Sister Lutz and some goodbyes!

I am so sorry I have not written in a while.  So many things have happened and I don't know where to start.

We had transfers last week and I have a new companion.  Her name is Sister Lutz and she is awesome! We get along so well together.  She is very motivated to work hard which I love! She has 2 transfers left and I have 3 left.  We both want to finish our missions strong and want to give everything we got.  She served with one of my old companions, Sister Smith and she just came from my old area in Provo. 

We had the opportunity to go to the final testimony of the missionaries that were departing.  2 of my companions were going home, Sister Smith and Sister Holladay and some other missionaries that I have grown really close to.  We sang "If the Savior Stood Beside Me".  Hearing their testimonies was bitter sweet.  There was a lot of crying going on, I had mixed emotions about everything.  I was going to miss my mission friends so much but it was also emotional because I am going to be up there soon bearing my testimony for the last time as a representative of Jesus Christ.  All of their testimonies were amazing, a lot of them focused on their testimony of their Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Our area also split, we are no longer covering 2 wards in Spanish.  We just cover 1 ward in Spanish and now we only cover 6 stakes instead of 14.  It was really hard to leave the other ward I was covering because I loved the members and people we were teaching but it is nice that we can just focus on one ward now. 

I was a little worried about not teaching as much now that the area is split but we have been so blessed.  We have found so many more people, we have received a ton of referrals.  The members are more willing to help us and we have been working a lot more with leadership.  It has been really nice to just work in one Spanish ward and focus all of our time there. 

My companion and I set a lot of goals for this transfer.  We set a goal to find 100 non members and so far we have been finding on average about 2 a day and have been getting a lot of referrals.  We have worked so hard and Heavenly Father is really blessing us for our efforts.  We also want to visit every family in our Spanish ward and teach them the Restoration and invite them to read the Book of Mormon for 5 min a day.  We want to strengthen the ward and have them be more excited about missionary work. 

We also have a new ward mission leader.  He is amazing! He is so organized and knows how to delegate really well, he has amazing ideas and he wants us to be busy, we love working with him. 

We also had a Spanish meeting for all Spanish missionaries in our mission and they talked about an initiative that we are going to be doing.  Starting September 15- December 15 there is going to be a website up called mormon.org/preguntas.  It has 8 questions of the soul like Why am I here on earth, How can I find peace and happiness in this life, How can I have a happy marriage, what can I learn from the challenges in life, etc.  They gave each companionship a box of mormon.org cards that have these questions on them.  We have been asked to show these questions to people as we contact them.  We have also been asked to show members how they can use these cards and share them with their friends....we have already started using them and we have seen a lot of success with them.  It is amazing how much the work is really hastening. 

We also had zone conference this last week, and this is one of my very last zone conferences which is crazy! It was amazing, we talked about wonderful things.  President McCune is so inspired, seriously I love that man.  He gives the best council, I am so grateful that I have had him as my mission president.  We talked a lot about goal setting and what we are going to do as companionship's to try a little harder in our areas and specifically what are we going to do to accomplish them.  He called on a companionship to share what our goals were and guess what...he called on Sister Lutz and I haha.  We shared with 60 something missionaries and our Mission President what our goals were and how we were going to accomplish them.  One of our goals that we shared was that by the end of this transfer we want to be teaching 30 lessons a week, our first week we taught 12, last week we taught 18.  He asked us straight up if we have faith that we will get 30 lessons and we both said yes we do, we want to work so hard and do everything we can to accomplish our goals and bring this area back up.  We were put on the spot a lot but it was a good thing, it gave us even more motivation to work even harder, President and a bunch of missionaries know what our goals are so we better accomplish them haha but really we need to so we can see miracles! President also talked about obedience, he gave this long lecture on obedience, it was sooooooo good.  He was so straight up but I loved it.  He said, we need to just be obedient, we know the rules, we know we can't see miracles if we aren't obedient, we know we won't be happy if we aren't obedient then why be disobedient...it just doesn't make sense.  We are so blessed when we are obedient in everything that we do.  I have learned so much about obedience on my mission, I have a strong testimony of it and know that we really can receive those blessings from being obedient in everything that we do. 

We are teaching a wonderful family, I am pretty sure I have talked about this family before.  The parents got baptized a year and half ago and went to the temple recently to be sealed.  None of their kids are members yet.  We are working really closely with their daughter who is 14.  She goes to church every week, she went to girls, she acts like she is a member already.  She is such a sweet girl.  For some reason she doesn't feel ready to be baptized yet, she gets really shut down when we bring it up and sometimes will cry.  She just found out this week that she has diabetes, she has been a little down about it but still is being positive about it.  She seems more willing to meet with us and talk to us more, we have been walking with her a few times a week so she can get more exercise and she has been opening up to us more.  We feel like she is really close, we are going to try and bring up baptism again this week with her and hopefully it will be a good experience.  We are hoping we can get all of their kids baptized, that would be so great for the family.  The parents don't want to pressure them, they want it to be their decision. 

We are also teaching this less active lady.  I have worked with her my entire time here since being in Pleasant Grove.  I love teaching her, she is in a abusive relationship and has made a lot of mistakes.  Its a long story but she is such a strong lady, she has been through so much.  my entire time since being in Pleasant Grove, she has not gone to church.  We always invite her but she never comes but yesterday a miracle happened.  She walked into church with her kids, I had tears coming down my eyes and so did she, I was so happy to see her.  She looked so happy to be there.  I love seeing the change in people, Tiana has really stepped it up and has a desire to change her life.

Our new ward mission leader told us "Sisters people say that you are here to teach the gospel to others but really you are here to change peoples lives through teaching them the Gospel of Jesus Christ".  It is so true, we are helping people come unto Christ to make that change in their lives.

I am so grateful to be serving with Sister Lutz, we have already seen a ton of miracles together.  I am looking forward to see what else is in store for us.

Happy Birthday Melissa, Iove you and hope you have a great day! Also Happy Birthday Dad, hope your day is amazing!

Also this is a little late but Happy Birthday Luke, I can't believe you are 7 years old now, where did the time go??

I love you all, thanks for all the support.

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces

Grateful for the Gospel!

Well this week was a little up and down but it still ended up being really great.  We didn't teach as many lessons this week, a lot of appointments fell through which was a little frustrating but we still were able to see a lot of miracles. 

We had a really great lesson with a less active lady we have been teaching for awhile.  She is the only member in her family, she has 4 kids who are younger.  Her husband is not a member.  Her one son really wants to get baptized, he is 10 so we have been working with him a lot.  He has such a strong desire to be baptized, he is such a sweet boy.  Her husband has always been really friendly with us but has never sat in on a lesson.  He is very catholic and respects the church but he hasn't really had an interest.  But a miracle happened this week, for the first time he sat in on the lesson with us and he has somewhat of an interest now, he is willing to learn more and supports his son for wanting to be baptized.  We are really excited for this family and have a lot of hope for them.  She came to church this week with all of her kids and she hasn't been to church in a very long time.  She would say "yeah I will be at church this Sunday but never came, there was always an excuse.  So seeing her and her kids at church was such a great thing.  We are praying really hard for this family, especially for the husband that he will have that desire and that he will want this for his family.

We have another investigator that we are working really close with.  She is really close, she is 14, her parents are members and got baptized over a year ago.  She goes to church every Sunday with her family but she for some reason does not want to get baptized.  She went to girls camp this past week and had a wonderful experience.  She has opened up a lot with us and this week, we are hoping that we can sit her down and talk about baptism with her and put her on date.  We think that she just needs a push and that if we put her on date, it will give her something to work towards.  We have been praying for her a lot.

This past Saturday we had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Mt. Timpanogos temple.  We did the session in Spanish, that was the first time I have done a session in Spanish.  We have been teaching a couple recent converts.  We love them so much, and they were receiving their endowments. We got permission to go.  Sister Traini, my last companion also was there which was really nice. What a special experience it was to be there for them.  A lot of ward members were there and a lot of people from American Fork were there that I knew.  It was really neat to do the session in spanish, I was able to catch onto things that I haven't before.  We are hoping in a few weeks that they can be sealed as a family with their kids.  There are some personal issues with that, we are praying really hard that they will be able to.

We had a zone training meeting this past week that was so good.  We talked a lot about talking with everyone.  When I served in my Provo, my zone leaders there were very good about talking with everyone and really helped the zone to be more excited about talking with everyone.  When we would go out to lunch as a district they would make us kneel down and pray and ask specifically where we should go eat so we could find more people to teach.  I definitely opened up a lot serving in Provo because we did that and because I was in a walking area and was able to talk to more people.  I know it is something that I need to keep getting better at.  Sometimes its really uncomfortable or awkward to talk to everyone that we see.  The zone leader that I had in Provo was actually at our zone meeting, he is an assistant now and he is very good at talking with everyone.  And he said something really interesting that I never thought of before he said "The Atonement of Jesus Christ has helped me so much in my life, I truly love my Savior and I know that he loves each and everyone of us and I want everyone to feel that, that is why I do everything I can to talk to everyone, I want them to feel the significance of the Atonement in their life...we have that message to share with everyone, we don't want to hold back".  My testimony of the Atonement has been strengthened so much since I have been on the mission, I truly know Jesus Christ and what he means to me.  Relating the Atonement to talking to everyone has given me the motivation to really do everything I can to talk to as much people as I can. 

I love serving a mission so much.  I really know that obedience brings blessing, and we can see miracles as we are exactly obedient and fully committed to serving the Lord.

I am so grateful for the gospel.  Virginia, I am so proud of you for being baptized, it sounds like it was a very special day for you.

Family- I love you so much, I miss you all a ton especially since the whole family is together and I am the only one gone but I know why I am here.  The gospel has blessed are family so much and I need to be here to share that with others.

Transfers are next week: I have no idea what is going to happen at all. We will see what Heavenly Father has in store for me.

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces

Another great week!

I need to do a little catch up.  Sorry I didn't do an email last week.  These past two weeks have been crazy but it has been a good kind of crazy. 

We had a baptism for Faith, a wonderful sister last Saturday and what a great day it was for her. There was a lot of craziness beforehand but it all worked out and she did get baptized.  Her mom gave the talk on the Holy Ghost and they have been less active for a long time so it was a big deal that she was giving a talk, she was really nervous about it.  She did such a good job, probably the best talk I have heard on the holy ghost.  She got really emotional.  She said something a long these lines "Faith I am so proud of you, I know we all say this a lot but you really do live up to your name, it is because of you and your desire to get baptized that we are back at church, I am so sorry I forgot how it felt, the gospel really does bless families and I know it will continue to bless ours". My companion, Sister Traini, and I were crying so much.  This family has come such a long way since we first started teaching them.  They want to start preparing to enter the temple to be sealed together as a family. 

We had a really great district training meeting.  My companion and I were in charge of the training and the theme for this month for our mission is "Making use of our time and making it more effective", we talked a lot about diligence and accountability in our training.  In Preach my Gospel it says that we need to be accountable our entire mission not just at the end of the mission, when we are set apart to be a representative of Jesus Christ we are accountable to the Lord.  We want to end our mission knowing that we were fully committed to the Lord and that we were accountable.  We ended our training listening to a song that was very fitting.  It is called "The hardest thing I have ever loved to do".  It talks a lot about the mission and just how we spend our time.  We told our district to reflect on their mission so far as they listen to this song.  One thing that I really liked that the song says is "the most sincere prayer I ever prayed, I thank my God each and every day".  The song starts with beginning the mission and saying goodbye to your families and all the other struggles that come from the mission that we deal with and then it ends with saying "the hardest thing I have ever had to do was getting on this plane and coming home to you".  Our whole district was crying by the end of the song, we all got very emotional.  The time that we have on the mission is so precious, we don't want to mess up that time.  We want to fully be committed to the Lord.  We closed with a scripture in Alma 36:24-25.  We invited our district to give an account to the Lord on our mission so far.  The spirit was so strong in that meeting, I know it was something our district really needed and they needed to feel that spirit again.  The spirit was not at our district meeting last week due to some things but this really helped our district come together and to be more unified.

We have been teaching a lot of people.  We have had a lot of work to do which has been great.  We are getting the wards more involved with helping with missionary work.  We have gotten a lot of referrals.  We have some really great investigators that could get on date for baptism soon. 

I want to give a shoutout to my niece Virginia, who is getting baptized this Saturday! I wish I could be there but know that I will be there in spirit.  I am so proud of the decision that you are making.  You are following the example of your Savior, Jesus Christ.  I will be thinking of you on Saturday. 

I love you all!

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces

Another wonderful week on the mission

This week was pretty good. It was a little slower as far as teaching lessons but we were still able to keep busy. 

We had a really great lesson with Brother M's wife.  He is going through a really hard time and it has been really hard on his wife and she is starting to lose a bit of faith.  We talked to her about the Restoration with her and we felt very prompted to invite her to be baptized, so we did and she paused and didn't say anything for like a minute and I was like o boy what did we just do and she said "yeah, I will do it, I need some time though, but I know for sure that it is something that I need to do".  I was in shock that she said that, I thought she was going to say no and be offended that we are pushing her too much but she said yes.  We were so excited with her answer.  We didn't set a date for her but this week we are going to pray about a day for her to be baptized and we hope that she can have that strong desire to prepare for that day.

We are teaching this family that is so awesome, we love them so much.  The parents were baptized over a year ago and before I got to the area they just went to the temple to get their endowments and get sealed.  None of their kids are members.  They have 2 daughters, that are 10 and 14 and they don't want to be baptized.  No one really knows that reason why.  They go to church every Sunday with their family and they go to mutual and the one girl is going to girls camp.  A lot of the past missionaries have tried working with them but they haven't been able to get them to be baptized.  So my companion and I have just tried talking with the girls to get them to open up more with us and we even had them paint our nails haha so that they could see we are normal people.  They have opened up a lot with us and they say they love it when we come over. We were able to help Julissa prepare a talk about Baptism and Confirmation and we explained why we need to be baptized because Jesus Christ set the example for us.  We also had a lesson with the whole family last night and it went really well.  The girls participated and they have never done that before.  We are very hopeful for them.  We are going to pray really hard this week and see if we can commit the girls for a baptism date.  It is going to take a lot of faith with them.

The English family that we are teaching has been going so well, their daughter Faith just had her baptism interview and passed! She is so excited to be baptized, she has such a sweet spirit.  This family has come such a long way since I first started teaching them, they have progressed so much.  They now are talking about working towards being sealed together in the temple, that will be such a special day for them.  Faith is getting baptized this Saturday and we are very excited for her and for the whole family.

We got a lot of referrals this past week that we need to contact which is awesome because we need more people to teach! We are very excited for what the rest of this transfer has for us.

I love being a missionary, it is the best thing that I have done.  I never want it to end! It will be the saddest day when I have to take off my missionary badge.  

I love you all, thanks for all the support.

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces 

Transfers and Baptism

This week was pretty stressful but it still was amazing!.  I was a little nervous about this past week because I was taking over the area and getting a new companion and we had 2 baptisms on Saturday and it was just a crazy week. 

Transfers can be a little crazy.  We wonder who our new companion is going to be or what area we will be in.  We wonder what Heavenly Father has in store for us.  President McCune said "ok Pleasant Grove Spanish area, Sister Garces you will be serving with.....he paused for a couple of seconds and said Sister Montanares! Sister Montanares and I both screamed a little bit and ran and gave each other a big hug.  I know Sister Montanares really well, we were in the same zone when I served in Provo.  She was companions with one of my former companion's, Sister Smith when she was sister training leader.  I have gone on exchanges with her a few times and we saw each other a lot when we served in Provo.  Every time we would see each other we would say "I could totally see us being companions one day, it is going to happen" and guess what we are companions now! We are so excited to be serving with each other, we already know so much about each other.  The end of our first day together we could tell that this was going to be a good transfer and that we would get a long very well!

I am the designated driver which has been interesting haha.  Its been good though, I actually know my way around Pleasant Grove more than I thought.  Also they changed our zone boundaries a little bit.  American Fork is now in my zone, so my old area is in my zone now which is pretty cool!

We had a lot of miracles happen this week, the first week of the transfer is always crazy.  I didn't think we were going to be able to teach as much but we did! We met all of our goals and taught 23 lessons and had 2 baptisms!  There was a little bit stress before the baptisms, we didn't think the font was going to be filled in time and then we thought it was going to over flow and all this other crazy stuff that happened.  The baptisms happened though, it was so great! After over 10 years investigating the church, brother F finally got baptized.  When he went in the water, I started to tear up because I knew that this has been a long journey for him and he finally did it. Anderson got baptized too, when he came out of the water, he smiled and looked so happy.  All the stress and craziness that was happening before the baptism didn't matter anymore, what mattered was that they were getting baptized.  A ton of missionaries were there, about 7 companionship's of sisters were there.  Brother F has been through a lot of set of missionaries.  My old companions Sister Smith and Sister Traini were there.  Sister Traini and I went through this whole process with Fabian and Anderson together and I will be pretty straight up, Sister Traini doesn't like to hug but she gave me a big hug.....and said "we did it, they did it, they are baptized, I love you Hermana".  We both had tears in our eyes.  I was kind of emotional through out the whole day because 2 other investigators that I taught in Provo and American Fork were getting baptized at the same time.  I was so sad I couldn't go to them but I was so happy for them that they were finally taking that step. 

We also got some referrals this week for new investigators and that is exactly what we need.  We just baptized 2 people and now we need to find more people.  We are so excited for what this transfer has in store.

We have another baptism coming up the 26th of this month for a 9 year old girl.  We got special permission to teach her and her family because there are English speaking and felt more comfortable having sisters.  The family has been less active for awhile and want their daughter to be baptized.  The whole family has progressed so much since we have taught them.  Their daughter, Faith is so cute.  We are really excited for her to be baptized. 

Family- So I heard that Germany won the world cup! That is awesome! Mom, I bet you were so happy! Charles and family, that's so great that you will be here for the summer...you all have fun together!

I love you all, thanks for everything.

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces

Grateful to serve in Pleasant Grove

Well, we have transfers this week and I am staying in the area and my companion, Sister Traini is leaving.  What an incredible transfer we have had together.  These past 6 weeks have gone by so fast but we have done so much together.  The beginning of the transfer we were only teaching about 7 lessons a week and this past week we taught 25 lessons this week, that is the number of our standards of excellence for our mission!!! So we were really excited last night when we reported numbers to our district leader and realized that we reached that number!

4th of July was so much fun!!! The entire mission walked in a parade in Provo.  I got to see all of my old companions and all the missionaries that I have served around.  It was so nice to catch up with everyone.  During the parade, I also saw a lot of people that I knew from my old areas! After the parade we had lunch with the entire mission and watched our mission slideshow.  Also later that day we were locked in a chapel from 5-9 with our district.  We watched Frozen, what a cute movie! We also played a lot of games.  We also saw some fireworks from our house but nothing compares to the fireworks in DC!

Brother F and Brother A had their baptism interviews and they both passed! They are ready! Keep them in your prayers this week.  Satan likes to work extra hard on investigators when it is close to their baptism! There is going to be at least like 15 missionaries there who taught brother F!

Tonight we have a lesson with big Brother M and his wife.  We are hoping to put his wife on date for baptism, we are going to have to trust in the spirit a lot for this lesson.

I am so grateful to be serving here in Pleasant Grove, it really is a great area! I am excited to take it over and a little nervous at the same time but I know that I need to still be in this area and that my new companion needs to be here too!

Shoutout to my Mom, I hope you had a great birthday this past week, I love you so much!!!

I love you all!

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces

Miracles and David Archuleta!!!

I don't even know how to start this weekly email. So many things happened this week.  I have come to realize that being a missionary is seriously the best thing in the world! I hit my year mark this week and have done a lot of reflecting.  I have come such a long way this past year, all the experiences, trials, etc have changed me into a better person.  I know what it means to truly love my Savior.  I have such a strong testimony of Him and His Atonement.  I can't believe I only have 6 months left, all I know is I am taking everything in and enjoying every second of it.

So Thursday we had a zone training meeting that was awesome! We talked a lot about setting goals.  We set a goal as a zone for how many baptism we could get for the month of July.  We set a goal of 30, we are all committed to it.  There is a lot of great things in store for the month of July.

That night we had a lesson with Anderson, we were on splits so I taught the lesson by myself with a returned missionary who just got home from Guatemala.  We talked about prophets, why we have prophets, and that we have a prophet today, Thomas S. Monson.  We watched a Mormon message with the prophet speaking and I told brother A to pay attention and think in his heart is Thomas S. Monson is really a prophet, watching him watch the video was neat, I could tell by his face that he really was feeling the spirit.  He's a little 12 year old boy and after the video, he said, wow, I believe he really is a prophet.  It was a great lesson.

On Friday we had such an amazing lesson with brother M's wife.  She was not interested at all at first, she would never sit in on the lessons.  She vented to us a lot about what she is going through with Miguel, he is a drug addict and he is still using.  He is up and down a lot.  I thought about my Dad a lot, I told her about my Dad that he used to drink, and take drugs and he met my Mom and she helped him overcome it and that the Gospel helped him and our family so much.  I told him, My Dad is so strong now, he knows this Gospel is true, he wouldn't have it any other way, and he needed my Mom by his side.  I told her brother M needs you, I know it is hard but he needs you by his side, you need to be there to life him back up again.  I was crying, my companions was crying and she was crying.  We invited her to start reading the Book of Mormon, we testified to her that reading everyday will help her to feel peace and that it will give her the strength to help brother M.  She told us that every time we come to her house she feels the spirit and feels so good.  It is amazing as a missionary that we carry this special spirit with us that people can really feel.

So another amazing thing!! Big Brother F (eternal investigator that has met with missionaries for over 10 years), he is getting baptized the 12th of July....it is happening! We met with him Saturday and he was like ok I am going to do it, the 12th it is!!! We are so excited for him.  We finally started telling members and missionaries about it, there is going to be a ton of missionaries there about 12 if not more!!! The members are so excited for him because they know it has been such a long journey for him.

So last night we had a missionary night fireside with one of our Spanish wards that we cover.  2 returned missionaries who just got home talked about their experiences, the purpose was to get the ward more excited about missionary work.  Anyways, someone walked in and I almost freaked out.  It was DAVID ARCHULETA!!!!!! Apparently he is friends with the Bishops family and they invited him.  I always knew he was a really great guy and all that.  I watched him on American Idol and I love his music...meeting him in person was really neat.  He is so humble.  He came up to my companion and I after the fireside and shook our hand, we had a conversation in Spanish. It was awesome, and he said my Spanish was really good haha.  Never thought anyone would say my spanish was really good and having David Archuleta say that to me was unreal....I asked him about his mission in Chile....he loved it so much, he told me these last 6 months of my mission is such a precious time that I need to take everything in and enjoy it because it will go by fast...he said you are blessing so many lives because you decided to serve.  I could feel the spirit so strongly when I talked to him.  I felt like I was talking to a normal person that I have known forever.  You can tell he has such a strong testimony of this Gospel.  I would of asked for a picture with him but I felt like that would have kind of been inappropriate since we were at a church event and I am a missionary haha.....so yeah never thought in a million years that I would meet David Archuleta on my mission...but then again I serve in Utah haha. 

So yeah that was my week, pretty awesome stuff!

We have transfers next, who knows what will happen.  All I know is that I don't want my mission to end. 

I love you all!

Love,
Hermana Veronica Garces