They came to church!

We actually have had some success this week! We went to visit our one progressing investigator this week the little 9 year old girl. She's doing great and finally had her prayers answered about the Book of Mormon being true! So that's super exciting! We went over 4 times this week to see her and her family. Last week her step mom who is inactive came to church. This week we went over on Saturday to see if they'd come, and we accidentally interrupted their parents surprising them with new bike.  Luckily, they were happy we were there. We managed to get the whole family to commit to going to church before they got too distracted. 

We also got to visit a lady who has been too busy to see us, but finally she let us in on Tuesday! Apparently she has been inactive for 7 years and has a really strong testimony but work has been keeping her away. That's a big struggle here especially since lots of the people don't have green cards and take whatever work they can get. Anyways she ended up being super friendly and invited us over again on Thursday, so we got to see her twice!

I told Sister Budge that I really felt like we needed to try to visit the Relief Society president, because we hadn't yet.  We didn't know her trailer number, but Sister Budge guessed and it turned out right! Not just that but turns out she had been hoping we'd come by, so she could give us a list of all the less actives who need visiting teachers. It was such a cool experience. God was definitely guiding us in that moment.

This week we also went over to see one of the recent converts who has been inactive. We told her how no one had been in gospel principles 2 weeks ago.  She felt bad and decided to go. She also asked to feed us dinner. She runs a 24 hour day care at her house so we were kinda surprised because it's sometimes wild there. But she invited us over, dinner ended up being at 2 in the afternoon which was strange for us, but it was really good! We were able to share a lesson and the video, “He Lives.”  We finished by testifying of the Book of Mormon and inviting them to church on Sunday. It was a really neat experience. 

We also went to go visit a less active who moved in a month ago and we invited her to come to church. It was amazing because she told us that she felt like her family really needed to go back to church right now, so she would try. She's a really awesome lady who has gone through so much and so it was great hearing her wanting to put her faith in action.

Then the very best part of the week was when we went to church, and all of the people we had invited and committed to coming to church showed up! Even the other lady who works at the day care that we don't really know came! It was a miracle because we were so used to them saying they'd come but not actually come! It was a great blessing! We ended up having 3 less active ladies and their children and two nonmembers not counting the little girl who is our investigator there! It was awesome!

Anyways this week I have been reading a lot of scriptures on having peace through trials. I love section 122 of D&C. We actually shared this with one of our less actives, and it really helped her. I just love it because no matter what happens, it's all for our good!

I also love the part in 1 Nephi where Lamen and Lemuel are complaining because they don't understand their father’s vision, and Nephi is just like, well did you ask God? And they say no, and he goes off about how we can't receive knowledge from God, if we don't ask him! If we do ask, he will answer! It kinda goes along with D & C 6: 23-24, 36-37 about how when we do get an answer from God we need to stop doubting and trust it. He is the surest foundation we have, so obviously any answer from Him is a guarantee! We need to trust Him! "Doubt not, fear not."

Sounds like you have been having a really awesome week! Thanks for all of the support! I hope you have a good week!

Love,

Hermana Burgoyne

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