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!
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