Lindsay - August 10, 2015

Gilbert Arizona Temple

Attending the Rigby's Sealing

Hey Everyone!! 

I hope you are all doing well! This week was definitely a week of planting seeds! We were able to contact a lot of people on their doorsteps and set returning appointments to come back. On Wednesday we had a zone meeting! We discussed a saying called BLT (Be bold, be loving, and testify of the Savior). We also worked on role plays. I feel like every missionary dislikes role playing! It is always awkward and for me, I always mess up! Plus the people that are the investigators just tell you what you need to work on so I feel like it is a little discouraging. But its ok! I need more practice! So Sister Moe-Tufaga and I are really working on improving ourselves in role playing! 

On Thursday we tried A LOT of people. This week was the first week of school, so in between 2-4 during the day, its hard to catch people at a good time. Thankfully we came in contact with some people and they told us to come back! On Friday, we had interviews with President Passey (SCARY!!) haha! Just kidding. It was great! To be honest, every time I speak with him I literally start bawling. He always has the Spirit with him, and it is so strong! He gives such good advice, and he is also really funny! On Fridays we weekly plan so that was fun! Sister Moe-Tufaga is a great planner, so I am glad that we have effective planning sessions.

So crazy story!!!! We were walking to one of our set appointments with a less active. We saw a family outside by their car just talking. I had a strong feeling that we should talk with them, but I didn't want to act on it because we were going to an appointment. But our appointment ended up not following through so we walked to another less actives apartment. Then Sister Moe-Tufaga blurted out, "I have a feeling that we should talk to that family over there!" It was the same family, and I said, "I had a feeling to talk to them to!" And so Sister Moe-Tufaga said, "Ok, let's go!" We talked with them, and found out that the guy was Catholic, and that he had a girlfriend and a son. We gave them a Book of Mormon, and sneaked in a pass a long card with our number in it! I am so glad that we acted on that prompting. Sister Moe-Tufaga and I have a goal about following promptings. Its called the 5 Second Rule:  When we get a prompting, spit it out before 5 seconds is out! Cause then we can act on it! So we are striving to accomplish that goal! 

On Saturday, we went to a sealing for a couple, the Rigby’s, who are returning members! They are the sweetest, and they have a little boy Aven who is the cutest thing! So my last companion Sister Mizell was invited to the sealing, and we got approval from our mission president to go so she traveled from Sierra Vista! We went to the Gilbert, Arizona temple! It is a beautiful temple! It was my first time attending a sealing! It was an amazing experience! Before the sealing, we went to Café Rio!! (Yes!!!) Then we attended the sealing, took pictures and ate dinner at Joe's BBQ. They home make rootbeer! It was amazing Dad, you would have loved it! So this week was great, and to top it off, I went to the temple! 

The Lord has truly blessed my life here on my mission! He has definitely given me sweet and peaceful feelings in my heart when I have discouraging days. I feel like Heavenly Father and Jesus are pushing me to press forward, and that additional knowledge and blessings will come if I keep persevering! I love this gospel, and I know that it is true! It has blessed my life, and I am so grateful for the foundation that the gospel gives me. I love you all, thank you to the Young Women in the ward who wrote me letters! You have no idea how much impact you have in my life! You girls are amazing friends! I hope you all have a great week!

Sincerely,

Sister Dunn

Taylor - August 11, 2015

Hey Family,

So there was only Zone Training this week Zone conference will be on the 18th! Zone Training was pretty good, they talked a lot about promising specific blessings. Basically our goal is to focus on desires and instead of being general and saying "you will be blessed" or "you will feel peace and happiness in your life" even though those things are true we need to make sure they are specific so they have a reason to change, so they have that real desire. It was really good, I learned a lot from it! 

My life (attempting)😉 to be a leader is going good. I definitely have so much to learn though, but I'm doing my best! Yes it's definitely hot and humid, but more or less I'm pretty used to it. Exercise is going good, though Elder Willhite doesn't like to run, haha but we work out pretty hard so that's good, plus we have a bowflex machine in our house which is nice! 

So this week we got more members out with us which helped us out a lot and creating friends/fellow-shippers for our investigators! One of our investigators is going to be out of town until the 16th, but she has already read the first 6 chapters of first Nephi! Her favorite part was 1 Nephi 3:7, she said it really hit her which was super cool! Cindy and Danyo and the other investigators had some event that they had been planning for a while so they couldn't make it to church but the Noche de Hogar(FHE) with them went really well. The issue with Cinday and Danyo is that they aren't married so we will have to work that out. The ward has really friend-shipped them so with some work everything should be good. We also really did our best trying to find those who were ready to receive us. We found a couple cool milagros (contacting someone we had knocked into earlier) that had met the missionaries before but they were teaching her brother and not her. She wasn't able to make it to church but we have a return cita for Tuesday. 

For a lot of the week though we weren't having too much success. We picked a few spots out and prayed about them during comp study which was one of our goals to improve on. So we went over how we could improve and came up with some good ideas, like changing the door approach, being more personable, just basically have finding people be our focus. Also like you guys have mentioned, just following the spirit and relying on the lord, and praying specifically for those who are ready to make that step of baptism! 

I'm loving this work, there's so much to learn and improve on but that is one of the big reasons I'm out here! I love the Latin people and I definitely have a soft spot for them in my heart! The ward is super boss and missionary minded.  We just have to fire them up to look for missionary opportunities for themselves instead of just feeding the missionaries, haha jk.  I love gaining weight eating rice and beans! Anyways love you guys! Thanks for everything!

Elder Dunn

P.S. maybe pics next week ;) sorry mom 

Holli - August 10, 2015

Hello Everyone!!

Yesterday was Zone conference so our pday was moved to today! Sorry about that!

Holy smokes our week was crazy - so much stuff happened. So we had exchanges this week and it was so fun. I went to Azusa and Hermana Janes was my companion - she's the best! We had to do some service for this lady named Margo and her daughter Catherine who is the investigator. They were super sweet but Margo is very talkative! We were sweeping and they have two dogs, a few cats, and some chickens so it was fly city out there! They were everywhere and they bite too. We were showing Catherine the Restoration video and I probably looked like some crazy person batting at my legs the whole time - unfortunately I had been in basketball shorts while everyone else had pants so I was a prime target for the flies. Margo says all they're doing is looking for a meal . . . Thanks Margo. I would prefer to keep my blood in my body. So we had grilled cheese, hot dogs, and ice cream for lunch . . . That was awesome! We also stopped to help this lady get some groceries in her house. Man I thought I was a junk food maniac. She had muffins and cookies and soda and two roasted chickens that smelled so good! We tried desperately to set up a return appointment :) preferably a dinner one. She has the cutest family too. She works two jobs so that might be tricky for the Azusa sisters. In the house where the Azusa sisters live, they had a bit of a cockroach problem. I did see one crawling up the side of the bathroom sink so I grabbed the toilet paper tube and prepared to smash, but when I looked back over it had disappeared! Weird. Poor Sister Janes was freaking out.

We managed to fix my bike this week! We stopped by a Potential Investigators house and he and his family were out with the neighborhood kids. We had planned to stop by and do a final check to see if he was really interested but the kids ended up talking to us for about an hour straight. They were super cute and funny but man they were talkers! One of the boys asked me if I played sports. I told him I used to play basketball and he asked if I would play basketball with him. I glanced down at my skirt and kind of laughed but then said that we missionaries couldn't play. I felt kind of bad. We happened upon a less active and she has the cutest black lab named Maggie who is 4 months old. So cute but crazy hyper! We had dinner with this member the other night and they have 3 cute but crazy boys! It was fun just to sit and watch them play together - but we all got exhausted doing it! 

We did service for one of the members in our Ward (Candace). We were basically separating her daughters things from her things. While we were moving boxes Candace found her mother-in-laws urn but when we looked inside . . . No mother-in-law! Sister Duncan and I looked very hesitantly in the box for her remains while Candace ranted a bit. We walked into the hallway and there was this dust on the floor. Candace said that could have been her. Needless to say we gave that pile a wide berth. 

We met this guy named Tye on the street the other day. We had offered to help him with something but then he just offered to grab us water. He disappeared inside his garage for a few minutes and then he called us over. He gave us the water and then he handed me two eggs and a lime. Ok . . . what? I guess it was a very nice gesture . . . He put the eggs and the lime in this plastic bag and tied it to my handlebars. That was fun.

We stopped by the Zimmermanns last night and had a good lesson with them. They are our eternal investigators. We handed them off to the ward but may pick them back up sometime in the future. Brother Zimmermann was raised Jewish so he has lots of concerns with our religion but he loves what it's doing for his son so kind of a dilemma. They'll get there eventually! 

The Senior comp. thing is going better, thanks for asking :) There's just so much to apply that I learned from Sis. Robinson that it gets stressful but I'm learning so much! I had a pretty good week this week and it's getting a lot better. I just want to say thanks - for all of the encouragement, advice, love, and support - definitely needed. I love you so much. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. I hope this next week is a good one!

Well that's about all from Claremont! We are both doing well. Sister Duncan did manage to biff it on her bike yesterday but she's all good! We had a good laugh together :) She landed on her gears wrong so I tried to fix it . . . haha. We ended up running into a member who fixed it in like two seconds so I got bike grease on my hands for nothing! 

Love you all so much and can't thank you enough for all of the love and support I felt this week. Thanks especially to the amazing YW in our Ward - you guys totally made my day with all of your letters!! Hope the week is amazing!

Love, Sister Dunn

Chelsea - August 10, 2015

Thanks Eagle 2nd Ward Primary Kids!

Kumusta everyone!

Wow this week has been such a busy one! 

FOOD: Haha okay so this week at the Busanias, they had pork and chicken barbeque. It was so good and reminded me of America so much haha. Haha so we had the elders over as well and everyone was talking in Tagalog super fast, and Elder Sirata and I were just sitting there trying to figure everything out... hahaha so funny. So Im sending you a picture of my favorite food here. Its at a restaurant at Payongs and its called bihon. Except I was eating it the other day, and there was some pig skin that had hair on it.. so that kinda turned me off hahah. So I definitely ate the grossest thing this week. There is this dish called kare kare and its pretty much peanut butter and pieces of cow fat. It was literally so disgusting haha. Its like chewing rubber and glue.... so gross. haha I also ate the tail of a fish. Its like eating crackers here. haha. also gross...

HEALTH: haha so I got a bug this week mom. Good thing is I lost a couple of pounds! hahaha. but Sister Rahlf got me on an antibiotic so I'm doing okay I think!

RANDOM: Haha super random, but filipino time here is so real. ohhhh man it bugs me! haha. like even my companion eats sooo slow, like an hour for each meal. And then whenever we go to Santiago, the van drivers are so slow and we are constantly stopping and im like, hello I have places to go and people to see here! Haha defintitely teaching me patience. We have two hours on p-day to write home but the internet is soooooo slow. it drives me insane. So I sometimes don’t even have time to read all my letters... but I made time today because I had no idea how Holli, Lindsay, Chelsea, and Taylor were doing! 

LESSONS: Haha so we were teaching a lesson to one of our investigators. She told us all about how she was really depressed before. She had a kid and she was having financial problems so she started to go crazy. She said that she would bang her head against the wall and then her family took her to a facility where they locked her in a room with no doors and tranquilized her twice... so when she was sharing that, Sister Mariano and I were kinda screaming inside haha. The creepiest thing though was that there was a rain storm outside that was super bad. She told us that we could sleep in her house if we couldn't go home. Haha I was so scared!  After she said that, I literally had a vision of her killing us in the night haha. But anyways, we set a baptism date with her so ya! She's doing great haha! So we have two baptisms this Saturday! One with CJ who is 9 and one with Joy who is 23. They both got interviewed this week and are ready to go. We are so excited!  Ahh so Brian! We had a lesson with him this week and he told us that he didn't want to get baptized. Pretty much cause he's scared of his parents reaction. But in reality, he wants a change so much in his life. His cousin then started sharing her experience with getting baptized and how she felt the same way and was also really hard headed about it. She started bawling talking about it and then Brian literally started weeping. A 15 year old boy, desperately wanting a change in his life, weeping! Oh man, it was such a good lesson. Then on Sunday, we were walking in the church, and I saw him at the end of the hall and he just shouted, "Sister Dunn!" And I was like Brian!! Oh man, he was so much happier that day and I really hope he follows through because it will bless him so much! 

SISTER MARIANO: So Sister Mariano is pretty much amazing! She has taught me so many things here! One thing this week in particular she has taught me is persistence. So during contacting, we just share a simple message, and if they seem interested we can ask to visit them. So usually, everyone doesn't seem interested, so I'm always like, let's go Sister Mariano, cause I just hate awkward situations, but she always keep persisting. Haha so we were taking a van from Guribang to Diffun and this girl was on it. She went to QSU, a college in diffun , and it so happened that we were going to QSU to teach a lesson. We talked to her a little bit and then we got off, Sister Mariano asked if we could walk with her to QSU, which was like a 20 minute walk. haha I was kinda groaning inside. Sister Mariano then gave her a run down of the restoration, and the girl, rosemarie, was just silent after and it was super awkward. Then,, after we got to QSU, Sister Mariano asked Rosemarie to come sit on the lesson! Next thing we know, the girl we were supposed to teach didn't show up, and we are teaching Rosemarie. And then.. next thing you know, we ask her to say the closing prayer and she just starts bawling, asking God for help to face her trials! So definitely, Sister Mariano is all about persisntence. She has such an eternal perspective on this missionary work and truly sees all these people as her brothers and sisters. So that is what I'm striving to be like on this mission!

There have just been so many tender mercies this week! We have 14 investigators with baptismal dates and 6 new investigators! We also have multiple contacts we have to visit! So there is just a ton of work to do! Something that we have really talked about this week is member and missionaries working together. Literally, a ton of the work is in the members. Sometimes the Lord works through the members, not the missionaries! So every lesson that we teach to members, we encourage them to find someone who really needs this gospel message in their life. We are so blessed to have the truth that we should have a desire to share it with everyone! It can definitely be hard, and intimidating, and weird, pero, there is no harm in it! Okay, I think thats about it! We have such a busy week ahead of us. We have zone meeting tomorrow, we go to Cauayan on Wednesday for new missoinaries meeting (I get to see my district!) and then we have CSP with the district on Friday and we have two baptisms on Saturday! So super busy! But I'm loving it! Have a great week everyone! 

Sister Dunn

Caribou taking a bath.  So cute haha!

CJ getting interviewed by our District Leader Elder Franzuela.
CJ is literally the cutest kid ever haha.