Aug 15, 2011

Hiya everyone! I sure hope you've had a great week. Ours was not bad, as they go. :) We had a mini missionary with us for most of the week. It was lots of fun to take her with us on all of our appointments and to show her every phase of missionary work. She's going to be a great missionary someday (if she doesn't get married first... hahahaha).

We met a new investigator this week named leslie. She's investigated the church before, and really liked it, but couldn't join because of her disapproving husband. They're divorced now, and when we knocked on her door this week, she invited us right in. We taught her about the book of mormon and how doing things to grow her faith, like reading, praying and coming to church, will help her get a closer relationship with God. She ate it up. We set a tentative baptismal date for the 18th of Sept. She didn't fully accept it because she wanted to know for sure that it's true. She came to church yesterday for the first time. After Relief Society, she asked to speak with us privately. I was worried that the lesson (which was the law of chastity) had turned her off of the church. But instead, she said that this church is her church. She feels like she belongs here. She said she didn't want to wait till September, so, since we already have a baptism scheduled on the 28th, we said, sure! She's super excited and she wants to meet with us twice a week now, which is different from the once-every-other-week schedule she had originally asked for. It's cool to see her change so quickly! I don't think I've ever seen it happen this fast before. :)

Our other baptism that we have scheduled for the same night is actually a couple of investigators from Colusa. It's funny that the work and the investigators really started progressing after we left there. Weird. So we've been teaching this couple, Jan and Leonard, since April. And about 8 weeks ago, after teaching them the final lessons, for the 3rd time, I handed Leonard (who'se been the one holding them back) a calendar and said, "you choose the date. When do you believe that you'll be ready?" And he chose August 28th. Even then, we haven't been sure that they'll be ready. Except that when we taught them this week, they were excited and making plans and getting ready. It was so cool. So we scheduled the building. We'll have Jan and Leonard and the Colusa branch come for their baptism at 5:30. We'll have dinner in between (a nice little potluck, I hope... ) and then Leslie and the Feather River ward at 7:30. It will be pretty cool. :)

We also have a baptism this sunday. It's for Jack, our 89 year old investigator. He's pretty excited (from what I can tell.. hahaha) and so is his whole family, and basically all of the mormon community in Yuba, who've known the family since they got married. It's going to be pretty packed. I'm glad I was able to be a part of this. :)

In non-baptism related news, we were asked to speak in the Spanish Branch here. We did it yesterday, and it's the first time I've ever had someone translate for me. It was pretty interesting. My talk was 6 minutes long if I read it myself, but when I actually gave it, it was 25 minutes. It took forever to get translated. I hope I don't have to do that again for awhile. :)

That's pretty much it for me for this week. It's going to be a busy couple of weeks for us, while we prepare for these baptisms and gear up for transfers... which is coming on the 30th. So not next week, but the week after. :) I'm hoping for a bit of a change. I've been in this stake for 5 transfers now. No other missionaries have been here as long as me... Oh well... what happens happens. :)

I love you all, and I can't wait to hear from you!

Love, Sister Reid

August 8, 2011

Well hello everyone!

We've had kind of a slow week here. I think that it seems to always happen after we have a baptism. There's always a bit of a let down. Not much... just a little one. Last week we taught 30 lessons, and this week we taught 19... which is still 4 lessons over the mission standard... :) Just not as awesome as it could have been.

There's really not that much to report in terms of specifics. We weren't able to meet with our investigators who have baptismal dates for various reasons. That's something we'll change this week. We did manage to have a pretty awesome experience with a new family we just started teaching this week. The mom, Christy, is a less active. She was baptized and extremely active when she was 13. She loved the church. She fell away when she was harshly judged by members of her ward as a result of some mistakes she made when she was 16. Now she's 25 and married and they have a yours, mine, and ours family. 6 kids. It's pretty roudy, but it reminds me of home... the oldest is 16 and the youngest is 2... just like my family, practically... :) Anyway. We found her when we were tracting a couple months ago. We've been trying to get in to teach them, but they've been forgetting our appointments. This last week, both of their dogs died from Parvo - a pretty nasty, very contagious disease. The kids were asking what happens to the dogs after they die, and Christy didn't know how to answer them, so she asked us to come in last night and teach them about the plan of salvation. It was a pretty great experience. The kids don't know much about religion, so when we asked them how Jesus Christ helps them in their lives and they didn't even know who he is, we set up a return appointment right then for next week. Christy really enjoyed us being there, so we'll be going every sunday night for awhile. She's excited that the kids will have some knowledge about God. It's cool. We'll continue to work with them, and help her to find forgiveness so she can come back to church.

That's pretty much it... We have a mini missionary with us this week. Her name is Sister Yang. She's from a Hmong family, and for those of you who don't know, that's a very small minority of asian people from the Mongolia area. She was born in the United States, but her parents weren't. She's a convert of almost two years. It's going to be a fun week, showing her around and teaching her about missionary work. :)

I love you all!

Love, Sister Reid

August 1, 2011

Wow. Can you believe that it's August already. It seems to me that time is flying faster than it ever has before.

It's been a really busy week for us. It started out really slow, though. On tuesday night, we'd only had 3 lessons actually take place. A bunch of people were no shows. So that was kind of sad. But after that, things really picked up, and by friday night, we had taught 20 lessons. So we looked at our plans, and decided to go for broke. By last night, we set a new personal record of teaching 30 lessons in one week. It was awesome. Maybe the coolest thing that happened out of all of that was that the other elders in our district have caught on, and decided that they're going to try to beat us this week. So there's an out an out contest, and for the first time in two transfers, I feel like our district might be trying to be unified. It's nice.

As far as our investigators go... Rhonda and Linda (i don't remember if I told you about them, but we've been teaching them for about a month) decided this week that, after praying (maybe) that the church wasn't true, so they've dropped us. Which makes me sad. Especially since they aleady believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet. But they were given some antimormon literature about a week ago and things haven't been the same since. Oh well. We testified like crazy, and they know that we know that it's true. Maybe the next set of missionaries can affect them. We've also been meeting with a part member family quite a lot, and the one who is not a member, Mark, has been really interested. In order for him to accept the truth, he'll have to make some pretty major changes in his life. But he said that he's willing to do it. The hardest for him will be living the word of wisdom and keeping the law of chastity. But we've talked a lot about the blessing he'll recieve for doing it, and he wants them. So he committed to being baptized on the 28th of august. We'll work hard with him. Hopefully he'll make it for that day. We also picked up a new family. We've only taught them once so far, but it was really great. After our first lesson with them the wife told us that she felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders and that she was more at ease and peaceful and happy than she'd felt in a long time. I'm excited for the coming weeks and beginning to really teach them. It's a mom and dad, his teenage son, and their six and one year old. It'll be fun to tell you about them as we continue to teach them. :)

My companion and I also had a really great breakthrough this week. I've noticed for the last several weeks that she's been trying less and less to participate. She speaks only when spoken to and doesn't teach unless I make her. We had a really long conversation about it, and we found out together that she has thought that her call to speak english was a mistake, because she wrote on her application that she learned English in High School (which is the same as most of us Americans learning Spanish in high school -- practically useless). So she's been thinking this whole time that she wasn't supposed to be here. We talked for a long time about the inspiration of the calls, and then we talked about the gift of tongues. She was having doubts that she could learn English at all, so she wasn't trying. It was hard to get her to admit it, but once she did, there's been a shift in her attitude. Now she has faith to know that she can learn english if she tries, and that the Lord will help her. She's more actively involved now. Things have been so much better the last few days. It's like I'm not so alone in the work anymore. I wish we could have had that discussion two months ago. :)

We had a wonderful baptism for Juanita Roberts this week. It was amazing. Nearly the entire branch showed up. I was so proud of them. And they took care of the whole thing. We didn't have to do much at all. It was wonderful. And I got to see them all again. It was like going to the best family reunion I've ever been too. The mission president came, and I'm a little embarrased. He probably thinks that I never did any work in Colusa, just hung out with the members all the time... hahahaha.

Anyways, I love all of you. I can't wait to hear from you. So please email!!!

Love, Sister Reid

July 25, 2011

Hiya family!

I sure hope you had a good week! Mine was both amazing, and really not. hahaha.

Before my mission, a good friend of mine told me that missions are amazing, and that you experience the highest highs of your life, but also the highest lows of your life. Sometimes in the same day. That has been true for me this week!

I won't tell you much about the lows. Just that we're experiencing some major struggles with some of our investigators, recent converts, and less actives It's tough to know how to deal with them. I pray every day for more guidance by the Spirit to know how we can help them. Last night, for example, we met with a cute, young, less active couple in our ward. Both the husband and the wife are returned missionaries. We talked pretty seriously about their experiences since they've not been active, and, just as it says in the Book of Mormon, they've forgotten everything. They have no light of the gospel in their lives. The testimonies that drove them while they were on their missions, and the joy in the service that I KNOW they must have felt, are gone. Just gone. They have no desire to come back. And it broke my heart. I absolutely refuse to be them after my mission. I'm sure that the Lord placed them here for me so I can learn from their example. I promise to Him, to myself, and to all of you, that I will NEVER be inactive!

Despite all the lows, or maybe because of them, we're seeing some great miracles too. Juanita, our investigator from Colusa is still rocking it! She'll be baptized on Sunday, and I'm looking forward to that, not just because of the baptism itself, which will be amazing - it always is - but also because most of the branch is planning on attending. So I'll get to see all my friends again. It'll be great. :)

We also picked up another new investigator this week, who will be a lot like Juanita. We didn't have to work for him at all. His name is Jack and he's 89 years old. He's been married to an active member for 64 years, and supported several of his kids through missions and educations at BYU, but never wanted to get baptized till this week. So we set the date for August 21st, and we'll teach him till then.

A couple things I've noticed as a trend in my mission... First, that I work with a lot of old people. Maybe my experiences at the Seville with grandma Reid prepped me for this... ? I love them. And I find that I can understand them. And I love hearing about their lives and their experiences. :) Also, I've noticed, especially the last two months or so, that the harder I struggle with personal trials and the harder my mission seems to be, the more "golden" investigators we get. It's like the Lord is balancing things out. I got transfered away from my favorite companion, to shotgun train someone who can't speak English, and we pick up Juanita (who's getting baptized on Sunday!). And then I find out that I'm staying here, and some things are about to get harder, and we pick up Jack - the 89 year old. These investigators are people I never had to work a second for. No knocking on doors, no asking for referrals. They just came to us...... It's nice. Not that I'm asking for any more hard stuff... it's just nice. :)

Anyway. That's about it for this week. I love all of you. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Especially those of you from whom I haven't heard in awhile. This means you, Kayti, Daniel, Jared, and Jaymi! I understand it's hard to write... but you can Email me! As for the rest of you, I found out you can email too. I can't email you back, but I can print your emails, and the write you back. So next week, I expect LOTS of email!!!

Love, Sister Reid

July 18, 2011

Hiya everyone!

I hope that your week was great! Ours was much better than it's been. We actually had some of our investigators come to church, which was nice. A few of them have started progressing and it's been fun to see them realize that we're doing more than just coming to their homes for "bible study" but that we want to help them achieve a level of happiness and satisfaction they've maybe never had before. It's nice to be back in this situation, which I haven't really been in since my first area.

As far as specifics goes, we've got a few exciting prospects. The first being that one of our investigators, Juanita, from Colusa, is getting baptized on the 31st. I don't remember if I've talked about her at all. But she's totally golden. She started coming to church the week after we left Colusa. And she hasn't missed a week since. We've been going up once a week to teach her the lessons, and she's excited to get baptized. YAY!!! We also finally got Jan and Leonard, also from Colusa, to commit to baptism. I handed Leonard a calendar and asked him when he believed that he'd be ready to get baptized, and he picked August 28th. It was really cool! So we'll continue to go to Colusa once a week to teach them as well. :)

We had our first Interview with President Weston this week, as well. And it was AMAZING. he's a great guy. And he's going to do great things for the mission. I already love him so much. Our interview was almost 20 minutes long. And it was much better than any of the interviews I ever had with President Pendleton. I love him too, but President Weston is great. He told me all about how much he knows about me. Without ever having met me before. From what other missionaries have said about me and from what he's observed in my interactions with other missionaries. He said he NEVER says that any missionary is the best, except for his trainer from his mission. And then he said that I'm the best. He said that only the best missionaries are trainers, and that's why I'm training. At the start of the interview he said he couldn't tell me if I'd be training again. By the end of the interview he said that I would definately be training again. He said that my ability to "lift where I stand" will lift the entire mission for years to come. He said that my level of success is unprecedented in our mission and that I've been that successful because of my ability to listen to and qualify for the spirit. It was nice to hear. Don't worry, though. I'm not letting it get to my head. I'm excited to get to spend more time working for and with President Weston. He's going to be great!

Transfer calls came this morning, and Sister Hurtado and I are staying together one more transfer. President Weston did say that he knows how hard it is to work in a companionship where there's a language barrier... He served his mission in Tokyo, Japan... He knows how much Sister Hurtado and I are struggling. He knows what this is like. He knows that it can be a little lonely. And he promised that it wouldn't be forever. We'll have one more transfer together. And then he said he'd give me a strong companion. He says he knows the joy of working two by two, instead of all by yourself with a shadow, and he wants me to have that again before I go home.

That's pretty much it for the week. I'm looking forward to the start of a new transfer, and the opportunities that will be there for us. Lots of growth and lots of success.

I love all of you and I can't wait to hear from you over the next couple weeks!

Love Sister Reid