Week 63 Knowing Backwards and Forwards!

So this week has rocked. First off. I made one of the best life decisions ever. Not only did I buy 6 pairs of earrings for 50c (total. As in 50 cents for 6 pairs of earrings) BUT I also bought a breadmaker. We went thriftstore shopping and I didn't find anything I liked so we were browsing the electronics section and here's the thing... For... 3 transfers or so I've wanted to go to a thrift store and see if there's a breadmaker. And well. There it was. Just sitting there. With a cute little green pricetag that said $9.95. So, I bought it. And guess what? Turns out it's the 1st breadmaker in America. It's SO OLD. 

(We call him R2-D2, or the robot slave. He's about as big as R2-D2...) 

But guess what else? It didn't have an instructions manual. Or recipes. Just the machine. And so I had no idea how to use it or what to put in. So Sister Affleck spent an hour on youtube watching videos about how to use it and took careful notes and gave them to me, and I tried it. And guess what? IT STILL WORKS AND I LOVE IT. I just put in the ingredients and 3 1/2 hours later, voila, a loaf of bread is sitting in our kitchen. It's probably the best idea ever. :) So...the first loaf was bad. But then we visited a member and shse has a breadmaker that she hasn't even opened yet so I asked if I could see it (hoping for an instructions manual/recipes) and guess what? The instructions manual/recipe book was still there! :D So she let me borrow it to get the recipes I need. So now I've successfully made 4 loaves of bread. And now our apartment smells much better. It just smells like fresh bread! ^_^ Wooo!

Last Tuesday night we had that lesson with X, the cute Japanese lady that speaks Spanish. She made us this 3 course dinner! Broccoli soup, followed by asparagus and milanesas (a classic Mexican dish which is basically fried steak) and fried rice, followed by pineapple pie. Definitely the weirdest combination of foods ever but it was all delicious! She loved hearing us sing and had us sing 3 songs, and then called her daughter, lied to her by saying she couldn't understand what we were saying so she should hurry up and come help translate. She giggled when she hung up the phone, and said she just wanted her daughter to get here already. So then when her daughter showed up, she said, "Oh, you missed them singing! It was beautiful!" and then paused, and said, "Oh! Could you just sing one more for her?" ... hahahah. She really really really likes Hermana Amendola's singing. Like. A Lot.

Afterwards we went to the mission home and picked up two new sisters! There are 3 new English battalion sisters, and so 3 left and went full pros, including my baby, Hermana Bermudez! :( Good news is, she's in the same area! They just made it a full pros area! :D Which is what we were hoping for all along. :) The new sisters are doing well. :) We're so proud of them! ^_^

Transfer craziness happened, plans got changed a lot, and it all came out alright in the end. One miracle we saw was when we went to visit an older lady in our branch, Hermana M. She told us about some people that used to be in her ward that served at the Battalion, the Ricks from Arizona. We had no idea who she was talking about, but let it go and feigned excitement. Fast forward 45 minutes. We're in the Battalion, and this couple comes off a tour and starts talking with us. They mention that they used to serve here at the Battalion. They say they're from Mesa. And yes, it turns out they are the Ricks, and yes, they remember Hermana M. How crazy is that??!?!

Friday we had district meeting. Our new District Leader, Elder H, was really nervous. In the end he had us teach the restoration backwards. We weren't sure why, but we tried it a few times. It was pretty cool. I think the point was that any way you do it, Christ is in the center of everything. Anyway. That night, in a lesson, we started talking about the Holy Ghost, and how it can teach you the truth of all things as we pray to know... and so I thought, hey, why not? And so we taught them the restoration backwards. And it was super sweet. :) (They had been taught it before so it was a review anyway.) Super cool miracle. :)

Well, we're excited for more miracles this week. Love you! ^_^

--Hermana Harris

Week 62 Good byes are getting harder!

So... guess what? We had transfer calls this morning and we're staying together, Sis Amendola and I! :D YEAH WOOHOO AWWWWW YEAHHH!!! :D Super excited. :) And in sad news Sister Bermudez is going full pros. That is not sad that she is going full pros, but the timing.... she will not get back to the Battalion until the day after I go home. :( My baby is going full pros! (The sister I trained is going to be teaching the full time for the next few transfers) And my mom went home today. ( The Sister missionary who trained her) :( Sister Salinas is en route to Mexico. :( These goodbyes get harder and harder. :(

Farewell for the leaving sisters. :( Sis Salinas

 The cops from last week. :O

 Funny story. So. Turns out sister Amendola and I don't know our apartment number. Hahaha! Here's the story. The Afflecks are leaving super soon, and this one time I made a blueberry pie and Elder Affleck LOVED it and told me if I ever wanted to, he'd buy all the ingredients and I'd make enough pie for all the Battalion sisters. Well, I never took them up on that offer but I wanted to make them a pie, so I got the stuffs together and made it. THey actually live in our area that we serve in, so we were going to bring it to them but we forgot it at home! So we called Sister Affleck and she said her husband was still in Old Town, so he could stop by and get it. So we told her we live in apt 8, and the dessert was on the counter. So she tells her husband to get the spare keys, go into apartment 8, take the dessert off the counter, and bring it home. So he does just that. But uh. Turns out we are #11. So. He stole Sister Mulipola's lemon cake. We got it figured out eventually but there was a pretty awkward moment there... very funny. :)

 Our pan is too big for the oven so it went in sideways ........ and uh the cookies didn't stay very well. >_<

8010: Valentines Day fun. :) Heart attack!!

8017: Stopped by the Battalion for a second... we were doing studies and had our fuzzy socks and didn't want to take them off or put on other shoes so... well... hahaha. :)

This week we had exchanges! Sister Rex came with me to La Mesa, and we didn't get lost! She started her mission in La Mesa, and she's going home next transfer. So that was a long time ago. But we were able to visit some of the people that she used to teach and they're super excited for us to come back! :D So we're pretty excited. It's going to be good! :D

The fireside on Sunday was awesome! :D It went super well. :) On Valentines Day we got to heart attack a few doors. It was a blast. :) We also got to visit a member, P. She's my favorite. I want to adopt her. ^_^

We had a sweet lesson with X. She's this adorable Japanese lady who married a Mexican. She's the cutest lady ever. ^_^ LOVE HER.

Ok so the special missionary fireside on Tuesday was AWESOME. ^_^ Absolutely loved it. Learned a lot about how to do missionary work and what we can do better. :D Hooray for being better missionaries! :D The area is doing really well. We're adding more and talking to more people and conquering fears. :D Yay!!

Well, that's about it for now. Thank you for all your love and prayers. :)

--Hermana Harris

Week 61 Kindness is a wonderful thing!

We had MTEs again (Missionary Training Exchanges). I loved MTEs and I loved having Sister Contreras with us. She was our trainer! So she came along with us all day. :) She's such a powerhouse missionary. Anyway, I feel better about missionary work in general this week because I finally started talking more openly to people. I read a quote once that says, "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. (Of course, that also has to be in harmony with the gospel as well...). (And it's supposedly Mahatma Gandhi that said it!)  But anyway, I know I need to talk to everyone, but I just have a really hard time actually opening my mouth. So I just did it anyway and it was easy and even though people look at us funny and say weird things, it's okay, and I feel happy, because I know I'm doing what God wants me to do and what I have been called here to do. :) Yay!

So there's a fireside tonight. I'm definitely excited about the fireside tonight. Clayton Christiansen, the one that wrote The Power of Every Day Missionaries. They had us read the Boston Case Study thing, about Sister Fulcher (Idk if you know what that is) and apparently he's going to talk about it. The case study was pretty sweet, so I'm excited to see how we can apply it to our branch. :) Exciting stuff!

I forgot to say - the other day Sister Amendola and I sang in Sacrament Meeting together. And gave talks as well. Haha. I was pretty nervous but I didn't die, and the song came out fine as well. :) Sister Affleck, one of the senior couples, talked to me the other day, and asked me if I felt like I had used my talents as much as I had wanted to on my mission. I realized that I've been wanting to sing more but I haven't. So I want to put something together with Sister Wells.

So on our way to email, we pulled off the freeway to take our exit and in front of us the cops were pulling this guy over, and then... well... the police all hopped out and one of them held up his hand to us to tell us to stop and they all pulled out their guns and came up and got the guy out of the car and he had his hands up and they patted him down and had him get on the ground and they handcuffed him and then another police guy came in and it was crazy!! Then they finally let us go past. It was intense. :) But super cool. :)

haha. Last Tuesday was crazy. While Sister Amendola got her haircut I got to talk to this really nice gentleman named J.. We talked about him being an attorney and his life and where he's traveled and his family and religion and the Mormons he knows. It was a very cool discussion and he was super nice and said he'd come by the Battalion. :) Also. The other sisters we share a car with on p-day were shopping at Target, and bought over $200 of food/clothes... and these members ran up before they could swipe their cards and paid for them! Oh man. So when they told us about that, we said, haha you should take us out to lunch! They were all over that, so we tried to decide where, and came to the conclusion of Panda. So we got our food, and sat down. Then someone walked up to us and said, "You were too fast! I was going to pay for you. So here, next time's on me!" and handed us all a gift card. Oh man. Twice in a row! It was crazy. Well, then that night we met an former member. He looked just like the captain from Firefly. It made me sad to see how sad he was. He's studied a lot of history and has decided there's no way God exists. There are so many scriptures that talk about the wisdom of men and how people will harden their hearts against the light... It's sad to meet those people in real life.

Thursday we had a member come out with us. She's SO awesome. :) As we were coming back, she said something like, "I think that before this life, we agreed/accepted to come to the earth right now (as in, during the hastening of the work) to do missionary work!" I think she's right. :)

Like I said, we had MTEs on Friday. For lunch we stopped by Subway. The lady who made my sandwich told me her sister is a member. She was really nice to us. That night we were able to stop by and visit an investigator that Sister Contreras had taught when she was in La Mesa, and she was pretty open and grateful for the visit. She even cried a little. It might be her time! We're going to see her again tonight. :)

On Saturday this lady named K came to the Battalion. She was dressed in a black Victorian dress, with a black hat, her hair in one of those hair net things with pearls on it, and she had gloves and a box/bag thing (like, how they used to use boxes instead of purses?) and her dress had all these pins all over it. I asked where she was from, and I heard, "Mawilyn." I thought it sounded Asian. So I asked her where that was, and she said, "On the east coast." "What brings you to Old Town?" "The miwitawy." Oh. I get it. *forehead slap* Well, that was embarrassing. Not only do I look like a moron, I also probably just made her feel uncomfortable. From the beginning, though, I felt a kinship with her. Probably because she looked like Nichole Grey (Jenkins). Well, I started the tour and then they ushered a couple from Taiwan on as well. Then in the next room three other people were added in. It ended up being a very unique group. Haha. She was pretty cool though. Very kind and respectful and sweet. Like I said, I felt a kinship with her. I love it when that happens.

Preach My Gospel class went super well! We started by sharing miracles we had see that week, and then asked them to share their missionary experiences/miracles. It was so cool! They've had some sweet ones so far. :) So proud of them! The Elders set up an obstacle course and we did the object lesson from District Meeting in sweetwater where they had the missionaries lead someone through the course but they can only talk to them for 10 seconds at a time, and then the 'investigator' has to walk on their own until the missionaries come back. Then you do it again, only this time there's a member who can hold on to the investigator and talk to them and guide them the whole time. :) It's super awesome and they loved it. Then we discussed a little what we learned and what we can do to be missionaries and invited them to bring a friend to the Fireside on Sunday. Sister Amendola's going to sing in it. It's a song called What Love is This by Kari Jobi. It's pretty cool.

Well. It's been a good week. The members are awesome and it's cool to see how planning and all that really works. It's awesome to be an instrument, to say something and have them completely relate to it and see how the scripture really spoke to them. It's the best. :) I love being a missionary! :)

--Hermana Harris

Week 60 Finding! Serving! Loving!

This week we found someone! Well, we had tried to visit her before but she always told us she was busy. But this time she let us in and we talked to her. She's super awesome and it was probably one of my favorite Restoration lessons. Just a little short. But it's good. :) Anyway it was super cool. :)

The other day we had a surprise night in the area. We thought we had the morning in the area but turns out we had the night, but we ended up having half our lessons for the whole week all in that one night. It was crazy busy and we had a miracle! Remember how there was that person who said his sister was in the hospital? Well, the sad news is she passed on, but the good news is her sister was home when we went by, and she let us in, and we sang to her. And she cried. We taught a little about the Book of Mormon and shared favorite scriptures and she thanked us so much for coming. She said it was perfect timing and she was so grateful for the peace we brought to them when they really needed it. It was so cool! :D Anyway. :) Very cool.

We had a funny/embarrassing moment. Sunday night we teach a PMG class. Right before class, I called one of our investigators and set up an appointment for after the class. He sounded super excited. So after the class we asked some of the members to come with us to the lesson. When we got to our investigator's apartment, a note we had put on his door two days ago was still there, and he didn't answer when we knocked. That's weird. So.... we called him again, and he said he opened the gate, but there is no gate at his house... so we were super confused until the member who was with us said she recognized his voice, and that he's a member in a different ward. I have no idea how his number got saved in our phone under our investigator's name but there you go. So... yeah. Anyway. We apologized and explained that we can't visit him but we sent the Barrio 20 sisters to go see him. haha. Bummer...

Yesterday at the Battalion we had a SWEEET miracle. :) Several. One of which, we contacted this lady and it sounds like she's going to be golden! :) Super cool stuff! :D Then at the Battalion it was so awesome. So I took this tour with this gentleman (I forgot his name, we'll call him R) and his friend S. So R and S are work buddies, and R is a member, S is not. R took S to temple square and all that stuff, and last night he brought him to the Battalion. So we took him on tour. Right before I started the tour, I walked in and R was explaining to S that we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but that the term Mormons comes from the Book of Mormon. So I wasn't sure how much he knew or did not know about our church. Well, in outfitting we talk about the equipment the men received and what they brought with them. So we gave him is 1816 Flintlock musket and asked him if he would have felt ready to go off to war. He said no, and that he wouldn't be able to rely on his weapon. So we used that to segway into the scriptures, saying that the men knew they couldn't rely on their weapons, but they didn't have to. They were given a promise from their prophet that if they were true and faithful they wouldn't have to fight! So they brought with them their scriptures, their Book of Mormon and their Bible, which both testify of Jesus Christ. When I said that, he quietly whispered, "Wow" and I could see the Spirit working on him. It was probably my favorite moment at the Battalion. It was so cool! I know the Spirit testified to him about the Book of Mormon. It was so intense! ^_^ LOVE IT. :) After the tour Steve was so grateful and so happy. You could tell he really felt the whole story. Possibly my favorite tour ever. :)

Also I made up a joke!

Why are sporks so small?

Because they're tiney spoons!

 

:)

(As in, they've got tines.)

:)

Ok.

Well, hope it made you laugh. :)

--Hermana Harris