July 30, 2018

Hello!!! It has been a very crazy week here in Mint Canyon and Solemnity! 

Tuesday I got my new companion Sister Weaver! She is from Nampa Idaho and has been out for 13 months! She is a super obedient and hardworking missionary! Which are my favorite qualities in a companion! Plus she is hilarious and very very sassy. Needless to say we work extremely well together!! ( I have always been blessed with wonderful companions) I picked her up in Bakersfield, then we drove 1 1/2 hours back to our apartment! The drive was awesome because we got to see the grapevines and fruit orchards and all the pretty agriculture! I can not wait to serve in Bakersfield! We stopped by some potentials and were able to pick up two new people to teach! Carlos and Maylee!  Carlos has investigated the church before, but lost contact with the missionaries and Maylee use to have the sisters come over every week to read the Book of Mormon with her! We are very excited to start teaching them! We had dinner with the Sweat family. Then we had a lesson with Shawn! We are helping him to prepare himself to go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead:)

Wednesday we visited with Sister Sheils and taught her the Restoration. I love going over the Restoration with members, I think it is so important to continue building your testimony of Joseph Smith, plus the spirit is so strong when you testify of the power of the priesthood. We found two more people today! Billy and Julie! Billy was an old refferal that we decided to stop by! He is very interested in the gospel and has gone to church a few times. Julie was a potential that the elders found. We were able to get a return appointment with her! She has never heard of the Book of Mormon before and was really excited to learn more! We had a lesson with Liberty and Luis and we taught them the importance of coming to church and how families can be together forever! Liberty gets so excited and loves teaching her husband and kids more about the the things she is learning! She is just so cool!! 

Thursday we had weekly planning day! It was so fun telling Sister Weaver about the wards and the people we get to teach! Then we rode bikes to Sister Valencia's for a lesson. She wasnt home but we ran into some awesome people and invited them all to church.  We were stopping by potentials and ended up picking up Christian. He is super cool and is excited to read the Book of Mormon. We had dinner with the Von Arxs. Then we went to read scriptures with the Kellys. 

Friday Friday was a crazy day. We had a lesson with Jenifer, but instead of teaching we got to help her bake a pie and some lemon squares for one of her dear friends. I love baking so I was seriously in heaven!! Plus I just adore their puppy Lu Lu. Sister Weaver is from the same place that Jenifer's son Easton is serving in, so that is way cool! Easton will be coming in home in October so everyone is way excited! We stopped by the Burgess family and read more scriptures with them. i just love them so much. They are the funniest older couple I know! We had a lesson with Rickey but when we got there he told us he was no longer interested in hearing our message. It was so sad!!! My heart really hurt... then we ran into a guy was was not happy to see us!! Dang it Satan!! We stopped by a few more people, then we had a lesson with Jesse. Sister Duncan came with us and helped us teach the plan of salvation. The kids were very wild and the power went out twice!! But Jesse still accepted to be baptized on August 18th!! yay!! Take that Satan! It was crazy because the spirit kept telling us to ask him but we were fighting it because of how nuts everything was.... but finally we asked and the room was just covered in the spirit!! When Heavenly Father wants somthing done He provides a way! We had dinner at the Lamersons which is always one of the, highlights of my week. 

Saturday we had another lesson with Sister Sheils and we taught her the plan of salvation. Her husband was home but he didn't want to hear our lesson. We had a pretty awesome lesson with Myiluv! We taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ and she asked a million amazing questions! She is learning so fast and loves to read the Book of Mormon! She is by far the smartest 13 year old  I know, plus she loves church and young women's... so she is set for sure! We were stopping by people and while we were standing in a doorway I noticed a poor lizard stuck on a sticky mouse trap!! We saved him and took him to Christie who did everything in her power to save him but sadly he died.... Good news though we got a return appointment with her for Sunday. So I guess God works in mysterious ways. 

Sunday Myiluv was the only one who was able to make it to church and she was having a ball. She always cracks me up in sacrament though because she says our music is way too quiet and that everyone needs to step it up when they are praising Jesus.... I honestly agree with her! Come on Solemint!! Step it up!! She loves to tell everyone that she is going to be baptized on Aug 25th so its great to see how excited she is! We were able to share the showers of heavenly blessings with Christie and invited her to start reading the Book of Mormon again. 

I love you all! Have a wonderful week and keep praising Jesus!!! 

July 23, 2018

Hello my cute friends and family!! We got transfer calls this Saturday and my cute companion Sister Thongrit will be leaving me:( . I get to stay in Mint Canyon and Solemint though! Which makes me so happy!! Since Sister Smullin and I first got here in January... I have really been able to see the wards and areas grow!! We currently have five people on date to be baptized!! Which is so exciting because the areas were dead when we got here!

Monday was p-day! Yay! We went to the Valencia mall and visited the cute Disney store. Then for zone activity we played chair soccer,,, which honestly is really starting to get boring... 

Tuesday we had a special counsel meeting with all of the mission leadership who were involved with the one week exchange to see how we can best bring the two missions together. It was cool to see how many good things both missions had and to make a plan how we can best learn from each other. Then we had our interviews with President Layton. The interview went well and he gave me advice on how I can make my prayers more meaningful and personal. The scripture he shared with me is Enos 2:5. It is so cool to see how the scriptures can really answer all of the questions that we have. We had dinner with Sister Valencia, She is just the coolest person ever! We have been trying to get her to come back to church and she has come once which is really an improvement! It has been so cool to see her faith grow!  We started an exchange with Sister Keller and Sister Reynolds that night at 8:30. It was interesting because Bakersfeilds does exchanges differently. They have both sets of missionaries working in one area instead of one set in each area. So we got to have a sleepover with our cute sisters which was super fun!!! 

Wednesday we started the exchange and I got to be comps with Sister Reynolds. I simple adore her!! We also has a few really cool miracles. We got Myilove on date for August 25th!! She is a 13 year old African american girl who had a load of questions about her purpose here on earth. Sister Thongrit and I found her while we were knocking doors! She loves to read the Book of Mormon and is so excited about the young womens' program. The best part is her dad is all for it, and loves it when we come over! We also had a lesson with Rickey!! Rickey is a pass-off that we got from the Spanish elders! We got him on date for August 18th and he is doing really good! He is always in great contact with us and loves to learn more. 

We had a visit with Sister Sheils and she has asked if we will start teaching her the lessons again. She really misses church and wants to come back, but is a little nervous about it. It has been so fun to see all of her personal growth in the time that we have been able to teach her. We exchanged back and went to visit the Lauracella family. They have a bunch of baby chicks and I got to watch Sister Thongrit catch her first chicken which was pretty hilarious. Then we had dinner at the Todds house! Jack is doing very good and so is the Todd family. It was awesome because when we were looking through Brother Todd's mission photos I recognized my high school tennis coach! Brother Todd's trainer is Jeff Erickson. How cool is that?? It is seriously a small world. Then we went over to the Kellys for our weekly scripture reading. Brother Todd came with us and we had a wonderful time reading the Book of Mormon. I love getting to spend time with that family. We have gotten so close.

Thursday was weekly planning. Then we got to visit with Liberty and Logan! We taught Liberty the gospel of Jesus Christ and it was just so cool!!! She asked so many questions and even took notes as we were teaching her! We even read some chapters in the Book of Mormon with her. She seriously loves to read from it.The best part is that she is reading it on her own.  Then because she is 7 months pregnant, we always help her clean after the lesson. So we tidied her house and did her dishes! I love being able to serve her. She is just so cute!

Friday we had district counsel and Sister Thongrit and I got to go give training's in each of the zones. We trained on being a more consecrated missionary. We got the training from a MTC training by Tad R Callister. It is an amazing talk and the spirit was there so strong in each of the trainings, I love being a sister training leader. It is so fun getting to serve the missionaries around me and getting to watch them all grow. We had the coolest lesson with our friend Jesse. Jesse is a single father of four kids, whom we found while we were knocking doors. He wants his kids to be raised in a religious environment and is really interested in the message we have to share. We brought Sister Zigler with us and Jesse and his kids just adored her!. They promised to come to church with us Sunday and we got them a ride!

Sunday was one of my favorite days on my mission. Brother Kelly finally came back to church!! The whole ward was so happy to see him come back and he was trying to hide his tears from us!! Myilove came to  church and loved all of it!! She can't wait to come back next week and just adored all of the young women. Jesse and his cute four kids all came to church and Brother Bench gave them a ride. It was so cool to see all the love and support from the ward and the kids just loved primary so much!! 

I love you all! 

Love, Sister Howard 

July 16, 2018

Hello all you beautiful people! We have been having such a wonderful week just exploding with miracles!! 

Monady I got to have p-day with Sister Parcell in Palmdale. We went to the air force flight test museum to see all the air planes; which was super cool! Then we went to a place called Charlie Brown which is this cool gift shop that has everything you can think of. We ended up going to the soda room and trying flower flavored sodas. I tried lavender and rose petal. Then we spent some time just looking at all of the crazy stuff. We had dinner at the Miller's house and their cute kids kept running around the table doing nija moves... I think I laughed way too hard. We did a lot of oyming (Open Your Mouth) and found a few potentials. We managed to hand out over five Books of Mormon in one day! 

Tuesday we taught Jordan. He is 11 years old and is going to be baptized this week! He has such a strong faith and loves to read the Book of Mormon! The spirit was so strong in the lesson and I am so excited for him! We got to teach Johnny who is a little bashful but he loves to give the sisters nicknames and he decided that mine should be Sunsine because I smile a lot... so that was sweet. We ended up finding two new investigators that night. Myra and her brother Martin. We found Myra knocking doors and we ran into Martin as we were leaving the area. They are so excited for us to come back and teach them again.

 

Wednesday I came back to Mint Canyon and Solemint to be with my companion and areas again. It was so nice to be back... We had a huge miracle happen too. We were walking around Jake's Way at night (which isn't the smartest idea) and we ran into Louis. He is the coolest guy ever! We taught him the restoration and then felt prompted to teach more in-depth on the priesthood, then on baptism. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted! He is going to be baptized August 25th. He invited us to come back the next night and teach his family. Which was actually interesting because the elders were already teaching his wife Liberty and wanted to pass her off to us. The next day we had an amazing lesson with Liberty and we got her on date to be baptized with her husband!! They are both so excited and we are working to get their son Logan on date as well. 

I love you all!!
Love Sister howard 

July 9, 2018

Hello everyone!!! Life is all good here in the California Bakersfield mission! 

Monday, I went out for lunch with Elder Brown, Elder Miskin, Elder Rivera, Elder Christensen, Sister Reynolds, Sister Keller and my cute comp Sister Thongrit. Then we all went to Target and bought sunglasses and matching marvel t-shirts. For zone activity we all played chair soccer and the sisters dominated again!! Whoo! After zone activity we went to the zone leadership counsel in Valencia. It was bitter sweet because in the Bakersfield mission we are no longer allowed to have them. We counseled as a zone on how we can better help the missionaries and their areas. 

Thursday we had our first interviews with President Layton. Then we got to go through new missionary orientation which was pretty cool. It is interesting to see how different they run everything in this mission. President and Sister Layton are really nice though. We had dinner with the Shepherd family who will be going on a mission in Urkraine. They were so cute telling us about all of the cool things that they will get to do and how excited they are. 

Friday we had a zone conference with our zone and got to see how president runs everything. It was basically the same, but was a little different... President likes to ask random people to sing so that was scary..... we had dinner with the Lamersons which is always the highlight of my week. 

Monday We went to Target again and everyone tried on new shoes and a couple of people bought some. Then we went to zone activity and played another game of chair soccer... this was probably the scariest one of my mission because everyone took teams and it was war.... after zone activity we had a pass-off lesson with Elder Rivera and Elder Christensen. They gave us a really cool family who wants to learn more about Jesus Christ. We shared with them the importance of going to church and reading the Book of Mormon. They invited us to please come back and teach them more! We had dinner with the Holquest family and we picked up one of the girl's friends named Ephony.... She has investigated the church on and off, but she is starting to really open up to us. On the way to our next appointment we got a phone call from an un-known number.... we answered it and turns out it was President Layton and this is what he said.... Sister Howard, "I want you to pack your bags!".... Sister Thongrit and I immediately started panicking...... then he explained that he wanted us to go on a special exchange with two of his sister training leaders so that we could better understand the new mission culture and they could understand ours. It will be for a week Wednesday to Wednesday and we will be exchanging after the mission leadership counsel. 

Tuesday we visited Sister Valencia and shared a scripture with her about the atonement. Then we did a load of stop-bys because all of our appointments cancelled. Knock-out was kind of hard becuase we were really worried about going on the exchange and meeting all of the new missionaries, so we called our district leader Elder Brown and his companion Elder Miskin  and asked them to give us some motivation. They were very guided by the spirit and helped us to feel so much better about all of the new changes. We had dinner with the McCoy family and then they took us out to get frozen yogurt with a couple of the ward families. It was a really fun night and help us both to feel better. 

Wednesday was the 4th of July!! yayay!! We celebrated by wearing fun red, white, and blue glasses and star necklaces while we drove 1hr and a half on our way up to our leadership mission in Tehechpie. Everyone in our zone told us to take pictures... but it really was just sand and hills everywhere with some power line poles and wind mills.... When we got to the church we saw all of the new missionaries and were seriously intimidated... so we waited till our zone leaders came before we braved walking in. The missionaries were all super kind and we made friends pretty fast. The meeting was very spiritual and it was cool to see how this mission works. Then we exchanged and I am now comps with Sister Parcel for a week! Palmdale is pretty cool... there are a lot of random cool things that I have gotten to see... like a road that has its own song when you drive on it... or all the random toilets on the side walk. When we drove to dinner a random fire started on one of the hills so we got to watch all of the fire trucks and helicopters come and try to stop it. Then we went home and sat on our porch and watched all of the gorgeous fire works.... It felt so peaceful and reminded me of home...  

Thursday we had weekly planning day which was interesting because Im use to planning on Tuesday. Then we went out and stopped by people and tried to OYM (open your mouth) to everyone we saw. We had a meeting with the zone leaders to decide how to best give the missionaries the cool new information that we talked about in Mission Leadership Council. President  just started a thing called OYM 10/20 which means as a companionship we need to talk to 20 people a day... the missionaries were nervous because they don't normally do that, but I was so excited because we basically already did that in San Fernando so I was pumped and ready to go! We had dinner at Sister Robinson's house then she took us to go and stop-by a part member family. We invited the kids to church and picked up Elizabeth and Ariana as new people to teach! Then we went to a Book of Mormon class with two recent converts and read a chapter with them out of the Book of Mormon and went over the importance of going to the temple. 

Friday we had district meeting and I got to help do a training on the repentance chain.. which I know nothing about!! Apparently its  just a few scriptures you share at the end of a lesson before you invite someone to be baptized... then we role played with the hermanas.... we have some super cool ones that came from Nicaragua when their mission got disbanded  So we hit it off pretty well because they understand why hard it is to adapt to a new mission. then we had interviews with President Layton and Sister Layton taught us about how to have good manners on the mission. We easily talked to 20 people and were able to get some return appointments. 

Sunday I went to the Palmdale ward and got to go to ward correlation. Then we talked to people and had dinner at the Millers. It has just been so hot here!!

Anyway I love you all, Love Sister Howard