General conference was so good, obviously you guys know
that! I learned a lot from all the talks
and was definitely strengthened by Elder Holland. I thought of you guys all conference. One of the biggest themes was families, I was
so happy to have such an amazing family.
I can’t wait to get home and have so much fun with you again! I learned from Conference that it truly will
get easier. I am having such a hard time
because it’s not what I’m used to and it’ really hard, stressful, draining,
restricting. But I will come out “refined”
from this experience. So I gotta put in
my time and work hard and God will help me.
Hopefully it will start working sometime soon…so as I said we watched
Saturday conference at eh church both sessions, it was basically only the
missionaries from our zone there, a few other people. Then we wanted to watch the first session of
Sunday at the church with our investigator Eddie, but he wasn’t able to make it.
So we still watched it there, more
people besides missionaries this time.
Then we went over to the Waters for the second session, and we had them
signed up for dinner that night as well.
So they fed us all after conference and we played the game Curses.
Sandra and Toby and Jen didn’t get to the Waters for
Conference until the end of Elder Oaks talk I think it was, whoever the first
speaker was. They didn’t seem totally
into it, obviously. Toby asked about “quorum”
and “seventy” to brother Waters. Sandra
asked us if any young people ever got up there.
Haha, she asked “anyone without white hair?” Funny cause brother Waters is late 40’s and
has white spiky hair, we all laughed at him.
Sandra liked Elder Holland’s. We
really wanted to crash Priesthood session and go watch at the church, we wished
. But we did have a member for dinner,
her husband went to watch it at the church, but she had it playing for us as we
ate dinner. We downloaded all those
talks though and listened to them, SO GOOD!
Monday we did regular ole P-day stuff. We emailed a little earlier, we will keep
trying to do that now, just so you know.
But I am having such a hard time with emailing! Like my time was up before I got to emailing
President (which we’re supposed to do every p-day) and so I didn’t get to email
President. And I don’t feel like my mass
emails are any good. Ugh. But after that we had a pretty good zone
activity. The zone leaders had texted us
all the night before and told us we were going to do “glow in the dark sports”. We tried doing capture the flag with glow
sticks, it was fun but ended up not really working, we tried other things with
the glow sticks. They set up the volleyball
net and we hung them from it, and they broke a few glow sticks and poured in on
the volleyball. We tried that, kind
failed, but it was funny. Then we just
played normal volleyball the rest of the day.
It was fun.
We then ate at the Stake Presidents house! Love them!
And then we had our lesson with Sandra that I told you a little bit
about, Brother Lent, our ward mission leader, who we brought to the lesson, was
just so excited and just wanted to testify every chance he could get, they were
baptized 2 years ago and were sealed a few months ago.
Tuesday we had an awesome zone meeting. We also got a new senior couple up in Barstow
in our zone now! They seem sweet, I’m
not sure if they will serve there their whole mission or not. We then tried lots of people who didn’t
answer, and we had dinner at home and then went over to Sandra’s. She was being interviewed by President Pratt,
our mission President’s first counselor for her baptism, so we went over there
and met him there. He’s pretty
cool. Interview went well and then we
just stayed and talked to her and Jen for a little while. It was interesting.
Right now, almost every single one of our investigators aren’t
progressing or we’ve only met once and can’t seem to make or keep a return
appointment for a first real lesson because they all reschedule a lot. Sheesh.
Wednesday literally everyone we had an appointment with
canceled that morning. Sheesh. 2 investigators, 2 less actives, and even our
dinner appointment at Sandra’s house. We
didn’t see many people. Lots of people
not home and/or not answering. We did
talk to these people though for a while outside their house, who we’d briefly
talked to before, a guy and his fiancé, Zach and Sierra, pretty young. But the first time we’d talked to them we
walked by, it was a warm day, and they were out in their driveway. He had a hose and was spraying her and they
were laughing, he was super drunk, beer in his other hand. We said hi, told 'em who we were, they said
they went to HDC but cool that we were out and they had a church. He pointed the hose at us and asked us if we “wanted
to cool off”, he was totally joking, it was funny, his fiancé told him to stop
hassling us, but he was drunk, they were nice enough to us though. Anyways, so we went back to that same street
on Wednesday to visit a potential who lives right next to Zach and Sierra. We got there and Zach was sitting outside in
a chair in his driveway. He looked nice
and sober this time. We walked up and
said hi and asked if he was the one that tried to spray us a few weeks
ago. He had no idea what we were talking
about, we then questioned if this was the same guy. He was like “oh no that must have been our
crazy neighbor or something, I would never do that to you guys!” We were pretty sure it was him, but he had no
recollection, he must have been so drunk that first time that he really didn’t
remember. Because then his fiancé came
out and he asked her “hey did I try to spray these girls ever?” And she was like “yeah remember and we told
them we had a church.” Haha, he was like
“oh well, gosh I am so sorry.” Haha, it
was funny. And then we told him we were
going to see their neighbor and he said “okay, good luck, if you can make that
happen I’ll buy you guys dinner!” We
went over and knocked on the door, we could hear the TV on and I could see
inside the house. We waited there for quite
a while and then left. As we walked back
from their door Zach and Sierra had this guy sitting with them. Zach said “hey he’s over here, he was already
outside on his way over here when you knocked and his wife is asleep.” So we walked up to say hello, though his wife
had been the one we were looking for. We
got talking to the three of them for a while.
They asked us lots of questions about our missions and a little of our
beliefs and our “restrictions”. They let
us hold their new puppies that were born 2 weeks ago. They were so nice. They weren’t interested exactly though, but
hey we made a friendship kinda so that was good. The guy told us to come back the next day in
the morning to catch his wife. We
finally talked to someone that day.
We had mormon.org time on Wednesday, I downloaded all of the
conference talks, yay! I also put lots
of pics on the USB, I should be sending a box home. Monday, actually, I’ll just put this letter
in it! Considering it would send the
same day anyway.
Thursday we went by that ladies house like her husband said
and no answer. Then we did lots of
service at the Homeless shelter, sorted clothes with the Elders. Was the last time we would see Elder Hurley
because he goes home Monday. Sad, he was
super cool. And we didn’t know it but
that was the last time we would see Elder Haueter for now because we heard
yesterday he’s getting transferred, he’s one of our zone leaders. Then we went to go try potentials and lots of
people weren’t home. We went to the top
of our area (which is pure desert) and we had 2 potentials on this road called Seneca,
so we just tracted that street. Mostly
nobody home, our potentials didn’t answer, people told us no, and then at this
one random house we picked up a new investigator! We knocked on the door and this lady opened
up a crack and asked “can I help you” (we get that a lot) we told her who we
are and told we have a message and all that and we asked her if we could share that
with her and she said sure. She stepped
outside with us because she said she had crazy dogs. So we told her about how families can be
together forever and we have a prophet guiding us from God and told her the
brief message of the restoration. She took
it well, we gave her a restoration pamphlet and a Book of Mormon and asked her
to read and pray about it and she said she would, we asked if we could come
back and she said yes. She was super
cute and sweet. Hopefully that works
out.
Friday we had weekly planning all morning. We do that for 3-5 hours. We did a lot, and it rained tons on this day
as well. Then we went out and only saw
one person. A less active man David
Love. He’s 62 and his family lives with
him, they’re active/ less active members.
He has lots of dogs. He works as
a car mechanic up in Barstow at some big company, they overwork them and don’t
treat them well. We wanted to tell him
of the importance of church, because he doesn’t go. He’s a convert, he knows the Bible so well. But we got there and my companion asked why
he wasn’t coming and told him the importance and he said he’d go if that wasn’t
his only time to sleep. She told him a
relationship with God is like any other, you gotta put in effort to get much in
return. He said, “I can have a relationship
with God right here without having to go to church, I read scriptures, I pray.” Then my companion asked “okay, then why did
God command us to go to church?” Then we
talked and she read him Isaiah 58:11, 13-14 where it talks about the Sabbath
day. He was caught up on the fact that
he wakes up every day at 3 am, works 6 days a week, never gets peace at home
with his family there, etc. Finally he
was like Okay I’ll try and see if God refreshes me just from going to
church. He says he doesn’t learn anything
at church. We’ll see how it goes.
Yesterday, Saturday we did tons of service…from 8 am to
10:30 am we went and helped with “clean the desert” day. Our ward signed up for a stretch of desert
through town and we picked up trash, we had little grabber things. It was so windy. Then after lunch and studies we helped this
lady from the ward right next to us weed her entire lawn from about 1:30 to
4:00. The Elders and a member invited us
to come help and a few other missionaries.
We actually live in their ward. Our
apartment isn’t even isn’t even in our area.
That was some hard work, dirty, it was cold. Then we went and had ward correlation
with Brother Lent. Then we had
dinner. Then we met with Dina
Rifner. She’s the only one we saw all
day, it was very interesting. She’s a
less active lady we always knock on her door but she rarely answers. But this night she opened and let us in. She was very heated and angry because I guess
about 10 minutes earlier she had just gotten in a big ole fight (not
physically) with her neighbor. Oh she
told us all about it. Then she started
to calm down and says she’s sorry and then she was like “Wow, God sent you guys
right at the perfect time I just realized.”
And it was really the perfect time.
We calmed her a little bit, she cried, she knew she had said bad
words. Somehow we got into the Plan of
Salvation and she was very interested, she didn’t remember it at all. We read her some scriptures and talked with
her for a long time. God really did send
us there.
And now today is Sunday!
It’s the 10th! Now I’ve
officially been out for 2 months! 16 ½ now
to go…still really struggling. Anyways,
today after studies we went to go see a potential Mosi. We saw her in the area book a few weeks
earlier and had went by once, but she was on her way out (she’s probably
mid-20s) she’s super nice and cute. She
said she grew up with tons of Mormon friends, grew up going to Young Women’s
every Sunday and Wednesday, she’s trying to help her friends from other
churches see how great our church teaches.
She loves us so much. We went back
this morning, and I’m so glad we did.
She was there, totally welcomed us in, and for about 10-15 minutes sat
there and told us how amazing we were.
And that even when someone slams a door in our face God is so happy with
the work we are doing, and he needs us to help those who listen. I honestly got teary eyed. She sat there forever telling us how amazing
we were and inspiring our hearts. I know
God sent us to her house for her, but mostly for me. She told us to come by whenever, especially
if we have a bad day. Sweetest thing, I
really felt the Spirit. Last night I had
been praying to feel God’s love because I was having a hard time truly feeling
it, and then God sent us to Mosi. Wow, I
just realized that. That was a quick
answer to my prayers.
Then, since it was fast Sunday and we came home for an hour
for “lunch” but didn’t eat, I just wrote this letter, parts of it. Then we had church. Wow church was so amazing. Testimony meeting was great. We taught the youth Sunday school the
Restoration and Apostasy. Then in third
hour Relief Society we talked about prophets and talks that have changed our
lives. One sister, Sister Thorup,
probably late 50’s got up and told her experience of going on a mission. She wasn’t going, her Stake President made
her fill out her papers, she still said she wasn’t going, and she went to
General Conference in 1985 and heard this talk by Elder Hartman Rector (Oct. 1985).
I don’t know what it’s called. I
need to print it out. Anyways I can’t
remember exactly what he said but he said something like even if you don’t want
to do what God has for you, that’s okay, do it anyway. And then we heard about Elder Holland’s talk
from this conference that said you get points for just trying. I felt the Spirit so strongly, comfort me,
and give me peace. It’s okay I don’t
want to do this, do it anyway though, I’ll grow and learn to love it, just
try. I cried. I knew that was exactly just for me. Then we tried to see our investigators Clay
and Brittany, no luck, Brittany wasn’t home, how do we get ‘em
progressing! 
I love you guys so much!
Love, Courtney
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