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