So this week was pretty good. Unfortunately we weren't able to teach as much this week but we were still able to have a successful week.
The wonderful Sister that was scheduled to be baptized on the 22 of February is having surgery this month on her arm and it is going to take a bit to recover from it so we pushed back the date for March 22nd. And we are hoping we can help her daughter to be ready for that date to be baptized as well. The mother still has such a strong desire, she's amazing! She is trying to quit smoking and it is hard for her but she is really trying and has cut back a lot.
We have some other people that we are teaching that could be really great, we just have to get them to be more committed so they can progress.
We found a new investigator this week. He's 17 year brother and we found him in the trailer park. We had a lesson with him last night on his doorstep, we couldn't go in because there was no woman in the house. It was super cold and we were doing this lesson in English, we were teaching him the Restoration and I was kind of nervous about it because it has been awhile since I have taught this lesson in English, I have been so used to teaching it in Spanish (I never thought I would ever say that haha teaching in English is harder than teaching in Spanish, wow!) Anyways the lesson went amazing. As soon as we started I wasn't nervous anymore and just listened to the spirit. I could tell he could feel it too. We invited him to say the last prayer at the end and he was a little hesitant at first because he has never prayed out loud in front of anyone but he did. It was such an amazing prayer, after he said the prayer he said he felt so good and that it really felt like he was talking to Heavenly Father. David has a lot of potential, we are super excited to be teaching him.
This week we also had a zone training meeting. The zone leaders called us and asked if we could do a 15 minute training on being guides as missionaries. So we decided to do an activity with the zone, we made an obstacle course and one person was blindfolded and one person guided this person throughout this course. One of our zone leaders, Elder Page volunteered to be guided on the course and then Sister Hadley guided him while the rest of us shouted him and tried to distract him to go other ways. It was actually pretty hilarious watching him go throughout the course, there were times he was really lost and he had to really listen to Sister Hadley. After the activity we had a discussion on how this can apply to us as missionaries being guides to our investigators. It shows that we need to help our investigators and invite them to do things as pray, read scriptures, attend church, and other things. They really have to be in tuned with the spirit to get the answers they want.
Another set of missionaries did a training on asking inspired questions. I still struggle with this problem, a lot of times I ask questions to investigators that aren't maybe the most inspired. Sometimes during a lesson we don't want there to be an awkward silence so we fill them up with questions. We have to not be afraid of silence, we have to go to heaven and really discern what they need. We did a role play on this. I don't really like doing role plays but they can be really effective. It was a really good experience, I feel like doing this really helped. We need to be in tuned with the spirit to get us where we need to go with our investigators.
Anyways, I am about out of time! I hope everyone has a great Valentine's day! This week we have zone conference on Valentine's day which I am excited for!
Thanks again for all the love and support!
Hermana Garces
Monday, February 17, 2014
Another great week in Provo!
So this week was amazing! We had so many miracles happen this week and we were able to teach a lot this week!
We have an investigator we are teaching from the Dominican Republic....she is super hard to understand haha. We have her on date to be baptized on the 22 of February and she is so ready. She has such a strong desire. She smokes quite a bit and we thought it would be a problem to try and help her to quit but we had an appointment with her this week and she threw out all of her cigarettes and she said she hadn't smoked for 4 days! We were super excited to hear that, she said she wants to do everything it takes to get baptized the 22nd because she knows that's the day she can be ready for. She has a daughter who is 15 named Bernice. She is very interested and has been going to church and loves young women's. We are working with her to try to get her on date to be baptized as well. She is so ready, she just doesn't know it yet.
This week we started teaching a 17 year old brother. His Mom is a member and goes to our ward but he is not. Our ward mission leader told us about him and said that we should start teaching him. Our first lesson with him was amazing, before we started teaching him the first lesson he said that he wants to be baptized. So we taught him the lesson and put him on date for the 1st of March. He accepted and said he would pray alot and make sure that it is something that he wants to do. He has been going to church every Sunday for the past 2 months with his mom, has already read some of the Book of Mormon. He is so ready, we are super excited for him!
We also found a few other new investigators this week that could potentially be really good. We found them in a trailer park in our area. We have appointments with them this week so hopefully all goes well with that.
We also were able to teach a lot of less actives this week. We have been doing a lot of family home evenings with less active families to strengthen the families. We had a lot of less actives come to church this Sunday which was great!
There is this less active lady we are teaching that I absolutely love. I think I have talked about her before. She is a single mom with a 5 year old son, she is from Chile. This week she really opened up to us about her life and why she has doubts and why she has been less active, we shared the Mormon message of "Waiting on the road to Damascus", she loved it and started crying because she realized that video applied to her a lot. She has been going to church the past month now with her son and I can tell she is doing so much better. I love her son. He is so cute and loves it when we come over, when he sees us he is always like "Hermanas, mis amigas" haha. He loves to play with us.
We had a lot of other great lessons this week, I am so grateful that I am still in this area and I hope I stay in this area for awhile. There is so much work for me to do here to build this area back up.
Also this week during our district training meeting we talked about talking to people wherever we are. When we are walking, in the store, anywhere. We should talk to everyone we see throughout the day. We did some role plays on how we could start talking to people. My district leader called on me to be a random person on the bus and the zone leaders were called to be the missionaries that were going to talk to me. So role plays can either go really well or really bad, sometimes they are just super awkward and everyone just starts laughing haha. But this one went super well. I put myself as an investigator and the zone leaders started talking to me to get to know me first and then they brought up the gospel and testified to me of the truthfulness of it and asked if would be interested in it and I said yes of course. I started to have tears in my eyes and the elders did too. It was like this role play was so realistic. The way they testified to me of the gospel was amazing and I thought to myself how could someone not want this to be apart of their life. It was a neat experience to do that role play even though it wasn't a real scenario, it felt like one.
So also last week for Pday we hiked "The Y". O my goodness it was really tough but super fun, making it to the top felt so good. As we kept going up, I felt like I was enduring to the end. It made me think that life is super rough sometimes and that it is not easy but if we keep going we will make it to the top. If we keep reading our scriptures, praying, go to church and other things we will make back to our Heavenly Father.
Well I am out of time.
Thanks for all the love and support. I love you all
Hermana Veronica Garces
We have an investigator we are teaching from the Dominican Republic....she is super hard to understand haha. We have her on date to be baptized on the 22 of February and she is so ready. She has such a strong desire. She smokes quite a bit and we thought it would be a problem to try and help her to quit but we had an appointment with her this week and she threw out all of her cigarettes and she said she hadn't smoked for 4 days! We were super excited to hear that, she said she wants to do everything it takes to get baptized the 22nd because she knows that's the day she can be ready for. She has a daughter who is 15 named Bernice. She is very interested and has been going to church and loves young women's. We are working with her to try to get her on date to be baptized as well. She is so ready, she just doesn't know it yet.
This week we started teaching a 17 year old brother. His Mom is a member and goes to our ward but he is not. Our ward mission leader told us about him and said that we should start teaching him. Our first lesson with him was amazing, before we started teaching him the first lesson he said that he wants to be baptized. So we taught him the lesson and put him on date for the 1st of March. He accepted and said he would pray alot and make sure that it is something that he wants to do. He has been going to church every Sunday for the past 2 months with his mom, has already read some of the Book of Mormon. He is so ready, we are super excited for him!
We also found a few other new investigators this week that could potentially be really good. We found them in a trailer park in our area. We have appointments with them this week so hopefully all goes well with that.
We also were able to teach a lot of less actives this week. We have been doing a lot of family home evenings with less active families to strengthen the families. We had a lot of less actives come to church this Sunday which was great!
There is this less active lady we are teaching that I absolutely love. I think I have talked about her before. She is a single mom with a 5 year old son, she is from Chile. This week she really opened up to us about her life and why she has doubts and why she has been less active, we shared the Mormon message of "Waiting on the road to Damascus", she loved it and started crying because she realized that video applied to her a lot. She has been going to church the past month now with her son and I can tell she is doing so much better. I love her son. He is so cute and loves it when we come over, when he sees us he is always like "Hermanas, mis amigas" haha. He loves to play with us.
We had a lot of other great lessons this week, I am so grateful that I am still in this area and I hope I stay in this area for awhile. There is so much work for me to do here to build this area back up.
Also this week during our district training meeting we talked about talking to people wherever we are. When we are walking, in the store, anywhere. We should talk to everyone we see throughout the day. We did some role plays on how we could start talking to people. My district leader called on me to be a random person on the bus and the zone leaders were called to be the missionaries that were going to talk to me. So role plays can either go really well or really bad, sometimes they are just super awkward and everyone just starts laughing haha. But this one went super well. I put myself as an investigator and the zone leaders started talking to me to get to know me first and then they brought up the gospel and testified to me of the truthfulness of it and asked if would be interested in it and I said yes of course. I started to have tears in my eyes and the elders did too. It was like this role play was so realistic. The way they testified to me of the gospel was amazing and I thought to myself how could someone not want this to be apart of their life. It was a neat experience to do that role play even though it wasn't a real scenario, it felt like one.
So also last week for Pday we hiked "The Y". O my goodness it was really tough but super fun, making it to the top felt so good. As we kept going up, I felt like I was enduring to the end. It made me think that life is super rough sometimes and that it is not easy but if we keep going we will make it to the top. If we keep reading our scriptures, praying, go to church and other things we will make back to our Heavenly Father.
Well I am out of time.
Thanks for all the love and support. I love you all
Hermana Veronica Garces
Parting with Hermana Bumstead, new companion Hermana Smith
So this week was really bitter sweet. I had to say goodbye to my companion Hermana Bumstead after being 3 months with her. On Tuesday we spent all day visiting less actives, investigators, members so that my companion could say goodbye to everyone. It didn't hit me she was leaving until Wednesday when I was helping her lug all of her luggage out of the house. She has been so amazing to me and I know our companionship was truly inspired.
So my new companion is Hermana Smith, she was my sister training leader last transfer and we were in the same zone! So we already know each other pretty well, we were super shocked that we got called to be companions because we were not expecting that at all! We are super excited to be serving together! She is from Oklahoma and she has been out almost a year.
So I was pretty nervous taking over the area because I never I have had to do that before. One of my zone leaders asked me before getting my new companion how I felt about taking over the Provo Slate Canyon area and I said "I am pretty scared but what is keeping me hopeful is that the Lord still wants me here and that there is still work for me to do here". He said "You are going to do awesome this transfer, Sister Garces...it is your time to shine and your Spanish is going to get a lot better and you will have a lot of success, I know it".
This week I have had to take more initiative in teaching lessons and making phone calls in Spanish and using a lot more Spanish than I am used to. This week was really great, we were able to teach a lot of lessons. We got really lucky with getting rides, a lot of members were able to come out with us to teach. We even committed one of our investigators to get baptized. We set a date for her for the 22 of February. I am so excited for her, she is so ready and has a really strong desire. Her daughter is super interested too, we didn't set a date yet for her because we didn't feel it was the right time but we are hopeful this week we can! We were able to teach a lot of less actives this week as well. And church was amazing, we had so many less actives that came back to church and several investigators that came. We haven't had that many people come in a long time. Out gospel principles class was full and it hasn't been that way for awhile. Our ward mission leader was so happy with us, he was so amazed how so many people were at church.
I am so grateful for the success we had this week and I know it wouldn't have happened without the help of my Savior.
I know I am still in the Provo Slate Canyon area for a reason. This area is really great and I am looking forward to building up the area even more!
Thanks again for everything, I love you all!!
Love,
Hermana Garces
So my new companion is Hermana Smith, she was my sister training leader last transfer and we were in the same zone! So we already know each other pretty well, we were super shocked that we got called to be companions because we were not expecting that at all! We are super excited to be serving together! She is from Oklahoma and she has been out almost a year.
So I was pretty nervous taking over the area because I never I have had to do that before. One of my zone leaders asked me before getting my new companion how I felt about taking over the Provo Slate Canyon area and I said "I am pretty scared but what is keeping me hopeful is that the Lord still wants me here and that there is still work for me to do here". He said "You are going to do awesome this transfer, Sister Garces...it is your time to shine and your Spanish is going to get a lot better and you will have a lot of success, I know it".
This week I have had to take more initiative in teaching lessons and making phone calls in Spanish and using a lot more Spanish than I am used to. This week was really great, we were able to teach a lot of lessons. We got really lucky with getting rides, a lot of members were able to come out with us to teach. We even committed one of our investigators to get baptized. We set a date for her for the 22 of February. I am so excited for her, she is so ready and has a really strong desire. Her daughter is super interested too, we didn't set a date yet for her because we didn't feel it was the right time but we are hopeful this week we can! We were able to teach a lot of less actives this week as well. And church was amazing, we had so many less actives that came back to church and several investigators that came. We haven't had that many people come in a long time. Out gospel principles class was full and it hasn't been that way for awhile. Our ward mission leader was so happy with us, he was so amazed how so many people were at church.
I am so grateful for the success we had this week and I know it wouldn't have happened without the help of my Savior.
I know I am still in the Provo Slate Canyon area for a reason. This area is really great and I am looking forward to building up the area even more!
Thanks again for everything, I love you all!!
Love,
Hermana Garces
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