Lindsay - November 9, 2015

The Sisters at Zone Conference

Hello everyone!! I hope you all had a fantastic week! This week has been awesome but crazy! Another sister from our zone had to return home early due to health reasons, so the other sister, Sister Condie is joining our companionship! So we are in a trio! It has been awesome!!! But we are also covering Pima and Hidden Valley wards! So basically we are covering 3 wards for 2 weeks! It has been crazy, but we are having So much fun together! We put our beds right next to each other so it feels like we are having a sleep over every night! Also Sister Grange likes to wrestle with me on the beds, and she always says, "you are a fighter!" She is preparing me for when I return home so I can be fit enough to wrestle Taylor and Spencer!! Haha!!! 

So here are the highlights of my week!  On Tuesday I went on exchanges with Sister Charles! She is an amazing missionary! She is also training, so that has been a stressful thing for her. But we had so much fun together! We also had a busy day too, so that was good! We helped a member sew some Christmas PJ's for her family! She sews 32 pairs of pajamas for all her children and grandchildren! It was so fun! And of course she took a lot of pictures and sent them to our moms:) she was such a sweet lady! We also taught a little girl who has Down syndrome! She was the cutest little thing! It was just such a great experience to be in a family ward for a day! I miss that atmosphere so much! Everyone becomes your family, and they just welcome you in! Not that YSA isn't like that, but it's just different:) 

On Wednesday we had an awesome lesson with Ria! She has had two or three baptismal dates, but she has postponed baptism for some reason. But we had an awesome lesson about the spirit and we brought a newly returned missionary with us! She was awesome and the spirit was so strong! And she set a date for December 11th!!! We about exploded when we left the house! We were so happy! And Sister Grange has taught her since May so she was flipping out! 

On Thursday we had zone conferences!! I love them so much! I got to see my trainer Sister Mizell and my MTC companion! They are actually companions right now! Isn't that crazy? The thing that stuck out to me in zone conferences was how to effectively study. Sister Passey did the training and she really helped me a lot! She said, "when you study with your investigators in mind, you also study for yourself". That is something that I struggle with! It is so hard for me to study for my investigators, when I want it study for myself so I can become a better and more effective teacher! But I realized that I will become a better teacher, if I forget about myself, study for my investigators' lessons and just go out and work! 

On Friday we served lunch at the YSA dollar lunch!! So fun! Then we also had another lunch with our neighbor! And we had a big dinner that night too! So on Friday, Sister Condie joined our companionship! It has been so much fun! That night we had an awesome dinner with a family in Sister Condie's wards. They also had the elders over too! The mother was hilarious! She would just tell story after story about her job and the interesting and hilarious customers that come in every day! By the end of each story, Sister Grange and I were literally crying because we were laughing so hard. Actually when Sister Grange laughs really hard, she always cries, so I laugh even harder when she does that:) Sister Condie and the elders weren't laughing that hard so it was kind of embarrassing:) 

On Saturday we had a lesson with a former investigator! He is a professional soccer player, so he is busy a lot. But he contacted us and so we set up a lesson with him! The spirit was so strong, and we set a baptismal date! And on top of that, he came to stake conference which was amazing! After that we had a lesson with an investigator from Sister Condie's area. He acted really strange throughout the whole lesson. He had made some wrong decisions in his life, and I know that Satan was working on him. He was really fidgety and nervous, and he talked about having voices in his head, belittling him, ridiculing him etc. It was scary! By the end of the lesson, we were literally emotionally drained. It was sad because he refused all of the invitations like coming to church and even receiving a priesthood blessing! I think at this point, he doesn't trust anyone, and he is scared of everyone, and he has reached a certain point of paranoia that is destructive!  

On Sunday we enjoyed going to Stake conference! Elder Oaks was the  apostle that gave the talk! It was so good! Elder Corbridge was also one of my favorite talks! He spoke about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints will not fall, and that the adversary will not destroy it! It was so powerful! We also had a lesson with Brian and Kara! They are our favorite! They are striving so hard to put God first in there lives! Kara is getting baptized on the 21st and we are so excited about that! Before we met them, Brian was less active and Kara didn't really believe in God, but now, Kara believes in God, loves the scriptures, and they both came to church on Sunday! It's amazing! 

Well, that's my week, I love you all!! 

Sister Dunn 

Doing service on exchanges with Sister Charles

Holli - November 9, 2015

Dinner with the Mission President and his wife and kids 

(Rickie and Becky) Those rolls were the bomb by the way :) 

Hello Everyone!

This week was pretty normal - nothing too exciting happened.

We are teaching this family (the Mak's) and it's pretty slow going. We are mainly teaching Anthony who is the husband and he is struggling with the idea of a loving Heavenly Father - he is pretty atheist but he has a desire to learn about God so we are working with that! During our lesson with him though, his mom (who only speaks Chinese) was
sitting on the couch watching this Chinese movie and the volume was turned up so loud and it made it so hard to listen to the Spirit! It was this really violent Chinese movie and we were trying to teach Anthony about faith, hope, love etc. so it was pretty tough! Thankfully the movie kept glitching so it got a little better - Heavenly Father was watching out for us!

We did splits on Wednesday with two girls from the young women (Lydia and Kyara) and it was pretty cool. We walked a lot, got lost, and finally when we were walking home we got ambushed by an anti. Interesting experience for Lydia but it was fun!

The Ausen's (Brother Ausen is our Ward mission leader) are an absolutely amazing family. Most of the Ward is so geared for missionary work and it's so awesome! However the Ausen's have been traveling a lot so our work has been a bit rocky but we sat down with them yesterday and they helped us with lots of different ideas to keep the Ward fired up about missionary work.

We had exchanges Saturday and I went to Sunland with Sister Thatcher.  They’re trying this new tracting approach where we try to get people to fill out this survey and teach them the Restoration at the same time. It kind of 

worked! We knocked doors from 3-6 and finally this one lady opened to us (Nancy) and she was way sweet! She had a daughter who was LDS who had passed away pretty recently. Nancy told us growing up she would go to 

church but it never fully clicked with her. One question on the survey was, do you want to be happier then you are now? Nancy said she had never really been happy her entire life. She felt she had always been kind of depressed. Super sad - she said she's just fine staying this way - she’s 

older and tired and has kind of given up ever since her daughter died.  However she did accept a return appointment - we gave her a rundown of the Plan of Salvation so hopefully she progresses and wants to keep learning more!

We had dinner with the Villanuevas Friday night! Talk about pressure! Sister Maughan came up with an awesome spiritual thought though so it worked great! We had an awesome lesson with Yiwei last night. He is super 

smart and was a referral from Brother Jensen. We taught him about the Restoration and and the Spirit was so strong! 

Yeah, overall kind of a rougher week here in Arcadia but it's still good! This area has lots of potential - the Lord knows what He's doing, and we are enjoying to the end!

Love you all so much - thank you for your love and support!

Love, Sister Dunn

Chelsea - November 9, 2015

Last pic of our apartment before Sister Mariano is transferred

Transfers and new companionships

Hello everyone! 

So this week has definitely been the hardest week of my life! So first on Monday, we were able to do an FHE with the Manibog family! So Jessa is the recent convert and the mom is a less active and the dad and the rest of the kids aren’t members. (We are gonna try to teach the fam later!) Anyways, the family home evening was so great and literally, watching them all gather around the hymnbook singing families can be together forever was probably the best moment this week. Also when we told them Sister Mariano was getting transferred, Jessa almost started crying. Ahhhh its so sad!!

So good news! We were eating dinner at the Martinez family on Tuesday night and our phone starts ringing and its President Rahlf. Sister Mariano is a new Sister Training Leader!!!! Oh my goodness she was just crying and crying and I went up to her and we were just hugging and crying and I was like I’m so proud of you!! Such a sweet moment with my nanay!!

So pretty much goodbyes were the worst. I was a mess on transfer day and I couldn’t stop crying. Oh and Sister Mariano is assigned in Cauayan!!! Haha! It was like the one place she didn’t want to go to, and I totally predicted Cauayan like 2 months ago and so when the ZL read the list off and he said Sister Mariano in Cauayan she and I both just screamed and laughed haha! But I know she’s gonna be great.

 

So my new companion is Sister Balaoing! She is Filippina (from Bikol or something like that) and she's 27! She and Sister Mariano are total opposites so its been a bit of an adjustment. She is so energetic and loud and oh man.. its been hard. But she is such a good teacher and really good in contacting. So we are always going to have about 100 contacts a week! haha. 

So at church yesterday, we had two less actives come! One is sister Jona de la cruz. She and her family are so poor that they have to work on Sunday. But she was able to come to sacrament meeting and sunday school. I literally almost cried when I saw her. She hasn’t been to church in more than a year! So it was a miracle! 

So this has definitely been a stressful week leading the area! But its been pretty fun. Lets just say that I have never talked more Tagalog in my life haha. The gross food for this week: Balut and bread with mayo. Dont worry, I didn’t eat it. I really don’t eat any food anymore because I just throw it all up or get a super upset stomach! haha. So anyway we were at an appointment and this lady fed us balut and bread with mayo and I literally almost threw up watching them eat it.  She gave me a pear! She’s so great! 

So ya, that’s about it this week! I definitely feel like God is magnifying what little efforts I can put forth! I’m trying my best, but I obviously have limited skills, but I think that God knows this would be a hard week so he definitely made my burden light. 

Love you all!

Sister Dunn

Haha we bought marshmallows and the next day there were like a thousand ants in the package, but since we are so poor, we just ate them anyway! hhahahah

Taylor - November 9, 2015

Hey! Doing pretty good, just loving the mission life! I don't have to give District Training this week because of Zone Training.  Zone conferences are also coming up so that should be fun! 

We are still working with the two part member families and they came to church and they loved it! Unfortunately neither of them are married so we have a lot of work to do.  We are really using the ward members well and I know as we continue to work with the ward we will be able to get them married and baptized! The Latin members in the ward will probably throw a huge fiesta for them when they get married. It will be awesome! 

We did have a hard time finding new investigators this week and we feel part of it is that we need to work on inspired finding. We need to make sure we are really following the spirit and aware of it constantly so we don't miss the opportunities to find those that are ready and waiting and that have been prepared by the Lord. The District did well this week and both sisters had baptisms so that was great! 

Wow mom sounds like you had a big week with all the yard work and fun activities, super cool! Be careful Dad you don't want to go too hard, you are getting up there in years! ;) 

Dad you're totally right, sometimes we need to take the leap of faith even when we think we can't do something and the Lord will help us and guide us through. I had a comp study recently with the Palm Beach sisters and I had no idea what I was going to do it on. I had tried to prepare and had a few notes. I started off with some questions that I had written down from preach my gospel. At this moment I can't remember them sorry.(by the way do you guys study preach my gospel? If not Hint: it's the best thing ever and it's not just for missionaries!) Anyways, so I asked the questions and then somehow with discussion I felt impressed to talk about how they are working as a companionship and how they can use the talents and skills that they both have and combine them to become better missionaries! They said it was just what they needed and super inspired! Anyways miracles do happen! And thanks for the thoughts on being a leader mom. I'm definitely trying to get better but there is always room to improve! Well sorry I have to go but thanks so much for the email! 

Love you guys!

Elder Dunn