Redlands Temple

Be Not Weary in Well-Doing

10/20/14

So this week Elder Evans, from the Quorum of the Seventy and the head of the Missionary Dept., came to talk to our mission.  It was awesome! We met for a couple of hours, but it didn't feel like that.  It went by so quickly.  He gave us a lot of good advice and, man, was the Spirit strong there.  At one point in the meeting he was gave us advice on finding.  He told us one of the best ways to improve finding new investigators is by not just talking TO people, but it's by talking WITH people.  Listen to them sincerely, teach based on what they've said, and then ask for referrals based on the things they've said.  At the end of talking about this, he walked into the aisle, looked me directly in the eye, and said "I promise if you do these things, you'll have more people to teach." And he promised a couple of other things too, but it was really powerful.  I felt like he was staring into my soul and promising it directly to me.  Which he was! Because we've tried our hardest to implement what he said and we got 7 referrals this week! Some of them are for places other than here, but still, it's pretty awesome seeing how inspired what he said was.  

The entire meeting was full of great stuff and I wish I could include it all, but just know it was awesome.  I know our church leaders are inspired and lead by God.  

I don't have a lot of time to write more today, but I want to include the scripture D&C 64:33.  It says:

"Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.  And out of SMALL THINGS proceedeth that which is great." 

I love that.  It's such a great scripture in relation to missionary work.  At times, it feels like we're not making a whole lot of progress, but in reality, that's not true.  ALL of our efforts, even the ones that don't seem to be showing a lot of fruit right away, work to make GREAT things happen.  I know that to be true.  And this scripture doesn't just apply to missionary work.  It applies to every good thing we do in life.  The small and simple efforts, the small things we do for other people all work to bring about bigger results. 

Sending lots of love from sunny California! 

Con mucho amor, 

Hermana Horne 

Milagros are Real!

10/13/14

This week has been great! So many miracles have occurred! 

God has definitely put us in the right place at the right time.  I don't even know what to write about, there have been so many good experiences. And it has been a CRAZY week.  We taught 27 lessons this week, which was crazy.  Yesterday we had an appointment every hour from 2 to 8, on top of church and studies. We didn't have lunch and had a 15 minute dinner.  It was insane.  But somehow we survived it.  And we had a ton of great, super spiritual lessons that day.  And we brought members to our lessons which made them so much better.  We try to get members to as many lessons as possible, but these lessons were GREAT with the members.  

Anyways, to try to cover the great things this week here's my top ten:

1. Finding David (I was in a parking lot and prayed that God would lead me to who needed what I had to say, and I was led to David.  We've taught him twice.  God DEFINITELY sent us to him) 

[David's story is included at the end of this post.]

2.  Alejandro the investigator... he's the bomb. 

3.  We went to the Redlands temple last week! It was so awesome! 

4.  Sav's mission call!!!! To Boise, Idaho! I'm so stoked for her. Incredible future missionary:)

5. Our recent convert, Roxana, is an INCREDIBLE missionary.  We were eating lunch with her and an investigator in between conference session.  We got up from the table, came back, and she was telling him all about why the gospel was so great and how much it changed her life.  He has issues with tithing so then she basically taught the tithing lesson.  It was awesome.  

6.  Met and had a great lesson with Jacquline, who is SO spiritual and SO sweet!

7.  Left a great blessing with Jacquline's son, Byron and his gf,Yolanda.

8.  Carlos (member) got a ride to a lesson with us! That was seriously a miracle.  We REALLY wanted him there, but he doesn't have a car and we can't drive him.  But we prayed for a miracle and it happened.  And it was a great lesson! He could be an MTC teacher (and his picture is in La Palabra de Sabaduria pamphlet that we teach with so he's basically a celebrity).

9. Mario (investigator) is keeping commitments! 

10. SO MANY ANSWERS TO PRAYERS THIS WEEK!

Love you all!   Con mucho amor, 

Hermana Horne 

[David's Story]  We were OYMing (just like talking to people we saw) in the parking lot of Stater Brothers. I only needed to talk to one more person (because as a companionship we talk to 20 ppl a day). And I had ended up by the door of Stater Bros.  I thought I saw people coming out so I prayed to Heavenly Father to send the person that needed to hear what I had to say out the door.  I waited and waited and no one came. I looked up across the parking lot and saw a man standing by his car with the door open.  He had been there earlier but I hadn't talked to him.  But since he was still there and he was the ONLY other person in the parking lot, I went to talk to him.  I asked him if he had faith in Jesus Christ and he said not anymore.  So I asked him what had happened that made him loose his faith.  We got to talking and apparently his wife left him for another man (although they still live in the same house), he lost his job, he might lose his kids, and his wife was helping him with his papers (he's from Mexico) but that's probably not going to happen anymore.  I told him how dad lost his job and how having faith in Christ and knowing that God was looking out for us really helped us through hard times.  I also testified about the power of prayer.  That in the moments when I felt the most alone, that's when I prayed the hardest, and that's when I felt God's presence in my life. That got to him.  He agreed to have us come by and talk to him.  Then Hermana Juarez came up and testified of prayer as well, and we committed him to try praying. 

I called him two days later and he had prayed and he said it helped calm him down.  So I told him that was the Holy Ghost.  And we've met with him twice since then.  Our last lesson with him was last night, in an awesome member's home and it was great.  The member mentioned how God places people in our path when the timing is right, when we need it.  David said he knew that was true and pointed at me and said "And it's all her fault." I'm SO glad I went up to talk to him.  I was originally just not going to.  But God didn't send anyone out the Staters Bros. door (which is weird because it looked like people were going to come out), and I was led to David.  He knows what he's doing up there. So that was really cool.  And our lessons with him have been great.  He's still trying to find his faith, but he's willing to try, which is the first step.  

Llena Espiritualmente (Spiritually Full)

10/6/14

Okay first and foremost, General Conference was the bomb.  I loved all of it! I feel so spiritually full! 

I have so many favorite talks, but the one on my mind right now is the talk given by Elder Bednar on Sunday afternoon.  He spoke directly to nonmembers and invited them to "Come and See." Come and see why members have such a desire to share the gospel.  Come and see all the blessings that it can bring.  It was so good.  And recognizing all the blessing and happiness that this gospel, this church, has brought to my life and wanting to share those blessings with others is exactly the reason why I decided to serve a mission.  And that's exactly why we try to invite everyone we talk to to "Come and See." 

Anyways, this week was great. 

We picked up some investigators and had a lot of cool experiences this week.  One experience we had on Friday night was pretty interesting.  We were going to teach someone who has already been taught by the missionaries before, but they dropped them for a little while.  So we decided we might try to pick them back up.  We knew they had been taught the Restoration before and were planning on talking about prophets and General Conference, not really the Restoration so much.  But right before we went into their house we both got the feeling that we might end up teaching the Restoration, so we grabbed a pamphlet for it.  We went in and talked to the mom, Teresa, for a while.  She wasn't feeling very well, so we talked to her about the priesthood and priesthood blessings. The conversation didn't even start heading towards talking about the Restoration.  Halfway through the lesson her neighbor came to the door.  He was going to come back later but saw that we were missionaries and said "I want to see what's going on here." He sat in the kitchen and talked to her husband for the rest of our chat with the Teresa, but when we invited them to pray with us he jumped up with a bunch of accusatory comments about how our belief in Jesus Christ isn't the same.  We both testified of how we know that Jesus Christ is our Savior and the testimony we have of him.  That quieted him on that subject, but he had a bunch of other problems with the church (basically just looking for a way to prove us wrong) and we answered each one of them either with testimony or scripture.  And we ended up teaching the Restoration and giving him the pamphlet we had brought.  We finished the conversation with him still being a little confrontational, but it was cool that we had ended up teaching the Restoration when our original lesson had not got that way. And it was really powerful to me, because I was able to feel the Spirit so strongly and there was not one question or comment he had that we didn't have an answer for.  While it's never fun to have someone attack your belief, this experience was definitely a testament to me that this church IS true.  We were guided and directed by the spirit and teaching the principles he asked about just confirmed to me the truth of them. 

That was just one of many faith-building experiences this week.  

Con mucho amor, 

Hermana Horne 

Picante

9/29/14

Big news this week: I ate a chili pepper.  For those that know me well, you know that I don't do spicy well.  So this was a big deal for me. I was feeling brave.  Even Hermana Juarez told me I was crazy for doing it.  But she also told me it'd make my Spanish better.  I'm still waiting for that part to come true though... But it was PICANTE (spicy)!  Like killer spicy.  I felt like I literally had flames sitting on my tongue.  I chugged so much milk, but it didn't do much.  But eventually my tongue just  started going numb...  So that was an experience. 

Embarrassing moment of the week: So we had dinner last night with a great family in our ward.  We got to the door and I did the super cliche knock that's like *Dun-nun-nuh-nuh...nuhh-nuhh* (you know what I mean, right?). Their son-in-law opened up the door really quickly and was like "You didn't." Hermana Juarez just pointed to me.  He was like "You didn't really just do that."  I thought he was saying that because it's super cliche or something, so I was kind of confused.  But then he was like, "That's really bad." I asked why and apparently when you do that in Hispanic culture it's like a series of bad words.  I had no idea. I was pretty embarrassed. So that was that. 

Other than that, we're still working hard to find new investigators.  And having fun along the way (we fed a horse on the side of the road one day and have found some pretty good overlooks of the valley). 

Yesterday, though, a family walked into Sacrament Meeting like halfway through and they looked a little familiar, but we didn't know from where.  We went up and talked to them afterwards and apparently we had talked to them like a month ago in the park and invited them to church! We set up an appointment to see them this Thursday and want to come to church again.  So that was sweet! BUT, we share the ward with two sets of elders and when we looked up the family's address we found out that they're in the Elder's area.  So that's a bummer, but the Elders are great so they'll be good to teach them! And it's awesome that they came! Especially since it's been like a month since we last talked to them.  And we had only talked to them for like 5 minutes.  So we're excited about that.  

Anyways, everything else is pretty good here! The weather's getting nicer.  We even wore sweaters to church yesterday, which is a big deal because for most of the time I've been here it's been between 95 and 110 degrees.  So we're loving this weather.

And we can definitely see the hand of God in our lives.  He's always supporting, guiding and protecting us.  Being a missionary is cool. 

Con mucho amor, 

Hermana Horne