Staying in American Fork!

So first off let me just tell you all that we have transfers this week! We just found out that we will not be a trio anymore! Sister Figueroa is leaving and Sister Holladay and I are staying! We will for sure miss Sister Figueroa.  We had such a fun transfer being a trio.  We learned so much from each other.  I am looking forward to staying in American Fork and doing more work here!

This past week we found out some changes to attending the temple.  It used to be that we could go to the temple twice a month, once as a companionship, and once as a district.  Our mission has changed the policy now.  We can only go now every 3 months just with our companion.  But we can go more our recent converts are going through the temple to do baptisms, endowments, sealings etc.  We can also go to the temple if any of our immediate family is going in for the first time, getting married, etc.  We can only stay for the ordinance and not go to like luncheons or receptions afterwards.  Another neat thing is that we can go out of our mission boundaries to other temples, we just have to get permission from our mission President.  If we have a recent convert that wants to do baptisms at the Salt Lake temple we can go.  The temples that are in our mission is the Provo, Mt Timpanogos, and Vernal temple.  We can go now to Salt Lake, Jordan River, Bountiful, Oaker Mountain, and Manti.  We can only go to those temple if we have immediate family doing ordinances or recent converts going through.  I think this new change is really neat! I think it will make us work harder to get our recent converts to the temple.  As missionaries part of our purpose is to get others to the temple.  We have two recent converts that we are teaching that we are working on getting them to the temple and the big G family that I taught in Provo are working on going to the temple as well.  I am so excited for them!

As for teaching this week it was a little slow again.  We are struggling trying to find more people to teach.  We have some investigators but they aren't really progressing or keeping commitments.  We taught a lot of recent converts this past week and less actives.  We are going to continue to work hard so that we can see miracles and be led to those who need the Gospel. 

This week we started using the bikes because we are really low on miles haha. It was such a nice week this past week.  It was in the 70s.  Using the bikes was crazy, my companions aren't really used to riding a bike since they have never been in a biking area.  Our area is so big and we were in over our heads using the bikes haha but we established that we are only going to use the bikes in the afternoons and only in 2 stakes that we cover in American Fork.  We aren't using them in Alpine or Highland because that would just be way too far for us haha.  It is crazy trying to keep track of 14 stakes but we do our best.

We taught this one less active family this past week.  It is a single mom and she has three kids.  I love them so much, we teach them in English, the kids don't really know Spanish very well.  They are always so excited to see us, we asked them how reading the Book of Mormon was going for them.  And they each wrote a summary of what they read, they were so excited to tell us.  You can tell now that they know the importance of reading the Book of Mormon everyday.  We taught them the Plan of Salvation, they had a lot of questions but they understood it so well.  I love teaching the Plan of Salvation, I love testifying that we can be with our families forever and we can all reach the celestial kingdom through the Atonement of Christ.  How wonderful is it that we have that knowledge to share with everyone.

I am so grateful for this time of year.  As a mission we have been encouraged to share the link mormon.org/BecauseofHim.  I already posted it on my Facebook page.  We are encouraged to share and to encourage others to share the message.  It talks about the message of Easter and there is a video that describes Christ and what we have Because of Him.  I love the video so much, it shows that we can be like Christ and be free from everything Because of Him.  I am so grateful for my Savior.  Because of Him I have a best friend that I can rely on.  Because of Him we have the Atonement.  I know that Christ lives.  I hope you all have a wonderful Easter and remember what Christ did for us.

I love you all.  Thanks for everything! Mom, I am so glad you made it to China safely.  Have a fun time with Charles and the family. 

Love,
Hermana Garces