Hanging out in Tucson!

Have you noticed that Sarah's emails have been getting a lot shorter?  I think it has something to do with the fact that she returns home next week!   If you would like to hear more about her mission, you are invited to listen to her speak on Sunday, December 18th at 9am.  She will be speaking at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4195 East Wildcat Reserve Parkway, HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colorado 80126.  Everyone is invited to attend!

Hi! 

This week was good! It was a little slow, but we got to go to Tucson for 2 days so that was fun! I'll be back in Tucson Monday night and then Tuesday we got to the temple and then Wednesday we fly home! So yeah! I may try to visit a few people in Tucson Monday night.

 

Tucson was really really fun! We ended up driving out to Wilcox on Wednesday night and staying there with the hermanas. It was a little crazy that night we had to wait for an elder from Silver City to drive down, so that we could carpool with our elders and him, but his car broke down so we had to wait a while longer and ended up getting in a lot later than normal. Then the sisters didn't have heating at their apartment. I think I slept like 3 hours, but it made me very grateful for my bed and heating! Then the next morning we met up with our elders and the Wilcox elders to go to breakfast before Spanish conference.

I loved Spanish conference a lot! We ended up listening to some talks and talking about how we can better our Spanish. I think the thing that stuck out to me most was when Hermana Child talked about how the main reason she studies Spanish is because she loves the people and loves the culture. That totally changed my perspective and although I don't have much time left I'm going to continue to study hard so that I can speak with all of these people that I love. I'm so grateful for the chance I've been given to serve a Spanish speaking mission and that I have come to love a group of people I wasn't able to even talk to before. We also got to listen to some Latin music and it was super great because everyone who was a native speaker got up and took turns dancing. 

Friday we had MLC and since all the district leaders were there it was a lot busier than normal. We had some great trainings on how to practice better to teach. We also talked s bit more about convert retention. It was good. At the end I started crying during the prayer because a good chunk of the people there are finishing their missions in the next week and we were all a bit emotional thinking about how close we are to the end.

Anyways not much else has happened this week, but even in the slow weeks I am so grateful that I am able to be a missionary and share the gospel with people that I don't even know, but am growing to love.

I love you lots!

Con amor,

Hermana Burgoyne 

Always Pray First!

Thanksgiving was good! We ate with a family in the Ward and it tasted good. Lots of turkey! I was a bit sad though because I didn't get any pumpkin pie :( but it's ok because we got some later in the week! 

Something I'm working on right now is to show more love for those around me. I'm also trying my very best to keep busy and give it my all since I don't have much time left!

This week was awesome! On Tuesday we went on exchanges with the Silver city sisters. I went with Sister Nuttall, who is friends with Lexi and a lot of my friends from high school, so that was fun! Also we had a really crazy day! We went to go do service for this lady named Carol Smith who they had recently reactivated. Anyways turns out the first time they went over she was not so nice to them and yelled a bit and lit a cigarette to scare them away. Then a few days later, she showed back up at church and has been going ever since. We went to go teach her after helping her move her couch, and we had forgotten to say a prayer which is never a good thing. We tried to teach her about the Restoration starting from the middle, and she just kept arguing with us and saying how all churches have the priesthood authority and complaining about how we use the Book of Mormon too much and how she doesn't think it's the word of God.  I was about to argue with her, and it was not going so well. Anyways just at the right moment Sister Nuttall asked a very inspired question which was basically if she had felt the spirit before and what it felt like. So carol responded and said yes 30 years ago and that it felt peaceful and warm. All of a sudden the spirit was back in the room, we asked if we could start over and say a prayer with her. So we did, and I was able to testify to her about the importance of the Book of Mormon and the Spirit entered into the room stronger than it had in any lesson I had been in before, and we were able to testify to her about the restoration and help clear up some misconceptions she had about the priesthood and the atonement. It was a beautiful lesson. She changed from being super argumentative one moment to being super humble! It's amazing what a simple prayer, our testimonies and the Spirit can do, because in reality the Spirit is the best teacher, not us. I love the verses in D&C 50 that say;

 "13 Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question--unto what were ye ordained?

14 To preach my gospel by the Spirit, even the Comforter which was sent forth to teach the truth.

15 And then received ye spirits which ye could not understand, and received them to be of God; and in this are ye justified?

16 Behold ye shall answer this question yourselves; nevertheless, I will be merciful unto you; he that is weak among you hereafter shall be made strong.

17 Verily I say unto you, he that is ordained of me and sent forth to preach the word of truth by the Comforter, in the Spirit of truth, doth he preach it by the Spirit of truth or some other way?

18 And if it be by some other way it is not of God.

19 And again, he that receiveth the word of truth, doth he receive it by the Spirit of truth or some other way?

20 If it be some other way it is not of God.

21 Therefore, why is it that ye cannot understand and know, that he that receiveth the word by the Spirit of truth receiveth it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth?

22 Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together."

The Holy Ghost really made the difference in that lesson and I don't think I want to ever take that for granted again!

The rest of our week was pretty good! We had a lot of less active recent convert lessons. We also realized that although most of our branch was gone on Sunday we had all of our recent converts there and that all of them are basically active which is super rare! I have definitely seen lots of miracles here in Deming and hope to see more in these last couple of weeks!

I love you lots!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne

Locked in a closet

So this weeks been pretty good! Lots of miracles and a few disappointments. Right now we are teaching lots of people especially less actives. The ward gave us a huge list of people they wanted us to visit which is super convenient, but also a lot of work sorting through those who are ready to listen and those who aren't!

Anyways this week we have found a lot of new investigators. One of them is an elderly man named Gennovo. We contacted him and his friend one day, and they seemed pretty interested, so we went back to Gennovo's house the other day for our appointment and his friend wasn't there, so we went on a little walk to go and see if his friend was home and Gennovo was nice and came with us haha. It probably looked pretty funny because here we are two 20 year old white girls walking down the street slowly with this nice little Mexican man. He's super nice and has invited us over almost every day, but his friend hasn't been there yet. We will see what happens with him!

Tuesday we ended up doing service at the healing house and started sorting and folding bedding and at some point the elders decided it would be really funny to shove me into the closet and lock me in. So that was nice of them, but it's ok because the next time we went I locked one of the elders in!

Wednesday we went to this really good Chinese place for lunch and it was super cheap and they gave us a lot! I ended up having my left overs for lunch for 3 days this week! After we ended up going to see Lisa with our Ward mission leader. We had a super awesome lesson with her and she told us she would be baptized as soon as she knew for herself if it was true! It was kind of cool because earlier that day while preparing to teach her the gospel of Jesus Christ I felt like we really needed to see if she had prayed to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, and I realized that that's what the elders had invited her to do right before we got here and so we hadn't ever followed up with her! So we invited her to do that and hopefully we will have her on date soon!

Another cool thing that happened this week is we went to see a less active member the other day and ended up having a lesson with her very active daughter Dalia (Dalia has 2 other sisters in the branch along with a few other members of her family, so basically their family makes up half the branch!) She asked us to go try her neighbor Juana because she knew she was going through a rough patch in her life. So the next day we visited her, and she let us right in and even though we were only there long enough to get to know her a bit I felt so much love for her. We were able to testify to her about how the Book of Mormon would be able to help her, and at the very end I felt prompted to tell her how much God loves her and wants to help her. She seemed to be full of hope afterwards even though she is going through some really hard things right now. I know God sent us to her for a reason, and that He is really conscious of our needs! I'm so grateful for the opportunity to help others feel of His love for us daily! I love you lots and hope you have an amazing week!

 

Con amor,

Hermana Burgoyne 

Freezing in Deming

This week has been good, it's been super super super busy, and a little confusing, but overall good. My new companion is great! We get along pretty well and we are getting stuff done, so that's good. Deming is interesting, I'm not going to lie I still miss Nogales a lot, but hopefully I'll like it here in a few weeks. Deming is just a super small town where the cars all drive super slow and half the people are cowboys. It’s pretty quiet out here, but it's not too bad because we have a set of Spanish elders and a set of English elders, so we spend time with them. Right now it's in the 70's/60's which is freezing compared to Tucson. I've been wearing sweaters every single day, so I'm not sure what I'll do when it actually gets cold here. I still am a little confused and feel like I don't know everyone, but it's good! I know God has something for me to do here, and so I'm just going to press on and trust him!

I'll start out with Monday night. We tried to go visit some people so that I could say bye to them, but no one was home sadly. So we ended up last minute going to go see Liz and Priscilla. The good news is Priscilla actually sat in on our lesson, and even though she's been pretty rebellious lately she can still feel the spirit trying to tell her to go back. We were super excited, because she actually said the closing prayer at the end of the lesson since I was leaving and she hadn't prayed for month!

Then Tuesday we got up at 5 and quickly stopped by Isabella'a, so that I could say bye to her before we headed up. Then we drove up and Elder Paxman gave us a rundown of our area, and then we started the 4 hour drive out to the middle of nowhere.  I was so tired by the end of it, but that's ok! Hermana Hoffman and I were a little worried, because we had no clue what we would do that first day, but half way through the trip we got a call from the elders telling us that we had a dinner appointment at 5, and then they were going to take us to go and see our investigator with a baptism date at 6, and then to go and have correlation with our Ward mission leader right after. I felt so much peace when they told us that and felt like it was a tender mercy from God that we wouldn't be searching around for things to do. That night we met up with the elders and met Ivonne a less active recent covert who just moved up here from Mexico, and then we also met Carmen Rincón who has a baptism date for this Thursday. It seems like the other elders had been doing lots of good work here!

Then not too much happened until Thursday. We've done service almost every single day this week. Wednesday morning we got up and went straight to a field of pumpkins to help load up the pumpkins into the branch president’s truck for his animals on the ranch. Thursday we went to go volunteer at a shelter for abused women and men. It seems like it'll be cool, we get to do some yard work and some office work, so that's fun! Also the Spanish elders here are super awesome and are willing to come and get us so we can follow them to half of our appointments. Right now we have Elder Pangerl ( sounds like pan+ girl) who just started his mission 5 months ago, is district leader, and currently training Elder Brozalez who is in his 2nd transfer here and learning English because he is from Chile. So that's fun! Also the zone leaders are in our district too. Anyways later Thursday after service we hopped into the zone leader’s truck (we got special permission to ride in the same car as the elders) and carpooled to Wilcox where we switched with the Gila valley zone leaders for their STL's and drove to Tucson to pick up Hermana Kerr and go to the mission home to stay the night for MLC the next day. It took a really really long time to get there, but we had fun and bonded a lot with our zone leaders.

Friday was super awesome! I loved MLC! We ended up talking about how to invite our investigators to pray with us. We also talked about how to help other missionaries be leaders and asking spirit driven questions. I learned a lot of great new ideas and I'm super excited to apply them in our teaching. Anyways we didn't get back to Deming until 9:30pm that night.

Saturday was pretty good. We did some more service, and we ended up going to visit Ivonne and she told us how she has done some thinking and that she feels like her life isn't the same when she isn't going to church. She told us she had already been sending her children each week even though she hasn't been able to go herself because of work, but she told us she would be there on Sunday. Anyways Sunday came around and she was there! It was a miracle and super cool to see the dedication she has even as a new member to church. Sunday we were also able to meet Margie Castro. She's a less active member who has been on and off active for a while, but she's pretty cool and really funny. I'm excited to get to know her more. Anyways we had a really good lesson with her about the restoration and could feel the spirit so strong as she bore testimony of how her knowledge of Joseph Smith’s experience has truly blessed her life. Then for the last miracle of the week we went over to read with one of the Elders investigators and his family and were able to get their less active daughter Daisy to sit in on the lesson which has not happened in forever! 

There seems to be lots of work to do here and not a lot of time to do all of it!

Something that hit me this week while we were in church was that a lot of time the reason people choose not to follow God's commandments is because they lack the understanding of why he asks things of us. Once we are able to understand the doctrine behind the principles we are more likely to follow it, because we know it will bless us in the long run. I'm so grateful to be a member of this gospel that we have the chance to learn more and more each day so that we can understand and apply the commandments God has given us!

I hope that you are all doing well! I love you so much!

 

Con amor,

Hermana Burgoyne