This week has been ok! It started off really slow.  The whole week we pretty much only saw 4 people besides our dinner appointments up until Saturday and Sunday. It was kind of discouraging, and we kind of started to doubt it would get any better until I was reading in Moroni 7:37.   This scripture talks about how miracles are only possible, if we have faith.  If we don't have faith, then miracles won't happen. So I decided that I needed to have faith even though the beginning of this week was really rough.  On Saturday we saw the miracle when we were able to see pretty much all of the people we wanted to see! It was amazing!

We are making progress with one of our investigators sort of. She's a 9 year old girl whose stepmom is an inactive member and dad isn't a member, but their uncle who is living with them is active! They have a really great family, and they all know a lot about the gospel.  It's just the struggle of getting the mom to church. This week we invited the whole family to church. The good news is the uncle was speaking in church yesterday and managed to get both the mother and his mom (who isn't a member) to come.   Sadly the girls didn't come.  But at least the step-mom came! She seemed to really enjoy it, and so did her mother in law who isn't a member so maybe we will start teaching their grandma! We are going over tonight to try and do family night with them. We went over to their house on Thursday or Friday for dinner and the uncle fed us and was telling us how much he wanted to start up family night with them.  He's a really great influence on them, so hopefully with some work we will get the 9 year old to get baptized. We pretty much visited their family 4 times this week because they were the only ones who were ever home. 

This week I have been studying a lot about charity. Probably because I have been reading in Moroni and that's like his favorite topic! Oh yeah, I finished the Book of Mormon! I read through Alma in the MTC and read Helaman to the end this transfer (clearly I slowed down a bit). Anyways I really like learning about charity. I've also been reading the Book of Mormon Institute manual along with it, and it's helped me learn and think about the Book of Mormon a little deeper. It talks about how charity requires us to forgive unconditionally and to assume the best of people. Charity is Christ like love. I decided I wanted to work on having more charity for everyone around me. Tomorrow I am going to start the Book of Mormon again and mark all of the references to charity.

Also apparently it was a really good thing that I took a marriage and family prep class this past semester. I don't think I've ever had a class that has helped me so much. It's so funny because we will be in lessons or talking to someone and they will bring up topics about the family proclamation and stuff about families.  It's helped me answer a lot of people’s concerns and questions. There was this one returning member in our ward who has been struggling a lot with something, and she brought up a topic about temples and I was able to help her understand something that has been bothering her for a while. It was so cool to see her countenance turn to relief right before our eyes. I am just so grateful for the guidance and knowledge I have been able to receive in this, because I am able to see how it helps others.

Also last night we went to go visit the Quijada family which is 2 families each consisting of 7 children.  It's a bit crazy, but we love it and go every Sunday. This week we sat down and listened to the grandpa talk for a long time. He only speaks Spanish and feels very alone because most of the grandchildren barely know any Spanish and everyone just speaks English all the time. He told us about how he can't really understand the Book of Mormon ever since the death of his wife, but that he knows that it is true. He also told us about his conversion story and I understood a lot of what he was saying. When the English Elders who visit them got there I was even able to translate for one of them and the grandpa so that was good, because half the time I feel like I have no clue what they are saying! He's a really funny person, and I was so grateful for the opportunity to talk with him last night and help him feel a little less lonely. I guess that's part of the job of being a missionary, ministering to those who need it, and being instruments in Christ's hands.

This week is transfers week. It's a bit sad because Elder Oviedo is being transferred to New Mexico, but I guess its ok.  He has been here for the past 6 months and probably needs a change in scenery. Luckily Hermana Budge and I will still be together since she's still training me!

Anyways I love you a lot! I hope you have a really great week!!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne

It's raining blessings!

Arizona is great! I really love it here! There are a lot of storms right now. We ended up getting stuck at one of our investigators houses, because the street was a river and it was raining super hard for about an hour! There have also been a lot of lightning storms lately. I love how people think it won't rain in Tucson.  Haha that's funny! It rains a lot and hard.

This week has been really neat! We've had a lot of blessings come our way. I don’t have as many stories to write about this week so this will probably be a little shorter than usual, but lots of blessings! Monday was great! It's crazy how weeks just fly by here. I seriously can't believe it is already P-day, but anyways Monday we went and played sports (sat around) after emails, and then we all went to go get Jamba Juice because we get half off here. Then the elders wanted pizza and out of nowhere Elder Gonzalez said, ok let’s go! I'll pay! He paid for us, and the 2 other elders to go get pizza! So that was fun! Then we went to FHE with this inactive family in our ward and the family I mentioned last week who have both the YW president and YM president and Relief Society president in it. It was a really good lesson! We talked about the talk, Forget Me Not by President Uchtdorf.  I love it and really suggest reading it! 

Tuesday we went with the elders and helped paint another one of the inactives in our ward’s house. It was fun! The blessings started coming that day. While we were painting, the Gospel Principles teacher in our ward called us and gave us a referral.  That was super exciting! We went by their house later that day and tried to visit, but only her son and daughter were home so we decided to try again Wednesday. Then, we went to Mutual to try and get to know the young women better. We also went to go talk to the Branch President about what we could do for the branch. The funny thing is beforehand we got this vibe that the Branch president didn't like us, but ever since we asked him if we could meet with him and since meeting with him, he was been really friendly to us. That's a blessing! Then one of the counselors in the bishopric came up to us and asked us if we would go with him on Saturday to visit one of his students who used to be an investigator.  The funny thing is all of the actives that have been giving us referrals are the ones we haven't been visiting. We've been trying really hard to go visit other members of the ward especially actives so we can get to know the branch better.  The ones we haven't really visited are all of a sudden super friendly to us too! It's kinda crazy!

Wednesday we stopped by the referrals house and she told us to come by later, because she was making cheesecake and so we set up an appointment with her for 7. Then we went and picked up dinner from the Lopez family who had left it at the Branch Presidents wife's house because they weren't going to be home.  We went and took it to the Elders. I got to try Pasole which is basically spine meat soup. It actually tasted really good! Then we rushed over to go meet our new investigator.  She is really sweet and she seems pretty interested. We only got to meet with her for 10 minutes though.  In that time, we learned she has 6 children and we got to meet 3 of them! We are really excited, and although we didn't teach a lesson the Spirit was definitely there! That night, this cousin of one of the less actives we have been trying to get in contact with texted us and asked us to come over.  This was exciting, because we have been praying for that family. We set up an appointment with her for the next day.

Thursday, we had zone conference which was really neat. I learned a lot of new stuff about teaching with the Book of Mormon and having an effective personal study. It was really helpful. Then we tried to go visit the cousin of that one family, but realized we didn't have her address and her phone broke so we couldn't reach her and no one else had her information.  Finally we found it in her progress record, and we were about 2 hours late to visit her.  She was really disappointed that we were different missionaries than before, but she invited us to come back the next day. That night we went over to one of my favorite families houses and had dinner with the Elders in our area.

Friday we studied a lot.   I was getting super anxious to go out, so it was such a blessing to finally get out of the apartment.   We went to go visit the cousin who we found out isn't a member and it was really interesting.... she opened up really fast to us, but she didn't seem especially interested in the gospel. At the end of our visit, she asked us if we could feel the evil spirits in her house and both me and Hermana Budge are like no? She kept going off about how her 2 year old daughter sometimes talks to them. We were thinking she's two. She is probably talking to herself. Anyways she asked us to bless her house. Hermana Budge didn't want to do it, so I ended up praying for her house. That was kind of a funny experience.

Then we went to the Santa Cruzes for dinner. Hermana Santa Cruz had bought me a really cute blue, black, and gray skirt from Costco, so I was pretty excited about that. While we were there, we got to burn Hermana Budge's skirt to mark a year of her being on her mission.  I played frisbee with their dog the whole time. Then we hung back to talk to Hermana Santa Cruz when the Elders left. When we finally left, we were driving down the street and saw the elders parked off to the side and turns out they had been waiting for us and wanted us to come with them, so they could visit some of the single mothers in our branch. So we went to go visit an inactive lady who just moved here who had known Elder Gonzalez from when he was serving in the branch she had just moved in. We were talking to her when her sister showed up, and the Elders ended up teaching her a lesson and got her information for the Hermanas who are over her area.  Now both her sisters are taking the discussions! We also got to visit with a few other families. We were also fasting that day to get more referrals and to be able to start teaching this 9 yr old that I mentioned in previous letters.

Saturday we did weekly planning and tried to visit the student of one of the councilors in the bishopric, but his wife wasn't home so we will try again Wednesday. Then the hermano we were with asked us if we would go visit his family who is part member and his wife who he is separated from. So we got 1 more referral!

Sunday turned out even better! Originally we didn't have dinner plans for that night, but when president figured this out he called up his Mom and asked her to feed us.  We had a really great dinner with them. I got to try menudo (cow stomach soup) which isn't too bad if you just swallow the meet whole and don't chew haha. We had a really great lesson with them. I love their family.  They have the cutest 2 year old daughter, and she likes to give me high-fives all the time. Then at church we got one more referral from the same hermana who gave us one earlier this week, so we are going to go with her to visit her tonight. She also asked us what days she could go with us to teach people, and so we discussed all of the people who need to be visited in the branch and planned pretty much a whole day to go and visit them with her! Also this week we have dinners every single day!

Anyways something that really hit me this week is happiness is all about perspective. We have to choose to be happy no matter what happens. I've realized that I have never really had a bad day on my mission, because I just choose every day to be happy no matter what happens.  My companion and I try to always have fun while we work, and not worry too much if things don't go how we want it to.  It's blessed us so much!

Oh also I love this talk by Neal A Maxwelll from the Priesthood session in 1986. It talks a little about how Jesus didn't just start out knowing everything perfectly and how he learned step by step, just like we need to. Perfection takes work and none of us need to be perfect right now, we just need to work on it. He had to learn how to succor His people like it says in Alma 7:12. We can learn to be like him step by step. I am so grateful for the Gospel. It just make so much sense. I wish that all people could just realize that! Anyways love you!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne

Cow's brain and blessings!

So cool experience this week! For one, we had companion exchanges for the first time this week. Our sister training leader went with Hermana Budge to our area, and I went with her companion and Hermana Budge's old comp to their area. That was cool!

Beforehand, we had a district meeting and had gone back to our apartment to eat lunch. I was trying to figure out what we could do with the 45 minutes we had between lunch and the exchange.  I just had a feeling we needed to go visit Karlena one of the inactives in our branch.  I decided that was silly, because we wanted to go when her daughters were home from school.  We wanted to talk to her 9 year old daughter about if she got permission to be baptized from her dad who isn't a member. I just kind of brushed it off, but then 5 minutes later Hermana Budge is like do you want to go visit Karlena.  Of course I said, yeah! I just was thinking about her.

We drove over and right when we were walking up to their door, Karlena and all 3 of her daughters were getting home from school!  They invited us in and we met their grandma who is staying with them right now.  We taught them about the restoration. It was a little wild because all 3 little girls are under 10, but the important thing is that the one who is 9 got what she needed out of it and actually knew quite a lot considering they are an less active family. It was really cool to see how God guided us there at such the right time. 

Afterwards, we got to do exchanges. They were super fun! We got to go knocking for a bit and give out some cards. Then we went and tried visiting a less active family that apparently hadn't let the sisters in for a long time. For some reason, they just let us right in today and we got to teach them. We also got the contact information for the girl who is in young women's so that they can meet up with her again next week.  I am seeing the blessings that come from having faith that God will guide us to where we need to go and help us find those we need to find.

Another blessing from this week came in an unexpected way. Last Sunday, the wife of one of our recent converts came to church because her son had just gotten baptized.  For some reason I just could not stop thinking about teaching her, but I didn't know much about her or how to go about it. Then Tuesday night, we were way down south visiting with another recent convert and we thought we had a meeting at 8.  Rather than staying down there to visit all the other people we wanted to, we drove up for our meeting only to find out that it was cancelled. I was a little mad because the elders were supposed to tell us earlier and hadn't.   However, while we were there we ran into that recent convert, and he asked us if we had a lot of investigators and we told him we were really struggling with finding people to teach. Then he said I have someone you could teach, and he told us about his wife and how she was really inactive and had been for a while, but that she had started coming to church. He asked us if we could come in teach her! So although I was upset with the elders, it ended up being a blessing and now we are going to try and teach her!

On Thursday night we went to dinner at a family’s house.  They wouldn't tell me what kind of tacos we were eating, and so I just ate it. Turns out it was cow brain.  It actually tasted pretty good haha.

We have also been blessed because some lady last Sunday ran in during Relief Society and told everyone that the missionaries are starving. All of a sudden all of the members are telling us to just come over if we don't have meals! On Saturday 3 different families invited us over for dinner! We had already planned to eat with one of them though, so we went there.

It was a family in our branch who is in love with Hermana Budge. They have a son who is on a mission right now in the Dominican Republic.  He gets back next month, and they kept asking Hermana Budge how much longer she'll be in the area, and when she goes home.  They fed us salmon, asparagus, ravioli, bread, fruit, and lots of other great stuff! I ate a lot! When we left, they gave us 2 huge paper grocery bags full of food from Costco, plus some sandwich's, breakfast food, and a bag of kettle corn the size of my pillow! They also bought Hermana Budge a skirt and are getting me one today, because they didn't know what size to get me.  The lady thought they were super cute so she wanted to get them for us!

This week all of the missionaries in our branch are going over there again for dinner! She's going to teach me how to make tortillas and tamales.  They had been asking me about how much Mexican food I have had before my mission, and I told them a lot because my mom loves Mexican food.  They asked me if I have had chile rellenos, and I told him I had. The husband is like wow you really have been exposed haha.  They're a really great family, and they speak English!

It is like 113 degrees here so it's a little bit hot, but we are surviving! We go to the temple every 4 months, so we go next month! I am super excited! Also, we see our president every month or so.  I had an interview with him about 2 weeks ago.  It looks like me and Hermana Budge are going to start working on personal progress with all of the young women! Yay!  I hope you are all doing well! I love you!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne

Flies and other pests

Church is great!  We are in a branch! I think they only have Spanish branches here. Ours is supposed to be the largest in Tucson, but there are so many inactives. It's a lot different than being in a ward,  but at least what is taught is all the same.  Yesterday we walked into Relief Society late, because we had been helping the Elders.  All the sisters were in a circle wearing bonnets, aprons, and holding mops, bread, cookies, flowers, lettuce, tomatoes and other various things. I was so confused.  It doesn't help that I don't totally understand everything they say, so I was trying not to laugh about how funny it looked.   Anyways I love our branch.

This week has been absolutely amazing! At the beginning of it I was getting a bit discouraged by the fact we only have one current investigator, and she wasn't even there when we went to visit her on Thursday. However after a lot of praying and talking to my comp, we realized that our purpose this transfer isn't to focus on bringing new members to the church.  Instead we decided to focus on reactivating all of the inactives in our ward. The silly thing is that this didn't hit us until we just happened to visit a member.  She started listing off all of the Relief Society sisters who were not coming. We realized we haven't even heard of some of them. Here we are praying to get referrals and to bring more people into the gospel when our ward isn't even put together enough to fellowship new members.  If we don't even know all the members how are we supposed to expect them to give us the names of their friends and trust us? Since our discovery, we have experienced a lot more success!

Saturday night we got a text from some of the sisters in a different area telling us about a new family who moved from their ward to ours. We had the opportunity to visit them last night. Some of the members here are just absolutely incredible! They go through so much, yet through it all they rely on the gospel. The lady we visited last night had 6 children and many of them had various challenges that I can't even imagine dealing with. It was such a blessing to go visit her and share with her Alma 37:36-37.  As we pray we can receive help and comfort from God, because he hears us and Loves us.

We also went knocking for the first time this week! It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, and we talked to some lady for an hour.  Her husband was a minister so it didn't go far.  Also did I tell you about the first lesson I ever went into? We walk into Hermana Victoria's house and there were flies.  She ran and got out her fly swatter and the fly kept landing on her bottom, so she gave it to Hermana Budge and told her to hit it.  Hermana Budge is like is it ok to hit a member with a fly swatter? Finally it landed on her arm and she hit it hahaha.

Yesterday morning we had the opportunity to visit a sister in our ward who was referred to us from the same sister who helped us realize how important it is for us to reach out to those who are inactive. It was probably the most amazing experience I have had since I became a missionary. We had been planning on sharing a quick lesson using the “Mountains to Climb” Mormon message and to talk about how Christ gives us comfort.   I had been trying to find the perfect talk or quote to go along with it, but I was having absolutely no luck. Then this morning, I opened up to this conference talk I had seen earlier this week.  I didn't feel like it related in the way I wanted it to, but for some reason this time my eyes fell on a paragraph about healing and overcoming.  It stuck with me and although I still didn't think it fit well with our lesson, I felt that's what we needed to share. When we got to this Hermana’s house we were let in by her husband.  We had no idea that she was struggling which really surprised her husband. But then we learned that she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and that she was going to be starting chemo this week. Immediately I realized that what the spirit had told me to share would be perfect for her. It was also really neat, because I was able to understand what her and her family were going through pretty well.  I was able to talk to her about dad.  After we shared the video with her, I read my quote and just bore my testimony to her that as she relied on Christ and made the gospel the center of her life she would be able to receive comfort, because he has already experienced her pains. I am not exactly sure what I said after or in the closing prayer, but the spirit was really strong.  I felt so much love for her and her family. At church I was just amazed by all the support the members gave to her husband and how everyone prayed in her behalf, even the new members who didn't know her. 

We didn't have many dinners this week, so we are living off of soup and Mac n cheese. One night we stopped by a water store that one of the recent converts in our ward owns.  They gave us free snow cones with ice cream in them, and I spilled all over myself. Then some Elders from the English ward came in and made fun of the fact that I had red stains all over my skirt. That was our dinner that night. 

We've also done a lot of service this week. We worked at the farmer’s market on Thursday.  Then Friday we got to go clean an elementary school.  There were lots of cockroaches and other gross bugs and mice. Other than that, it was fun!

My address is 

La Lomita Apt # 1151

2080 W Speedway Blvd.

Tucson, AZ 85745-2168

The apartment is gross.  The area isn't all too bad, but not amazing!

You can send stuff here, but when it gets closer to transfers it may be better to send them to the mission home.

Love,

Hermana BURGOYNE 

Oh yeah, we went on a 7 mile hike today.  It was fun! I just wish that I had brought more water and that it was a bit longer. It was sorta disappointing though, because the waterfall at the end was a little stream.  Oh well!  It was a good work out and I got to know people in my zone a bit better!