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 

Moving!

This week we have transfers! I am kind of freaking out right now! I'm going to be pink washing Deming, New Mexico with Sister Hoffman and going STL for my last transfer which is pretty much the last thing I expected! They are taking out a set of elders and putting the two of us in, and neither of us have served there before so it's definitely going to be an adventure! I'm excited and super nervous! It'll be good, because it'll help me work hard until the end! Sister Delgado is going to be training a new missionary! She's freaking out too haha.

This week was awesome! We had tons of lessons and tons of miracles! Tuesday I got to go on exchanges with Sister Hernandez up to Los Reales! I was so happy! I got to go have dinner with the Sardinas who are one of my favorite families up there! They are such a great family! Then later that night I got to go see Liz! I've missed her a lot. She seems to be doing really awesome and progressing really well. It's amazing to me to see how much she has changed these last few months, and all because she has been applying the teachings of the gospel in her life!

While I was gone Sister Delgado and Sister Kerr got to visit with lots of our investigators and even were able to set a baptism date with Isabella's cousin, Ashley, and change out baptism date with Juan Limón!

Most of this week we have spent finding new people to teach, and we've found lots of people who seem pretty interested so that's good!

On Friday we had the trunk or treat which was fun! There were lots of games and lots of little kids. We took pictures with everyone!

Saturday we had two lessons in the morning and both of them went pretty well. Then on our way home from them we got a call from President Passey telling us about transfer news, and after that I couldn't focus for the rest of the day! That night we went to a huge Disney themed birthday party for a one year old boy in our Ward. I love the birthday parties here! We ended up leaving with Minnie mouse ears and a bunch of desserts! Then later that night we tried some other people, but just ended up planning because we were so stressed!

Sunday was a bit bitter sweet, because I had to go and say good bye to lots of people here that I love. Juan Limón is doing really great right now. Earlier this week we found out he was struggling a bit with some of the commandments, but we talked to him and taught him and now he is working on it! He has lots of faith, and I'm so excited for him to get baptized at the end of this month! The whole time we were there him and his wife kept complaining about how I'm leaving, and they told me that I need to come back to stay with them the night before I go haha. I couldn't make any promises, but I told them I will try to be at their sealing in the temple next November!

We were also able to go visit with Rena, and she seems to be doing well. We stopped visiting her for a month to see if it would help her have the desire to learn more, and it worked! Turns out she has been reading and feels like it's helping her a lot! Earlier in the day our Relief Society president who is good friends with her told us that Rena had been talking to another member of our Ward who was really sick, and so she called her knowing she was the Relief Society president to let her know that the other sister was sick. We were all laughing because she already acts like a member of the ward.

 

Yesterday, the Spanish wards bishop’s son gave his homecoming talk, and he shared a scripture that I've maybe shared with you before, but it was a good reminder for me. It's in 2 Nephi 4:19-21, 28

"19 And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.

20 My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep.

21 He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh.

28 Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul."

I feel like my entire mission I've really related to this scripture because I feel like even though as a missionary I'm always trying to be my best, I always feel like I'm not doing good enough. But I know that God is always there to help me, and that he doesn't expect more out of me than my best. Then I love how it continues in verse 28 to say how the only reason we feel down when we are doing our best is because Satan is trying to make us feel bad and forget that God loves us no matter how imperfect we are. We just need to shake that off and keep going and trust that because of the sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ. I'm so grateful for all the peace that that knowledge brings me in my life and that I can share that with others! I love you lots!

 

Con amor,

Hermana Burgoyne