Temple groundbreaking and transfers

I am doing really great!! Transfers were good! I am actually really happy about it. My new companion is awesome and really motivated to work. We have been finding a lot of new people to start teaching and it's just been really awesome.

On Tuesday, we got up and went to the transfer site to change companions. Sister Passey gave a really great talk on how being obedient allows us to be worthy of the Spirit.   After the meeting, I went on splits for a little while and then we went to the transfer site, and I met Hermana Flake and we were on our way. It was super fun!  We went to go visit one of the less active ladies in our branch who we had been inviting to fast to help her husband find a new job. It was super awesome because we got there, and I asked her if she was able to fast. She said yes and then went off on a story about how almost immediately after she had fasted for that her husband was able to find work! It was such an amazing miracle! Then we had dinner with our Branch President’s wife which was good like always.

Wednesday we had Zone meeting and did some training on keeping the Sabbath day holy and how to teach people about that. It was really great because our Zone Leaders have been trying to get us to speak in Spanish during all of our meetings.  We haven't been so good at it, but all of us were trying for the most part and I was able to answer a lot of questions in Spanish. It was really funny because I am pretty sure Elder Gonzalez and Elder Stidham didn't think I could say anything in Spanish. Usually, I had tried to avoid speaking it in front of them, so when I would answer questions they would get super excited when I said full sentences in Spanish. 

Then we got a lot of referrals for the English elders that night from knocking a trailer park. There was this one really awesome lady who wasn't at all interested in us beforehand, but we asked her if we could pray for her and she said of course and then afterwards she asked us a bunch about the Book of Mormon.  We were able to have a long discussion about it.   She said I wouldn't normally let strangers pray for me, but you two have really good spirits and I can feel that. It was a really cool experience. We set up an appointment for the elders to come and give her a priesthood blessing the next day. We also met this other teenage boy.  It was a really neat experience because you could tell he had been struggling with a lot, and we were able to bare testimony of the Atonement and we could see his faith in Christ increasing as we were speaking to him. It was awesome.  On the way out of that trailer park, we saw this boy sitting on the side of the road, and I felt prompted that we needed to talk to him.  We turned around and we talked to him about the Book of Mormon, and he told us how he had some cousins that had investigated and joined the church and how much they loved it.  He was super interested so we set up an appointment to see him the next day, but he lived in a different area so we had to refer him to some other Spanish elders in our Zone! But that's ok because at least God is trusting us enough to allow us the opportunity to plant seeds in people!

Then Thursday was awesome too. We did a little bit of knocking. We met some really interesting people of different faiths. There was one boy who just radiated light that we talked to. He was Muslim.  Just meeting someone with so much light in him makes me wish he could have the fullness of the Gospel in his life too. We also were able to meet with Ashley and her little brother (Ashley is the one with the baptism date for next month)

Saturday was the ground breaking for the temple, so we went to watch that at the stake center. It was really awesome because President Uchtdorf was there for it along with 2 members of the 70. They gave really good talks about how important it is for us to remember that our bodies are temples and to have a ground breaking for our hearts, to soften them and to change for the better. It was really great!

Yesterday was probably one of my favorite days, because we were finally able to get Ashley and her family to come to church because it was the primary program. Then our other investigator Naomi came with her dad who we are working on teaching as well!  It was really awesome and an answer to our prayers.

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An update on the 18 year old boy. When we contacted him, Hermana Budge wanted to give him to the English elders because he spoke English.  I had a feeling that we needed to hold on to his record and try him again, so I just didn't send the information. Then yesterday we went to go find him, but the address he gave us was wrong or we weren't listening right and turns out he doesn't even live in that apartment complex.  He hangs out around there a lot, so we knocked on the door and the people told us he doesn't live here, but pointed us to his aunt’s apartment where he goes sometimes. She answered the door and wasn't very happy to talk to us. She kept telling us she was Catholic and so was he so they weren't interested. Then Hermana Flake offered to pray for them and the aunt’s heart started to soften, so we said that we could leave our number for him so we gave her one of our Jesus cards with our number on the back.  The Hispanic Catholics love pictures of Jesus, so she thought it was the prettiest thing in the world.  We left 2 other ones just for her and she asked us which church we were from.  We explained about how we are LDS and she said she never heard of it, but she recognized Mormons and so I explained to her what the Book of Mormon was and you could see her countenance change. We were able to leave her with 2 Book of Mormons one is English that she was going to give her nephew and one is Spanish for her.

Anyways that's about it for this week.

Thanks for sending the pictures at the Fort Collins temple.  It looks gorgeous!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne

A lesson in Repentance!

This week has been good.  Ashley, the 13 year old girl is still planning on getting baptized, but we may have to stop just teaching her and try to start teaching the whole family. Her mom won't give them rides to church which is rough, so we figure we need to reactivate her and then maybe we will be able to get Ashley baptized! Also, we will hopefully have another couple of dates by the end of this week! The 9 year old girl (Naomi)  we are teaching is progressing really well, and her dad who isn't a member is really warming up to us a lot since we found out he was trying to get her to get baptized Catholic, and we taught her a lesson on Priesthood authority. Today we are planning on having a family home evening with their whole family, so we will see what happens. Our goal is to get the father and maybe even the grandparents interested too, so we will see how that goes.  They've all investigated at one point or another because the uncle and the girl’s mom are both members. They all live in the same house. We also have another investigator named Patricia.  She is really sweet and half her family is LDS. Apparently her husband is too, but inactive and we didn't even know he was a member. We invited her to be baptized 2 weeks ago, and she is praying about it right now, so hopefully we will have a date with her by the end of the week!

Other news! We have transfers this week!! We got calls on Saturday morning while at service. Hermana Budge is going to New Mexico to serve with a Hermana from El Salvador.  My new companion is going to be Hermana Flake. I've heard she is really fun and bubbly.  She's a sister training leader, so I guess that means that we will be going on a lot of exchanges, but that should be fun! I will get to know a lot of people! I am super excited though!

We were super close to hitting standards this week, which is good! Also we had some really fun lessons with Naomi and her little sisters. This week the elders went with their uncle to go through the temple for the first time, so they left their car at their house to drive up all together.  Whenever missionaries happen upon another companionships car you obviously have to leave sticky notes or something all over it. However we didn't have any, so we asked the little girls if they did and they decided that we should probably just draw all over it with expo marker since it's a white truck. So they had a lot of fun with that, and we turned it into a great object lesson on repentance haha :).

Also the other day we were trying to drop by one of our former investigators, and when we were walking up the stairs to her apartment I saw this 18 year old guy sitting on the other stairs.  He was looking over at us, and I just had this feeling that we needed to go talk to him, but I was kinda scared.  However just as I was about to go up the stairs he called over to us and asked us to share with him what was in our "Bible."  We walked over to him and he puts his cigarette out and turns off his music then shakes both of our hands and asks to see one of our Book of Mormons.  He spoke English, and the ones we carry are in Spanish so we told him we can go get an English one for you.  He took one of them and just started reading the introduction. We were trying to explain to him what it was, but I was really surprised that he seemed pretty content to just read.  Once he was done, he was like that's nice thanks for letting me look at it.  Then he shook both of our hands again and said God bless you. We managed to ask him if he wanted us to send some missionaries over with an English Book of Mormon.  He agreed and showed us where he lived. It was really strange, because it's not often people ask to hear your message here. But definitely a blessing!

Also I was reading in 2 Nephi 33 this week and I love verse 10 and how it tells us 3 times to believe in Christ and how if we don't believe in the Book of Mormon to believe in Christ.  If we believe in Him we will know it is true, because it testifies of Christ and teaches us to do good. I love that. It's so silly to me that people don't want to accept the Book of Mormon because they think it is "of the devil". I mean all it teaches is good and it teaches you to believe in Christ. There is a really good institute talk that explains 10 reasons why to believe Joseph Smith was a prophet and one of the reasons is why in the world if the Book of Mormon was evil and that Joseph Smith just made it up would Satan tell him to testify of Jesus Christ and encourage people to believe in Him. That would literally make no sense. I just wish all people would give it a try, because if they just read it with real intent they would know that it's true.

I love you all a lot! I hope you have a good week! Thanks for everything!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne

New Investigators!

Conference was great!  Some of my favorite talks were Elder Holland’s and President Eyring’s.

This week has been pretty good! We didn't have many lessons and we were driving back and forth a lot, but it was a good week! We managed to contact a lot of former investigators this week and set up appointments with them for this week! Only one of the people we got in contact with told us she wasn't interested so that was good! Also we have a goal for each companionship in our zone to get 3 new investigators each week and we've been trying, but haven't had much success until this week! We were lucky and tried a referral last Monday from a member of the bishopric in our branch.  We ended up teaching a lesson to them and setting up an appointment for this week! So just the first day of the week we got 2 new investigators!

Then last night we had dinner up in Marana, which is like 40 minutes away from us and only the elders go up there, but we tried one of our formers and she let us right in and we got to teach her and set up another appointment for next Thursday! I feel like we've been greatly blessed for our increased obedience and diligence!

We also went on exchanges again this past week. It was good. I was with the STL for our Zone and since she had been in our area before, we visited some of her recent converts and less actives she had worked with before. It was really good because we were able to figure out the needs of some of the people Hermana Budge and I were struggling with. We also had a lot of success. I felt like I grew a lot from that day! Also one of the ladies we usually teach in English even complimented me on how well my Spanish was getting. I think I finally realized I need to stop worrying about it and just kind of go for it, and usually it comes out better than what I expected! It was a really great day! I felt like we helped a lot of people. We saw a lot of miracles with some of the less actives and I was even able to contact one of the neighbors of one of our investigators who is always outside working on something, but I have been afraid to talk to!!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne