time the bishop would just listen to us and then that would be the end of it. But being allowed to correlation was great. We got offered help. :)

 

One of the more annoying parts of the week was the stake Correlation and the Prep meeting we had. We have the stake meeting once a month and we were unable to go last month because no one knew about it and because no one told us. We were going to miss this one because of a prep meeting (prep meeting for VC trumps Stake meetings, go figure) but we did split so Sister Vause and I and went to the meeting. Which turned into a breakfast for an hour and then a 15 minute talk about what we needed. The only thing we asked for was an english class to help people learn english. Yep, that's important. Then the High Councile man talked about how we shouldn't have spanish wards or branches and that they all needed to learn english and go to english wards. Uh, no. Everyone has a right to listen to the Gospel in their native tongue. That's a promise that we have in the BOM. Yes, they need to learn english if they are going to live here, but they can go to church in spanish.

Then we dashed off to the prep meeting and waited for 15 minutes to let us in. So we only heard about 15 minutes of the prep meeting but apparently we got a talking to. We are not allowed to talk to elders pretty much. Ok, so they didn't say that exactly, but they said that we are not allowed to laugh with them or talk for longer than 5 minutes and it is supposed to only be on topic about The Work. Got it. No personality. Don't make other missionaries feel welcome in the VC. Sigh. I understand the importance of having boundaries between the elders and sisters, I really do, but this doesn't do anything to increase mission unity, which is what they are going for (big rift still between VC and FF and Elders and Sisters). So I get so frustrated that people thing that imposing more rules is going to help us be better. Again, I understand the purpose of rules, but this makes it sound as if they don't trust us and that we are not capable of being obedient to the rules that we do know. Unless of course, there are some missionaries that are breaking these rules and therefore ruin it for the rest of us. Thanks!

 

So yeah, slightly frustrated right now.

 

But Myra is doing good. We taught her and her two daughters and they came to church! the girls said that they didn't like it but heck, when you are 12 and 11 no one likes church. But we had a really good lesson with Myra about the Plan of Salvation. She still isn't ready to be baptized but she got really excited about baptisms for the dead. :) I love her. She is so cute and happy. And so dang pregnant. Maria is doing good too. We taught her about recognizing the Spirit and was pretty excited when she realized that she had the Light of Christ. Yep. You is awesome! What is cool is that she babysits for her job and one of the little girls that she watches loves what we teach. I really don't even know her name, we just call her Gordita (little fat girl - a common nick name). She's 4 years old, knows how and in what manner she should pray and loves the song The Spirit of God and loves to sing along with us. She's been trying to talk to her mom into taking her to church but no luck so far. So cute. Someday...she'll be baptized.

 

That's pretty much my exciting news. Thanks for all that you do. I love you lots and hope you enjoy your end of summer!

Love, emily

 

 

 

The pictures are of Elder Stosich, Elder Isom, me and Sister Cottrell, my most favorite people here. We have had some good times together. Fishing, soccer, sleepovers. Yep, it's a party. :)

 

 

Ready for transfer news

Well, it has been a good transfer, luckily I have had wonderful friends that have helped me out. But of course, all good things must come to an end. Sister Hartvigsen and I are staying together, but we are going back to the visitor's center. Sis Hart is not happy at all. I just accept the fact and move on. We all have to do stuff we aren't fond of. Elder White has called me to be the new administrative assistant. Something to do with paper work and a lot of initiative, which apparently I have. Sister White made a comment and said that she doesn't like having the sisters out full feild for so long becuase their hearts never come back to the visitor's center. It's true. It's so much simpiler and easier just doing missionary work. Sister Cottrell is still full feild. Elder Stosich is leaving and going to white wash a different area in a different ward, but he will still be in the zone so we can still play soccer. (Bytheway, I was playing soccer kinda rough and kicked off half my toenail. So, it really hurts...) Elder Isom is staying and getting a new companion who introduces himself as a terrorist. It will be fun...E. Isom is pretty sad about losing his companion. those two are pretty tight.   We've had some good experiences this week. We went out to luch with a member who we helped move. She is a sweet single old lady and speaks english and spanish, Maria (shocker on the name, right). We went to a place called Rosa's and it's amazing. Someday, we're coming back here and i'll take you around. We walked to it, which it wasn't far. I love being able to go and do stuff wtih the members with out worrying about being at the VC.   Elder Isom's 21 birthday was yesterday. for the past week I have been talking to people and letting them know that it was his birthday, so members all day were saying happy brithday to him. Hehehe. I had fun with it. Sister Hart and I went out and decorated their apartment door at 6 in the morning. And left him a box of brownies (which he loves). His first bday in the mission wasn't the greatest so hopefully this one was better. We ate with the familia Inzunza and had gorditas (which are not like the ones at taco bell). And some how I managed to have 2 cans of pepsi, which of course sent me thru the roof. The elder had a blast watching me spaz out. never doing that again...   We've been able to build good relationships with the members. They know us and trust us and don't mind helping us. We are taking some of them to the VC to watch the new god's plan with them and helping the YW prepare to go to the temple, and always have that goal in mind. We had the YW president take us to wal-mart today. We got cut from 900 miles on our car to 550. Some missionaries have been going over on miles (not us, just so you know) and so lots of people get punished. So that means I'm taking my bike back and buying a helmet and some tubes. Sis hart hates bikes but knows that she's got to go on it so she won't fight it as much. But whatever we got to do, we will. I'm slightly excited.   The Elders had a baptism on Saturday. The familia Leon have been able to help us out a lot. And so their 11 year old son decided to get baptized. So We had to scramble and make some programs for it. I played the piano and did a special number for it. The cool thing was, earlier that day we had had a lesson with Diana Leon with Myra, and set a baptism date with her. And she came to the baptism and then came to chruch! she's so awesome. she talked to bishop after sacrament and so hopefully things will continue to go well with her.   Maria Aragon is still progressing. We are teaching her out of preach my gospel, like how to study and recognize the spirit. She is super excited that we aren't being transfered. She is such a sweetheart. We went to mutual with Elizabeth (her daugher) and they were  making jean purses. It was kinda fun. The elders couldn't find the YM so they came inand joined us while we made flowers to decorate the purses. I love those elders.   Otherwise, we are doing good. We are back to the VC, we have work in our area. We ride our bikes and have a lot of referrals to contact. Alma really wants to come to church but it's a new excuse every week. But we work slow and steady. They are awesome people. I love htis area. I have had such a good transfer. yeah, it's been hard in some ways, but the Lord really has blessed me with firends to help me out with the support i needed.   So love you all, emily

Last week of transfers!

Hello Everyone!   Well, I guess that ths summer is being pretty mild. And half the time I don't know the temperature because our car temp doesn't work so i never know. All I know is that it's hot and that I'm getting a wicked tan. Don't be jealous. And i've already gone fishing today. It was pretty good. I'll attach a picture of the beauty I caught.   Well, this week has been pretty good. We had another dust/lightning storm. It was beautiful to watch. We have had some interesting lessons this week. One of them was with the ASL Elders and the english zone leaders from our neighboring zone. The English Elders (Harral and Poulson) have been teaching some kids in this family, except there are some language barriers. Grandma only speaks spanish (hence us being invited) and their mom is a deaf navajo (hence the ASL elders). So we had a leccion grande with 6 missionaries, 3 familys and a host family. It was a lot of fun. Most of it was jsut socializing and such, but the reason why we all had it together is because the family members that don't speak english were feeling left out, so we all translated. Sister Hartvigsen signs and speaks spanish so the poor kid was mixing languages like no other. She would sign to me and speak spanglish. Oh it was fun. So that was a neat experience.   On of the senior couples that lives in our ward, the Blacks, are leaving to serve a mission in Florida. So we went over to their house and helped them pack up their stuff and then move in their daughter who is going to live in their house while they are gone. We helped move her furniture, unpack, set up stuff, and I got assigned with decorating. So i did my thing and had fun with what space I had. And objects. She was into the black, red and white theme so if it didn't have those colors it didn't go up. We had fun there were a lot of members and family helping out. We are going to miss them. Sis black was in charge of the chior and they both worked in the family history center.   So, since the blacks are leaving, Sister Nishiguchi is now in charge of the choir, and I am now the pianist. bah! there are just so many things going on. And I have no idea what is going to happen for transfers. We have 2 new spanish VC coming in so someones going to be training. I could stay, I could leave. its all up in the air.   We have a new investigator, Myra. She is a sweet lady. Saddly, her husband is in Mexico and she is thinking of going and joining him there. She has been going to and english ward that has a spanish sunday school class. So we got a referral from the elders for her. I really like her, so we are going to get to work on her.   We are still visiting the LA family that we found, Alma, but she always flakes on us when we try to do something. But she really wants to come back to chruch so we will keep on visiting her. goodness gracious. It's so hard to keep track of Hispanics.   Most of our investigators we are probably going to drop, they aren't progressing. Mainly because they can't. Anita (70, had a stroke a while back) said she couldn't go to chruch because it's cold and her broncitus will act up and she can't read. So we made a copy of the BOM on CD, well, she doesn't have a cd player. hmmm. So that's kinda frustrating. But we keep on going. It's hard to find people. If someone ever said that being a missionary is easy, they lied.   Maria, our eternal investigator, feed us dinner the other night. She's such a sweet heart. she loves us and so we are working on finding new stuff to teach her. you can only teach people so much, odds are we'll get her a preach my Gospel and teach her out of that. She's already read the Gospel Principles book. :)   Otherwise, We keep on going. There are ups and downs, the trick is to keep on smiling with the downs. I love you all alot!   Love, emily

Hello!

We've had a slightly more eventful week. For P-day on monday we went fishing in one of the many canals that we have here. I caught my first fish (the first fish) and ssiter hartvigsen and i caught all of the fish that day. We are headed out again today. Some of the elders really wanted to do it and since I had never done it before we just had some fun. They got me a Bumblebee fishing pole. :)

Sister Nishiguchi and Vause had a baptism the other night and I played the piano for it and one of the sisters in the ward and I did a special musical number with her violin and my piano. for practicing 30 minutes before the baptism we did a pretty good job. It was a beautiful sercive.

We are working on getting in with the youth of our ward, so we have been trying to go to young men and young womens. As a general rule, Elder Stosich and Isom play soccer with the YM on wednesday evenings. We were invited and we all had a blast. I played in my skirt (shorts underneath) and all the YM thought it was the funnest thing. I still get comments about it. And they all thought I played soccer before my mission. Nope. I just have fun and it turns out to be talent. We went to YW on sundays and talked about Sacrifice and Consicration and the difference between the two. It was hilarious because we spanglished the entire lesson. But everyone leared that we need to sacrifice all (or in other words, consicrate) our lives to heavenly father. HOpefully things will start to pick up. I"m working really hard to get to know the people in this ward. It's hard! And i'm not so good at the name game.

On Thursday/Friday we had exchanges. So sister Tejada came to be with us Thrusday afternoon and Friday Morning. Sister Cottrell was also on exchanges with the english sisters but we had a meeting for the VC early in the morning and so she just had a sleep over with us. :) 4 girsl, 1 apartment. Oh so much fun. And it was really hot. We don't have that great of an air conditioner. But we got up early to play soccer and then went to our meeting. I love these sisters. With Sister Tejada, we got yelled at by a complex manager. He says that we are soliciting on his property. Well, be a stinker. We meet with some of our investigators and had some good lessons. Mainly i just used her 1. to learn something 2. to understand what the heck some of our investigators are saying. My spanish is not that good. Regardless, we had a good time.

Maria is still progressing. We take maria's daughter, Elizabeth, with us occasionally for lessons, especially if they have a daughter that same age. We finally found Jose at home. He is in a sad situation. Unfortunatley, his daughter has made some poor choices and so he is in legal trouble for it. odds of him getting baptized aren't so good. We have to hand over another of our investigators to Tempi because he doesn't live in our area. Dang it! We have had a miracle. Some english elders have been giving us some referrals and so we now have a lot more leads. They said that they had met with a family and taught them about the restoration and the dad said that he hadn't finished praying 10 minutes before they came and felt that this was right. So now we have a new family to teach. :) exciting stuff.

We had interviews/Zone development meeting on Tuesday. I gave a talk about the importance of following up and how we need to make sure that progress is being made. It went okay. I was slightly scatterbrianed. But it was good. After talking to president i was slightly unhappy because I felt that everything that i was doing wasn't good enough and that I pretty much can't do missionary work. Life isn't as simple as teaching investigators about the doctrine of Christ and yes, we did do that! regardless, he is my mission president and I have things I need to learn. He talked about having a Current Bush experience (I'm the gardner here - Its a conference talk, look it up cause i'm going thru it right now). Blah. But we had a good time. We practiced being bold and extending the invitation to be baptized the first time we teach them. don't hide the fact that our goal is for them to be baptized. Yep, we be bold.

For my birthday, We ended up meeting with some members for dinner and because i didn't eat my birthday dinner with them, they got me a cake. Mexican tradition goes that whoseever birthday it is, get's their face in the cake. And it did. It was so funny! I knew it was coming too. But i ended up getting icing all over the member's hair. The Elders backed up against the wall, knowing that i would do something to whoever pushed me in. Oh, i love the members that are here.

love, emily

First week in a new area - July 5

Well, life certainly has moved on. We got sister tanner off to the mission office. She was done and ready to go home, as much as she liked to deny it. It's been an interesting transfer with her. While I can see that she has grown and matured since our time at college, there is always room to grow. We may have had our differences, but we were able to pull it together. I'm not sure where our friendship stands right at this moment, (or where I stand with sister Dewitt for that matter) but i do know that we learn and move on.

 

We headed up to scottsdale on wednesdays and swapped companions. I have only one companion. Sister Hartvigsen. She's a socially awkward sweetheart that's been out for about 6 months. But, bless her heart, she tries really hard to do the things that are right and work hard. It is way out of her comfort zone to even be on a mission. So no pressure for me to be the companion that she needs/wants. She doesn't know much of communication or socilaization, and knows it. She did graduate from college in Political Science. She's a knowitall, and knows it, and acts like it. So most of the time i just laugh (very silently) and help her out, gently trying to guide her.

 

So...on with our story.

 

We moved into our new apartment, which used to be an elders apartment. And it was disgusting!!! Think black bathtubs and carpet with trash all over the floor. those boys had not cleaned that apartment in months! As a result, there were no cleaning supplies in the apartment. We ended up paying 40 or so bucks out of pocket to get sufficient cleaning supplies to make it habitable. Luckily the mission office likes me and is giong to reimmberse me for some of it. (so that's what the charge is to my card at frys - mom). I have talked to the eldes that were in that apartment, and after scolding them (very nicely i might add) they were not to happy with me when i told them that it was a rule to clean your apartment every week and they are to do so. So. I may not have those 2 elders as my friends, but Elder Isom and Stosich (DL and his comp) are totally on our side. They are being pretty helpful duirng this whole WhiteWash and cleaning ordeal.

 

The Elder's didn't leave the area book in the best shape either. They didn't have many investigators but they pretended to. But after 4 days of cleaning and organizing, we were able to get the area book and formers folder into a somewhat managable shape. We have a lot of work to do. Cleaning up the area work. Our area is pretty big. So we have a car. Sister Nishiguchi and Vause have a bigger area but they are in bikes and the VC. so far I have been pretty irratated with Nishiguchi because she keeps on asking for rides everywhere, and then doesn't want them. We only have limited miles! bah! so that has been a source of stress for me.

 

We are 1 pair of 3 sets of missionaries that work in Liahona 4th ward. (Nishiguchi/Vause, Isom/Stosich, Me/Hartvigsen). I've heard that the ward is pretty big, but due to the long weekend, about 2/3 of the ward was gone. But they are pretty welcoming. I'm looking forward to this area. I have meet about 2 of their investigators. They have one with a date but we have yet to find him. Most of the time we spend trying to find where places are in our area. there is some organization to the streets but not enough to make everything clear. Pretty much every night we eat with a family and with the elders. That makes it a lot of fun. Normally there isn't enough members to have them feed all of us. Nish and Vause eat with english members because her system can't take hispanic food.

 

Otherwise, we are working on the area. We haven't spent much time there but that's what we get to do this week. I don't have much to write about, I've been cleaning the whole week. So i'm slightly frustrated with that. But otherwise, things are going well.

 

We had a prep-meeting for the last part of our 4th of july p-day. We had president Ellsworth come and talk to us and we found out that instead of having other missionaries helping us out at christmas lights (like they normally do) it is just going to be sisters in the VC asking for referrals and for people to meet with missionaries. So that will cut our numbers way down, but that only means that we need to step it up a notch and work harder. We played games and i got to talk to my two favorites: Sis Dyer and Cottrell. I miss them a lot. Sis Cottrell is training and FF and sister dyer is training VC. So we are all seperated from each other. Sister Hartvigsen had a social mishap hand sat out for the rest of the games. Poor kid. But I enjoyed myself. I miss the VC. but there are so many new people there that i don't know if i have a place there like i used to. sigh. Oh well. We learn.

 

So that's about all i got for you today! I love you lots and will talk to you later!

love emily

Feliz Cumpleanos a mi!

Hello everyone! so this past week has involved a lot of walking. Which isn't surprising, seeing as we have to watch our miles (we use them for p-day seeing as 2 companionships use the car). So because we pretty much have zero to none investigators, we have been looking up formers and referrals that we have gotten from Salt Lake. We have a ton of trailer parks and apartments in our area, and we have had some success. We have had a lot of return appointments and a lot of fallen thru appointments. But in our wanderings we have found a lot of less actives and a part member family that wants to come back to chruch. We can help with that!

 

Last sunday we had helped an old lady cross the street with her shopping cart of belongings and we found her apartment and started teaching her. Her name is Maria, she is in her 70s and was actually taught a while ago. But the only reason why she didn't get baptized was because she didn't see the need to get married to her 'husband'. So we started talking to her and hopefully she will realize the need for a legal (and yet expensive) marriage licence.

 

We have found a lot of others. There is some really good potential in a lot of the trailer parks that we visit. Some people run and hid others give a tenative yes and others are somewhat more serious. So when we start getting somethign solid i'll let you know.

 

Poor sister Hartvigsen isn't taking the heat to well. She ended up taking a few showers the other day. As for me, I just sweat. A lot. and the heat doesn't bother me. I love walking around in it. I have an awesome tan line on my foot too from my shoes.

 

Our ward mission leader has been temporarily released from his calling for the next 3 months. Therefore, we got no ward mission leader. Slightly frustrating in case you didn't know that. We kinda depend on them a lot. So mostly it is just us as missionaries taking care of ourselves, like we normally do in spanish wards.

 

The nice thing about being full field is that we get to meet up with a lot of the members. We eat dinner every night with members, and most of the time the elders too (if there is another dude there). We have been able to do some service for people. It involved climbing in trees and roofs, and knocking down oranges and grapefruit. It was pretty fun.

 

When we did our weekly planning, i made sister Hartvigsen a dang awsesome planner. I had some disney princess and fairy copies from sister tanner. So I colored them up to make cinderella look like her and tink to look like me. It was dang sweet. I'll get a picture of it for you eventually.

 

In all honesty, there isn't much to report. We just walk a lot and talk to as many people as week can. We have had a lot of storms this past week. A huge thunder and lightning storm came thru last night. So yeah, that's pretty much my life. We get to go to the 6 AM temple session on wednesday so we will hopefully stay awake for the rest of the day. Good news is that we still get to go to the temple. 

 

Alright, love you lots and hope you enjoy your week!

 

Love, emily