November 27, 2017

Hello loved ones,

Life is amazing here in the Great California San Fernando Valley!!! Everyone has started to put up Christmas lights and it is so beautiful!! This week has been very eventful! We have started teaching the Olsen family. They are all members except they are less active. They asked us to teach their 8 year old son Jefferson the missionary discussions before he gets baptized so he can understand more fully what he is doing.

The Gill family is still interested in taking our discussions, but Kyle's mom Michelle, has decided he will be baptized into the Baptist church in January. We are racing the clock right now with trying to get them to change their mind and have him baptized into our church. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and we know they felt the spirit. They still have struggles with our sacrament but we are getting closer to helping them understand the importance if it. 

I love being a missionary so much! Right now we are just really praying and trying to find more people to teach. We are having our knock out blitz this week and the elders and sisters in our zone are going to knock in our area to try and help us find more people!! 

I love you all so much!! I appreciate all the letters and packages I have gotten! Thank you all so much for the love and support! Have the best week ever! 

Love, Sister Howard

November 20, 2017

Hey everyone,

This week was definitely an interesting one! Sister Trujillo and I are now famous!!! We were knocking doors around one of our ward members' houses and they got a notification from the neighborhood watch on their phone. The notification was a video of Sister Trujillo and I standing on a doorstep and the caption said, "Beware! Two crazy girls with bibles!!!" Needless to say no one opened their doors that night...... but I mean we did look gorgeous in the video!! 

Jesse moved to Castic this week so we taught him our last recent convert lesson with him... It makes me sad, but I know that his new ward will take good care off him. Stephanie also moved this week, so we lost two of our investigators! She moved to Florida, and we are praying that she can find our church there. Our part member family, the Gills family, is doing very well, but they weren't able to make it to church this week.

We had a wonderful Zone Conference this week and I got to see two of my MTC buddies!! In our conference we really focused on how to bring more people to church and what we can do better to explain the importance of sacrament. 

Sunday we were able to go to the "Face to Face" broadcast with Elder Oaks and Elder Ballard. I really loved it!! One of my favorite things they said was that the only label we want to have is that we are Children of God. Always remember that, and let people know who you are! https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/face-to-face/oaks-ballard?lang=eng

We have been trying really hard to find more people to teach. Sister Trujillo and I decided to do a YSA blitz. This is where we get to ask the other missionaries in our zone to knock in certain areas and if they find YSA (young single adults) they give them to us to teach because we are over the YSA. We had a fast as a companionship for inspiration on where to have the missionaries in our zone knock. We were driving home after an appointment and we got a call from our zone leader Elder Kerr and his companion Elder Noble. 

He said, "Sisters what ever you are doing... ( immediately we both started panicking because we thought we were in trouble) keep doing it!! (sigh of relief). "We had an appointment to meet with our investigator at the "Face to Face" but he didn't show." We then decided to stay at the "Face to Face" instead of leaving early like we had originally planned. After the "Face to Face" we were going to bike to our dinner appointment but because we were in our suits, we decided to walk. We took a route that normally we would never have taken on a bike. As we were walking, we saw a young guy sitting on sidewalk and felt impressed to go talk to him. He was going through a divorce and was just kicked out of his house. He is interested in the gospel and wants us to teach him again'!!! The whole day played out perfectly for us to be able to find Matt. We will being handing him over to you shortly so that he can begin receiving the lessons!!!" 

Our fast worked!! The Elders found someone for us!!! I want you to all to know that the Lord's hand is in our lives everyday. He listens to our prayers and helps us accomplish our goals. There is power in fasting!! It will bless your lives and the people you are fasting for lives as well. There is nothing more wonderful then sharing this amazing gospel with our friends and family! Be proud to stand up for what you believe!! 

I love you all!! Sister Howard 

November 13, 2017

Dear Family and Friends,

What an amazing week!! We stopped by one of our part-member family's home to share a short inspirational message with them. The father is LDS and the wife and son are Baptist. They go to church together every Sunday.  They like things in the Mormon church and some things in the Baptist church. The Baptist church has more dynamic speakers then the Mormon church but they hate how at the Baptist church they don't dress up nice, and the money goes to the preacher. They want us to help them decide what church to have their son Kyle be baptized in. We taught them the restoration and the spirit filled the room. They then decided to come to church with us on Sunday. Later in the week the bishopric asked me to speak in sacrament, boy was I panicking! I needed to give a really good talk! I prayed a lot and did the best I could do to prepare a great talk. We don't have technology so I had to hand write my talk. We get to sacrament and I was happy to see that the other speakers were really powerful ward members. The meeting ended up being super spiritual and our wonderful investigators invited us to come back this week and continue teaching them the discussions! They also are planning on coming to church with us next week as well!!! We are so excited!! 

My trainer decided that I should learn how to drive in our area so I can understand it better. Well I don't have very much driving experience and we had to go on the freeway. As we were heading to the freeway I reminded her that I had never been on a freeway before.... which I swear I already told her but I guess she didn't hear me sooo..... we were both panicking and praying like we've never prayed before as I got my first freeway driving experience. If that isn't enough I also gave us both a heart attack when I accidentally ran a red light........... I can promise you that Heavenly Father definitely protects his missionaries... and I am so grateful for my amazing companion. Sister Trujillo is one of the most amazing missionaries on the planet. I love you all so much!! Have an amazing week.

 

Love,

 

Sister Howard!!

November 6, 2017

Hi loved ones,

This week we were able to find one new investigator! Her name is Cheyenne. She lives in the Copper Hills Ward! We found her in our area book as a former, so we thought we would just stop by. She was super happy to see us and asked if we would pray with her!

Jesse is going to start doing family history work this week as we continue to teach him his recent convert lessons! His faith is continuing to grow and he's been bringing his friends with him to church!

I got asked to teach a training in district meeting this week and boy was I nervous! I studied the lesson for two days then prayed like crazy! Because of Halloween our ward gave us all of their left over candy so we had loads of chocolate. When I went up to teach the training I told all the missionaries that I was a brand new missionary and the only way that my first training was going to work out was if they participated. Then I announced that anyone who participated would get a candy bar. My Zone leader said I was lying and that I didn't really have chocolates. So I looked him the eye and dumped the chocolate all over the table! My Sister Training Leaders were dying of laughter and I have never seen so many elders participate in district meeting. Chocolate to the rescue!  I got to teach on how to answer peoples' questions with the Book of Mormon. Even with all the laughter, the spirit was in the room as I was training, and I know Heavenly Father helped me say what needed to be said. Even though I had planned a very elaborate lesson, I ended up not even using half of what I planned, and just had the opportunity to let the spirit guide me. Heavenly father will not let you fail if you truly  work hard.   

I had my second round of exchanges and they had me take over my area for the day... It was so weird being the person calling all the shots! I was surprised and excited to see that I actually knew what I was doing! I am finally getting the hang of being a missionary! 

For Halloween we got to watch "Meet the Mormons" with two zones! They also gave us pizza! Sister Pinter, my MTC companion, was there so I got to watch the movie with her! Then we had to be in our apartments by 7:00pm.

Knock out didn't go to well this week because of the world series... but we were able to give out a couple of pamphlets. We are hoping that now that the world series is over more people will be willing to listen to us. 

Love, Sister Howard