Christmas Missionary Moments

Christmas:

Christmas was warm and windy! It was 85 degrees I think, so we definitely didn't feel a cold, white Christmas. We had a normal morning: woke up and exercised at 6:30, did some studies, etc.  We had a zone activity in the morning and all ate breakfast together, and then we had a lunch appointment with a member. I had heard that I would eat a million tamales during the Christmas season (since that's a traditional Mexican Christmas tradition), but I have yet to have eaten 1 Tamale this month of December. Instead we've eaten more Thanksgiving-esque food than we did around thanksgiving! After that, we went around and sang to members, had a meeting with the Assistants, talked to people, pretty normal day :)

Road Trips:

Now we get to have exchanges with the sisters all over the mission! When we go to the far-away places (Corpus, Laredo, Brownsville) we drive with the Assistants and they do exchanges with the Zone Leaders. We usually have 3 hours in the car as we drive up, and the assistants have been trying "to get us out of our box, and out of professional mode." ha ha. On the latest trip to Laredo, they made us play the slug-bug game (where every time you see a Volkswagen Bug or a PT Cruiser you punch the person next to you), except we had to punch them. We both learned that we need to improve our punching abilities. We also got to tell a lot of fun stories and ask for advice, etc. It's amazing how much you can fit into 3 hours! 

Exchanges:

I never really understood the purpose of exchanges until the last couple of transfers. In our new calling they're one of the most important things we do. It gives us a chance to work in the other sisters' areas and help them have more animo and faith and purely just get to help - it's a great opportunity to be completely selfless, since we're not in our own area thinking about what needs to get done, and just help and serve - and learn a lot in the process. We get to come up with a goal and a focus for each exchange (for example, we'll focus on faith and the goal will be to find 3 new investigators) and then we'll each work with a different sister and work on those things and talk about them throughout the day. We've had lots of really cool miracles happen as we've helped and served. If I've learned anything on my mission so far, it's that God is merciful, and as you forget yourself and serve others He takes care of everything else. It's super cool. 

Okay, well I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and that New Year's is equally magical :)

Love you all!

-- 

Hermana Reynolds

(late) missionary moments

Hi all! 

Merry Christmas! Here are this week's brief missionary moments;

member missionary work: totally different in every area. In Laredo to find new investigators, we hit the streets, talk to lots of people, people are super humble, you find new investigators, then you'll bring members to lessons. When you're new in a branch the members are super friendly, but you have to go up to them and introduce yourself and set up appointments, etc. Here in "the 'burg" it's completely different - the members have been calling us to feed us, and we've already had 2 experiences with people bringing us people to teach or saying "you need to go by this part-member family! They were super interested and you can try again - they need to get baptized!" 

Christmas Conference: Since this is the last Christmas that the Maluendas will be here as mission president,  they had a special Christmas Conference today where the entire mission came to McAllen. We had a little devotional in the morning, and then we had lunch and played games and got gifts and each zone made a skit. 

That's it for this week! See you soon!

--

Hermana Reynolds

Missionary Moments

Missionary Moments!

The Forgetfulness: We have a lot on our minds, all the time. Lots of things to coordinate, etc.and sometimes things just slip through the crack. Like remembering to send emails. ha ha. I had a whole email typed out last week and realized after we had left the library that I didn't send it. You'll just get twice the love this week! 

Transfers: Today is transfers! The exciting thing about transfers is that ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN. Nobody is ever safe. It all starts on Monday - sometime during the course of the day the Assistants to the President call the Zone Leaders and then tell them what's going to happen, and then they send out a voicemail to the whole zone letting us know what happens. Sometimes they tell us where we're going and who will be replacing us, but sometimes we only get told if we need to pack our bags. There have been a couple of transfers where that call has come on Monday Morning, but more often than not it comes in the evening, or, if we're really lucky, around 10 or 11. That always makes packing fun :) It makes for a little anxiety ever Sunday and Monday before transfers, especially because it's not as if you stay in an area for 2 transfers and then leave. Some people move areas every transfer, some stay for 7, there's just no way to know. Everyone who gets transferred has to go to the mission office in McAllen, so Tuesday morning we all congregate there and they have a little meeting and the greenies get assigned to their new companions and they switch around luggage and cars and we head back. 

The Mornings: We have to be awake by 6:30, but we usually get up a little earlier than that, like around 5:50-6:00. Sister Medina and I have adopted the habit of "morning pillow talk," and it's lovely. The alarm rings (okay, actually the other sisters' alarm rings 5 minutes before ours and I lay there trying to make myself pretend to be asleep... usually not super successful), and then we turn it off and talk about if we had interesting dreams or anything on our minds. Then we eventually decide we should get up and be productive, and so we say our prayers and get dressed, etc, and put 2 Pop Tarts in the toaster. I guess someone once said that if you eat a super simple carb before exercising it gives you more energy more constantly during the morning or something? I don't know, I just think it's a great excuse to eat a pop tart. Then we drive down the street to the park (We drive to avoid being eaten by the ravenous dogs). There's a pavilion and a track, and a few members of the zone usually come and exercise or play basketball. We usually jump rope (because running is overrated) and do other things to strengthen our bodies. We then return home, and somehow the 4 of us all get showered in our 1 shower, and we eat, etc, and then start studies at 8. 

Christmas: It's the best! It's definitely a different experience in Texas, because it's not very cold and just doesn't feel like winter. At night time there are lots of Christmas lights, and then it feels more christmasy. The houses here either have no decorations or have too many with lots of lights. :) Every Christmas the church puts out a Christmas Video (A Savior is Born is the video this year, last year was He is the Gift) and then we get cool little pass-along cards. It's great because we can go up to people and just say "hey, can we share a card with you with a video about Christmas?" and then start teaching. Evidently the Mexican Culture eats Tamales during the Christmas season like they're going out of style, but I have yet to experience that. 

Mormon.Org Time: Once a week we get an hour to go to the church websites and read talks, watch little videos, etc. I had no idea how wonderful church websites were until my mission! It's this fun little opportunity to catch up on church news, etc. Usually it actually consists of finding a couple of talks to read depending on what I want to study that week, and then watching church videos because they're wonderful (like the I'm a Mormon videos, mormon messages, 12-step videos, they're all great). 

Okay, well I think that's it for this week! Love you all!

Love,

Hermana Reynolds 

P.S. Only one more emailing session before Christmas! Crazy!

Last Missionary Moments of November

Hello to all!

Here are this weeks moments: 

Playing Piano: Up until I served in Laredo, I didn't make too much use of my piano playing abilities. Last transfer there was another Sister Missionary who played quite well, also, so I didn't do much then, either. However, this transfer the amounts of piano playing occasions has multiplied exponentially. I started off the transfer strong by playing for the choir for District Conference - with about 2 days of practice. That was pretty miraculous. Then I got asked to help with the primary program in the Spanish Branch. 

Side note: the musical abilities of the Hispanic culture do not generally expand to the arena of singing. Especially in young children. So that's pretty funny. 

Anyway, yesterday was the most I've experienced so far: I played for 2 sacrament meetings, 1.5 primary practices, 2 baptisms, and one district meeting. Thank you, Mom and Brooke. Thanks to you, Laredo has music. :)

Nothingness of Man: This transfer we've had a lot of miracles, and I always just end up feeling so very aware of God's mercy. Sister Medina and I memorized Mosiah 4:11 this week, and that and the hymn "I Stand All Amazed" pretty much sum up my feelings from this transfer. God is SO GOOD. I don't get it. He just keeps blessing us, even though we're less obedient than dirt (says the Book of Mormon). It's really humbling and amazing. 

Thanksgiving: I have heard of horror stories about thanksgiving for my whole mission (having 5+ meal appointments and throwing up between them to be able to eat more, etc), so I have been preparing myself against this moment since February. We decided to only have 1 meal appointment. and it worked! We had a zone meeting, which included a thanksgiving dinner by one of the branches, and then our car had a flat tire, so the Zone Leaders taught us how to fix it, and then by that time we only had a couple of hours so we did some contacting and talked to a couple members and then went to our meal appointment and left feeling quite content at only having eaten 2 turkey dinners. :) However, we definitely felt the Turkey Come the next morning, getting up was pretty painful... 

Well, I hope you enjoyed this week's missionary moments! I love you all!

Love, 

--

Hermana Reynolds

More Missionary Moments

Here are this week's missionary moments:

The Conch: Every Saturday, the North and South Laredo Zones get together in an epic battle of soccer. We play at a place called "the conch" (it's just a rink such as would be used for hockey, but without ice.) We get up at 5 so that we can be there by 5:30, and usually there are so many missionaries that we split up into 3 teams and rotate. It's usually pretty dark and we're playing on cement, so it's a very interesting experience! Sports were terrifying before the mission, but now they're very enjoyable. It's a fun way to interact as missionaries. 

OYMing: (OYM = Open Your Mouth). In some proselyting areas, a lot of the work is done through members and most converts are found that way. In Laredo, it's usually more effective to find investigators through contacting and OYMing. That just consists of talking to whoever is on the street. There's always a little natural hesitation when approaching people who are about to leave or are playing basketball in the street, etc, but ultimately, really cool experiences from it and God blesses with miracles when you show your diligence in talking with everyone. While we were in McAllen this week, my temporary companion and I went to a park to find there, and we ended up meeting a woman who had a lot of questions about church and baptism and we were able to sit down with her and teach her a really beautiful lesson. Miracles like that happen every. single. day. It's so cool

Sad Sundays: This moment is so frustrating. You go by investigators who have said they're going to come to church, and then they say something like "you know what, we just don't think this church is for us," and they haven't even tried it out! it's ridiculous. Yesterday we had one person say he didn't want to come and we flat out said "so you're not going to follow God today?" and he said "no, I don't need anymore blessings, I'm not going to lose anything by not going. It's really horrible. Something I've learned on my mission is that I'm never going to miss church again. It's so important!

Well, I hope your week goes marvelously :)

Love you all!

--

Hermana Reynolds

Missionary Moments

Hola a todos!

The last few weeks I've been feeling less than motivated to write stories of my mission, because every day is basically full of miracles and after a while they all just run into each other. Great problem to have, right? Anyway, I'm going to try a little experiment, and start writing about moments of the mission instead, so that you can get a glimpse into the small moments that are talked about with less frecuency. 

Missionary Moment #1: Biking. (backgroud information, we have a mission rule that we use our bikes 2x every week). On Thursday we decided to bike, and so we layered our sweaters and got on our bikes and headed out to work. To reach certain parts of our area we have to cross and bike on the side of a highway. It's very exciting. We reached the part where we had to cross, and an accident had just barely cleared away so there was a surge of traffic. But then the police man stopped traffic for us to cross. We bike and bike, and then we reach a really big hill. And you bike, until you can't bike any more. and then you walk. And then you bike again. But the best part is that you feel really happy and not discouraged or mad. Just happy that you get to teach people :)

Missionary Moment #2: Frozen Yogurt. Some days you need a pick me up, so you take a 15 minute break and go to the Fro Yo store and eat Taro Frozen Yogurt, and watch the stray dog outside trying to find its owner.

Missionary Moment #3: Baptism MIracles. Sometimes you try really hard to help people be baptized and nothing comes of it. And then sometimes you find people that other missionaries have tried to help for a year to be baptized, and then everything falls into place and they decide they want to get baptized. And it's incredible.

Okay, there are the moments for the week. I love you all! Keep happy and healthy :)

Love, 

Hermana Reynolds

another week in Laredo :)

Hello!

Well, this week was another week full of miracles and  busy times. Transfers happened on Tuesday, and my companion, Sister McArthur got transferred to another Zone and my new companion is Sister Medina - she's wonderful! We're going to have a great transfer. Today is her Birthday, and while we were outside washing the car 6 little puppies ran up to us, so we got to play with some adorable puppies to start off her birthday. It was pretty magical. 

Sister Medina came up on Tuesday evening, and then we worked together for a few hours, and then the next morning we left to McAllen for MLC and didn't get back until Friday, so most of our first week was spend in McAllen. We worked really hard in the last few days we had here, though, and had cool things happen. On Saturday night, we were walking by the house of some people who we had briefly talked to before, and they had just arrived from the store and were taking in groceries, so we helped them. They invited us in and we talked for a while, and the mother figure is this sweet woman who's 70 years old and has 10 children and 42 grandchildren and 7 great-grandchildren and now is taking care of 4 sweet little kids between the ages of 8-13. We invited them to church the next day and they came! The only sad thing was that yesterday was a special regional conference and the kids were a little bored, ha ha. but they're really cool so we'll see what happens from here :) 

The regional conference was really really good - it was Elder Oaks, Sister Reeves, Lynn G Robbins, and someone else. They talked a lot about repentance and change, and also about simplicity and living within our means. Good stuff :)

Sister Ingleby who lives with us is training now, so we have a greenie living in our house now, and it's really fun to think back to what it was like and how recently it feels like I was there. Pretty crazy how fast time goes. 

Well I hope your have a phenomenal week! Love you all!

M

--

Hermana Reynolds

Halloween and Other Exciting Things

Transfer #6 is over! Where is this time going???

Okay, well this week flew by. Here are some highlights:

We had an Animo fest:

In Spanish, there's this word Animo, and it's one of the "5 pillars" of our mission (which are Animo, Amor, Trabajar Duro, Obediencia, Gran Actitud). There's no English equivalent, really, and it gets pretty broadly interpreted, and a lot of times missionaries interpret it as always being really excited. So sister McArthur and I decided to focus the transfer on Animo, and discovering together what Animo means personally for all of the the sister missionaries in South Laredo. Ultimately, we decided that Animo is giving your all to the work, but in order to do that you have to understand how. So we studied about the Heart, Might, Mind and Strength, and did some small activities with that, but then at the end we decided to have an Animo Fest to end the transfer, and so we had each girl pick a Spirit Animal (since Animo and Animal are basically the same word..), and we got together and painted ourselves as that animal, and then we choreographed a little dance and recorded it. It was pretty magical, and very cool to see how everyone had grown during the transfer to understand Animo more :) 

Halloween:

So, if your question is "did you get lots of candy?" or "did people think you were trick-or-treating?", the answer is: No. We had to be inside by 6:00 pm, so nothing too crazy happened. We did dress up as each other, and we got invited to a member's home earlier in the day for Carne Asada. It was a really humbling experience - this particular member lives very close to the border in a very humble cinder-block home, and most of the flooring in dirt or cement. I'm not sure how they afforded it, but they cooked a ton of meat and had salsa and tortillas and beans, and about 10 of the missionaries and them and a few other people all had a Halloween get together. It was really beautiful to see how important it was to this member to present something to the missionaries, and how deep her love was in spite of her circumstances. The people here are really good :)

Andy came to church:

Toward the beginning of this transfer, we had a referral we were going to go contact, but as we started walking up to it we saw a big dog on the porch. There's a fine line between faith and wisdom when it comes to the dogs in Laredo.. sometimes they're nice, but more than often they're hungry. (They're also always either really big or are Chihuahuas. So. Many. Chihuahuas.)

This particular day, I wasn't feeling like giving up because of a dog, so using skills acquired from watching The Dog Whisperer, I made friends with the dog and we knocked on the door and this guy named Andy answered. He's pretty cool, but didn't have a phone and it was really hard to keep contact with him. So we had given him a book of mormon, but we kind of lost contact after that, but last week we decided to try again and we found him and he's been reading the book of mormon and he now has a working cell phone, so we've been able to teach him quite a bit, and then through a really big miracle he came to church. So that was exciting. We like it when people come to church. 

Love you all!

Love,

M

--

Hermana Reynolds

Hurricanes, General Authorities, Corpus, oh my!

This week was very full of exciting events! Let's get started, shall we?

On Tuesday the Zone Leaders told sister McArthur and I that we were going to have to go to McAllen with them the next day because we were going to have a Mission Leadership Council with a member of the Seventy, and so we cancelled our previous plans and we all headed out to McAllen Wednesday morning. We've all known that we were going to have a "mission tour" this last week (where a general authority comes and trains the missionaries and makes sure that everything is going well), but the MLC meeting was a surprise. It was also kept quiet who it was that was going to come, but eventually we found out that it was going to be Elder Edward Dube. He was awesome! 

On Thursday we had a 3 hour meeting with him, and then on Friday all of the Laredo Zones, the Sinton Zone, and the Corpus Christie zone all met together in Corpus to have a conference with him for a few hours. He's super energetic and fun and taught us a lot. I was sitting there, and I had one of those moments of thinking "Wow! Who else gets to have opportunities like this?" It truly is such a PRIVILEGE to be a missionary. It's amazing what the Lord can do through and with us, and it's a miracle in all senses. Because we had to be in Corpus (a 2.5 hour drive) by 8:15, we left at 4:15. For some reason, when there's a meeting missionaries are either 1+ hours early, or 15 minutes late. It just happens. So we arose at 3 to have time to exercise, drive, and be there by 7:15, and then the meeting started at 9. I was expecting Corpus to be vastly different, but mostly it was just humid with lots of little bugs that bite your legs when you wait outside for churches to be unlocked :) Good moments.

On Saturday, we experienced the side-effects of the hurricane. We were getting all kinds of texts and calls saying that it was going to be insane and that we should be super careful, so we were pretty apprehensive. When it came time to leave, it was the beginning of the huge storm and there was torrents of rain, and a lot of the roads we were going to turn on were too flooded. There were signs on the sides of the roads that said "if water on rd, turn around, don't drown." ha ha. Ultimately, the torrential rain only lasted for an hour or two, and then went down, and then had pretty much stopped by mid-afternoon. We are so very happy to hear that nothing worse happened with the people of Mexico! It's pretty miraculous. It did mean that it got a lot colder here - it was 70 degrees yesterday and probably 65 this morning. Although, I've heard that Utah is even colder, but I can testify that acclimatization is a real thing - 70 degrees felt like 40. Yikes... 

The only other thing that might compete with the hurricane that happened outside, was the hurricane that happened inside of us that night. We went to a member's house, and they fed us Menudo. You can google it for more description probably. For some reason the Mexican culture LOVES it, but it's the worst thing ever. the taste is less than favorable, but stomachable, the texture is much less than favorable, and if you smell is.. well, you can't smell it if you want to finish the bowl. I'd heard horror stories about it, but never had had the ... hmm... opportunity ? to try it before. I thought I might get through my mission without trying it, but I guess now I can at least say that I am a survivor :)

Okay, well I love you all!

Enjoy a picture of the Laredo Skies - ain't nothing like it

--

Hermana Reynolds

A few life lessons

So, this week was full of the usual

My compy wrote a song about Laredo that sums up our life pretty well:

Laredo days, sun rays

The dogs are barking, gotta ride away

the people are humble, willing to listen

their hearts and doors are open

1,2,3,4 knock on one more door

just to find that soul that needs a little bit more of

where we come from, where we're going

and while we're here what we've got to know

I think there's a little more, but that's kind of our life :) It doesn't get much better than this. 

This week I thought I'd share a couple of things I've learned that have changed me a lot while on the mission. 

#1 is called the order of sheep. As missionaries (and this applies in other aspects, like "as mothers/fathers, etc") we have our "sheep" we have care over - be they missionaries, investigators, children, etc. Since the missionary work is so focused on helping the investigators progress, it's really easy to focus on their needs first, but the idea behind the concept of "The Order of Sheep" is that we have to prioritize them, and the one who comes first is our companion (or spouse) - and THEN the other missionaries/children (if in a leadership position), and then the ward/investigators (other responsibilities). At first I wasn't sure if I agreed, but it's cool to see that as I've really tried to follow that, miracles happen and things fall into place. 

The second thing is about making goals. On the mission there's always need to make goals and plans, and it can get a little overwhelming and then NOTHING changes. so, someone came up with a better way to go about making goals and plans, and it's pretty magical.

It looks like this:

VISION

   /   \   

goal goal

action action

measurable measurable 

action action

(I hope the formatting doesn't mes that up, but you should get the idea)

Basically, you start with a vision, and then you pick two different goals that would achieve that vision (IE, vision of being healthier, goal #1 is eat better, #2 is exercise more)

Then you pick an action you want to do to achieve those goals (like only eating sugar 2x a week and eating 5 servings of vegetables, and then working out every morning) and then you pick a measurable action that helps you measure if you're achieving your vision. (like, have I lost weight this week?, and do I crave sugar less often?)

It's made my life a million times easier, and now making goals and plans is fun and doesn't scare me.

I hope it changes your life, too.

we had a conversation on Sunday with one of our investigators who was supposed to come to church that was pretty intense - he thought he needed to stay and clean his house, and we thought he needed the blessings of coming to church. I ended up telling him "When you're in heaven, you're never ever going to look back and regret not cleaning your house, but you WILL look back and regret not setting the example of going to church for your children." And it hit me - it's true! I'm never going to look back and be like "man, if only I had watched that movie, or had stayed home from that service project, etc.," but I would look back and regret not doing the really important things. 

Okay, well enough preaching for today. Be good. Don't forgo decisions you'd regret not making :)

Love you all!

M

--

Hermana Reynolds

Another week :)

This week we were kept bustling. We had a bunch of exchanges and then we had interviews with President Maluenda, and we had lots of exchanges. On Wednesday we had an exchange with two sisters in North Laredo, and while I was there we taught one of their investigators and she was saying how she didn't feel ready for baptism. Upon further questioning, she said "well, I try to listen to only Christian music, but sometimes I listen to worldly music... and I dance, too" "Um, we can do those things..." "Really? I didn't think you could!" Basically she thought we lived the lives of nuns... but it turns out that we don't. Phew. 

On Friday we had interviews - usually that consists of trainings and then one by one we have interviews with the mission president. This particular time, Sister McArthur and I were asked to give a training, a musical number, and then they asked me to give a training on Body Language. We had had the exchange on Wednesday, and then on Thursday we had a weird trio exchange thing with the STLTs (the sisters over all of the STLs) and then another pair of sisters from the north, and by the time Friday morning came around I think sister McArthur and I were about ready to be done, and we hadn't even planned the trainings yet, ha ha. Sister McArthur and I have been trying to "be ducks" - because they glide across the water, even though their feet are paddling really fast. Nice, right? Somehow God really loves us, and he helps us, even when our attempts to be calm ducks turn out to be more like great success in being rabid ducks. I'm learning more and more that I think responsibility is an opportunity to show us how incapable we are, and then how capable God is. It works really well, let me tell you. :)

Saturday we had an inter-zone activity with both the zones in Laredo - a pretty intense Iron Rod activity. It was really cool; walking around, blind folded, with people telling me whet to do and deciding who to trust really showed me a lot. Sister McArthur and I talked about it after, (she had done it before so was a tempter instead of participating blindfoldedly) about how tactics Satan uses. It's kind of scary, but cool that we can think about things like this and then protect other people.

Okay, well I love you all!

Love,

M

--

Hermana Reynolds

This week was pretty crazy - we had MLC (mission leadership council? something like that.) in McAllen, so with driving time we weren't actually in Laredo for about 3 days. And then we had General Conference, so our schedule was a little nuts, but we received lots of inspiration from our Mission President and from the Prophets. 

Wasn't Conference great? While I was watching the sustaining of the new apostles, there was such a sense of reverence and respet. Not in a presumptuous manner, but being a missionary has helped me understand the weight that callings carry with them, and the inadequacy that one feels as new assignments and responsibilities are entrusted to servants of God. It's really amazing - these imperfect people are so trusted by God, and somehow he molds us to be the people he needs. It's pretty cool. I loved the closing prayer that said "where else do we find such order and inspiration, we are still awed by the calling to the apostleship we witnessed this morning..." and whatever else he said. It was a good prayer.

This week, we had stopped by an investigator's house, but they weren't home. Their next door neighbor was outside, so we stopped to talk to him, and as we were explaining what we do he said "Do you guys know about baptism?" .... "Yes, actually, why do you ask?" "Well, my wife and I have been wanting to have our daughter baptized, but we're not sure where to go and everything. Do you charge?" Ha! It was cool. They were about to leave, but hopefully they're prepared and are cool to wait a few years to have their baby girl baptized. 

Mario (our blind investigator) came to conference! I think he liked it - he only was able to come to one session, and we're going by tonight to follow up. He's quitting a lot of Word of Wisdom habits, so we've been calling him every day to follow up and see how it's going, and we called him on Wednesday while we were driving to MLC and he said "2 other girls came by to talk to me today (Jehovah's Witnesses) and I told them ' you don't know what you're talking about! I'm already talking to missionaries, and there's God and his son Jesus, and this whole Jehovah thing makes no sense. You don't know what you're talking about." :) He's a wonderful man. When we were trying to get him to conference, he said he couldn;t go because his wife hadn't left out clothes for him to wear, so we had him wait on the porch and we went into his house and found his clothes so that he could come. I love what we do :) 

Well, I love you all!
Love,

M

--

Hermana Reynolds

Hello!

Well, Transfers happened and I ended up in Laredo!

My new companion is Hermana McArthur, and she actually went to SVU. We never had a class together, but I'm pretty sure we saw each other often and we have lots of mutual friends/acquaintances. She and I have lots of similarities and get along swimmingly. We are in a cute apartment with 2 other sisters, and it would be the nicest apartment I've been in, except for the fact that our AC has been broken since I arrived here. Thankfully, there's a lot less humidity in Laredo, so that's nice. But it's been pretty warm at night. It's all good though, it's a great opportunity to prepare for nights without AC in the future, right? :)

We've had some super cool things happen here - the people of Laredo are VERY humble and prepared, and we're always busy. Right now there are only branches in our Zone, but they're getting bigger and it's exciting to see lots of receptive people. I got here on Tuesday, and then on Thursday we had a Zone meeting and afterwards went and ate at a place called Cici's Pizza. I didn't eat a lot, but what I did eat didn't make me feel so great. Lots of grease. Yum. We went home and were going to have a biking day, so we got our bikes and started biking (Laredo has lots of hills, so I'm gonna get nice and fit this transfer). After biking for a while and being in the sun, I didn't feel so great. We tried a couple people that weren't home, and then I realized I wasn't gonna make it. So I went behind a car and vomited all the pizza out, and then I heard my companion contacting a guy walking past on the street. We talked with him for a little bit, and then kept walking, and then saw a guy who was just coming out of his house abd about to leave. He said we could go talk to his blind father, and we did and he was super prepared. We taught him to pray, and when we came back the next day he said "I've been praying the way you taught and I feel a difference! I've been mad at God for taking away my eyesight, but now when I feel mad I start to pray and I feel better!" We went back yesterday and met his wife, and they both are planning on being baptized in a few weeks. Miracles! Also, isn't that beautiful metaphorically? Teaching a blind man the gospel? Love it.

Yesterday we went and talked with a woman who the other companionship of sisters met, and we met her husband. She was super excited about the idea of baptism, and they both are pretty receptive as they're about to be parents (she's like 7 months pregnant). We taught them how to pray, and asked the husband as the head of the household to offer that prayer. He didn't want to, since he said he was shy, but finally offered a very short, simple prayer, and afterward the wife broke down into tears. The spirit was super powerful, and it was really cool to see her recognize that. First prayers are the best! She also then proceeded to pin a clothes pin with blue beads to "counteract the gravity from the foll-moon/eclipse so that her baby wouldn't be born with cleft palette or anything." Cool.

Well, I hope that everything goes splendidly this week!

I love you all!!! 

Love,

Hermanita Reynolds

3319 S Bartlett

Laredo, TX (I don't know my zipcode...)

Well, it's only been a few days since I last emailed so I don't have anything TOO crazy to report. We had 2 exchanges this week, and so there were two days that I went to the STL's area and worked with them in McAllen. I had one exchange on Thursday with Sister Perez (who is going home next week) and then on Saturday I had another one with Sister Pickett (my trainer). It was fun to get to work with both of them separately and have a chance to get advice from sister Perez and work again with sister Pickett, since it's been a while since we were together. While I was sister Pickett, we were walking down the street and we found a woman standing in her driveway, and we went up and started talking with her. She said she grew up Catholic but didn't really go to church anymore (pretty typical), and we taught her a little bit, and she said she didn't really know how to pray, so we asked if we could teach her. She said yes, so we explained it, then I said a prayer to give an example, and then she prayed, and after she had said a couple of sentences she started getting choked up and then ended it and, with tears in her eyes, said "Wow, I'm sorry, it's just that I've never prayed before." It was super cool to see how someone with little religious background could recognize the power behind prayer and the feeling of the Holy Ghost. 

Also this week we experienced our first Flash Flood. We had gone home to eat dinner, and in 1 hour it went from being cloudy to pouring rain and then our street became a river. There was probably a foot or a foot and a half of water, it was crazy! We looked outside our window and thought "oh no! How are we gonna get out of here?" We were on the bikes, and were trying to figure out how we'd go work again. The rain eventually stopped, and we went outside to take pictures of the street, and then we realized that it was only half of our street that flooded, and the other half was totally fine, ha ha. So we didn't end up being stranded, but there WAS a lot of water.

Our Stake also did a cultural celebration this last week, and each ward had their youth prepare a cultural dance of the area. Which basically meant that there were a bunch of line dances and one or two hispanic dances, but it was fun. :)

Okay, well have a great week!

Oh, PS, next week is transfers, so if you mail anything after tuesday t should probably be sent to the Mission Office.

--

Hermana Reynolds

Hey ya'll!

Man, this whole emailing on Wednesday is throwing off my groove - now I have a week and a half of experiences to draw from. 

Hmm. Well, the most exciting thing was that Alan got confirmed, and the ward has been welcoming him splendidly :) Yay! Alan's doing really well - when we went over on Monday he had read up until Mosiah, and he's looking for ways to get the people he knows to read the Book of Mormon.

A couple of weeks ago we were looking through our Area Book and we found a record of a former investigator that looked really interesting and we decided we should try and find him again. We'd tried by his house probably 6 or 7 times in the plan of a couple of weeks, and he was never there. But the other day we FINALLY found him. He came out and at first kind of tried to kindly tell us he wasn't interested, but he mentioned something like "when the other missionaries were teaching me, life was real good, but I just am more comfortable in my baptist beliefs." As as probed a little bit he just started crying. He's a big, African American man, and he just broke down and told us how horrible his life is and how he's at rock bottom and he's been praying and praying to have relief and to find something. Evidently he had been really close to getting baptized before, but his family and friends talked him out of it, and then his life went south pretty hard. He talked with us for 20 minutes or so, and cried the whole time. At one point he got really choked on his emotions, and then looked at us and said "you can see that I need help, right? I just need someone to be there for me." He said he's willing to learn again, and he prayed with us and said a beautiful prayer and I was so humbled to be a part of it. Miracles like that are what make everything worth it :)

We had Zone Conference yesterday and learned a lot. One thing President Maluenda said that I really liked was that the mission is a time to learn lessons, because we'll never have the spiritual support like we do now, so we should use this time to learn through trials the things that we'd have to learn otherwise after our missions and without all the spiritual support. 

Okay, well I love you all!

Have the best week of your lives.

Love,
m

--

Hermana Reynolds

Alan Got Wet!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Man, there were so many miracles that happened this week - I don't even know where to start. I'll start with the baptism, that sounds like a good idea. So, we've been teaching Alan for 2 months now, and he's been SO ready for the last 3 weeks. He had to wait for his baptismal date because of emergencies getting to church, but yesterday when we were waiting for his family to get there, someone asked him if he was ready and he said "I stink of preparedness." ha ha. It was really neat, because almost his WHOLE family came, and none of them had been very receptive before, but all of them felt the spirit and were making comments that he's never been this happy nor this committed to anything before. It took 4 people in the font to baptize him, and I was scared to death the whole time that he was going to drown, but he made it! 

We had him write down his testimony on his iPad and had a member of the ward read it as part of the baptismal program, and it was incredible. Basically he said "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has helped me change my life. I used to be so angry and thought that God had done this to me, but now I know that he loves me and that I can change."

I don't know that I have ever seen anyone as desirous to be baptized as Alan, and I feel like I was allowed to be a small part of a very large miracle. From everything we've seen, Alan is going to be the means of bringing about a lot of blessings to his family and to the ward. 

This week was also sister Moore's birthday, and on her birthday we had a blitz where the Zone Leaders came and worked in our area for a few hours, and sister Moore and I found 3 new investigators within those 3 hours. It was super cool. One of them is named Phillip, and we met him through a kind of crazy series of circumstances, but we talked with him briefly and then set up a return appointment for Sunday. Saturday night we ended up having some things fall through, and I felt really strongly that we should go visit him. So we went, and found him outside. He told us that he'd been thinking all day, and that lead to a really cool discussion about the Plan of Salvation, why we're here, etc. There are some people you meet and talk to as missionaries that are interested, but don't get that this applies to their life. I'm not sure how to explain it. I guess just the majority of people take a while to realize the seriousness of what we're sharing. I guess a lot of it is that most people have a pretty solid religious background and don't see the need for more. Anyway, Phillip has been really cool to work with because he takes it all seriously. It's hard though because you can see how much potential he has, but because of circumstances he hasn't been able to use a lot of that. I think that's one of the hardest things about the mission, is seeing unrealized potential. I guess that's probably how God feels about a lot of us, ha ha. 

Well, I love you all!

Love,

M

--

Hermana Reynolds

This week we had the first thunderstorm I've had in months, and it was the biggest I've ever experienced in my life! At about 12:40 I woke up to a huge crash of Thunder, and then from then until we got up at 6:15, with a break of an hour or two, there was constant lightening and thunder. Not like one crash every 5 minutes, but 5 crashes every minute. and sometimes 20 crashes every minute. and they were all super loud and close. We were all excited for the rain and coolness that it would bring. But then. We realized. 

Hot weather = no bugs.

Cool weather = a nightmare of bugs 

I don't even know how this many bugs exist. We came home and there were HUNDREDS of tiny dead bugs on the counter by the window. I don't know how they got in,  but there were bugs everywhere and while we were biking it felt like we were a windshield and kept getting hit by bugs. not the most pleasant experience. 

But, the weather was nice, and it helped me remember to not relocate back to Texas after the mission ;)

In other events, Alan is getting baptized next Sunday! He came to church yesterday, and he loved it. It's fun, because as we get to know him more we get to know his personality, and he's hilarious. He used to only be able to communicate with us through his iPad, but sister Moore and I have learned how to spell words out with his eyes, so we can talk whenever, and he'll make the funniest comments. However, the people in the ward, for the most part, have yet to realize his hilarity. Or that he is normal. Or can't talk. Or can communicate. Basically, there are a select few who have taken the opportunity to get to know him and realize that he's normal. Lots of them talk to him like he's 3 and can't understand, and it's a little frustrating. But, that'll come with time. Yesterday, there was a member who's been recently converted, and he was talking with us and Alan, and he made some comment to Alan, to which he received no response (obviously), and sister Moore said "Alan's a little quiet.." She was kind of joking, but the member thought that he really just was shy and said "it's okay, I felt that way too, at first. It'll come with time!" Ha ha. We all had a good laugh about it. Alan can understand everything, and was even in college classes for a while. We're hoping he can go back to college, because that would be super awesome for him. 

Anyway, that's mostly it for this week :) 

Until next time...

--

Hermana Reynolds

This week brought a lot of learning experiences, that's for sure :)

Transfers happened, and our beloved District Leader got called to be a Zone Leader, and we all shed tears of sadness for our loss. We LOVED our district leader, and we made lots of miracles happen as a district. All of the other companionships in our zone had one companion change except for sister Moore and I, so there is a lot of fresh blood in our Zone and we are excited to get to work. 

Alan didn't make it to church again yesterday, because his Mom went out of town and he had to go stay with his sister far away and then to top it off, he got sick. It's ridiculous how hard Satan will work against people progressing. But, that leaves lots of room for miracles. Alan has been an interesting situation because it requires a lot of work with the Ward, and this ward has had 1) lots of bad history with missionaries before and 2) a lot of strong families that carry the ward and do all of the service. Anyway, we've gotten a bit of chastisement for asking favors from the ward with bringing Alan to church and wanting him to get baptized... I've definitely been learning the importance of wards and missionaries working together, which I had no understanding of before the mission. Anyway, that being said, his baptism won't be until the 30th of August. But it's gonna happen. :)

This week we went over to the Stake President's house to help his wife sew a quilt (a dream come true service project), and he was home from work and so we started talking about the things he'd been studying, and he asked us a few interesting questions I thought I'd share. I've made them a matter of study during my personal studies this week and have gleaned many helpful insights.

1) what is the difference between having "faith in" and having a "testimony of" God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost (the first temple recommend question).

2) Why do have have to have faith in those members individually, and how are they different (hint: Faith in God has more to do with Commandments, Faith in Christ is more about Atonement)

Well, I still haven't found my camera cord. One day i will and I'll send pictures of the AP's planners. They turned out beautifully:)

Love you all!

--

Hermana Reynolds

Another transfer ya se va!

I can't believe this transfer is already over! crazy. The AP's were at one of our meeting this last week and they both said "Sister Reynolds, you're making our planner covers for next transfer, right?" I realized I've never send pictures of the ones I made last transfer, so I'll have to repent and send some next week. They look pretty beautiful ;)

 

A few weeks ago we were eating lunch with the Bishop's wife, and we asked for referrals and she said we could try by the neighbor and that they had a son who might be receptive, but that the parents were a little weird. We tried by a couple of days later and talked with him - he was super nice, but was just leaving so told us to come back. We had a few other experiences like that with him, and then finally this week found both him and his mom at home and they invited us in to talk. Usually we try to talk with people to "find a need" and then apply the gospel to that need. Often the need is pretty hidden, but one of the first things the mom said was "wow, that's really cool what you do. Lots of people go through hard things and need that help, like we just had a death in our family, obviously." Not sure why it was "obvious," but it was a super clear need! They had questions about life after death, and we were able to testify and teach and they accepted baptismal dates and we asked them to say a prayer at the end. We taught them how, and the mom said it. It was brief and heartfelt, and at the end she said "Wow! I could feel that! I've prayed before, but doing it in the name of Jesus Christ has a different kind of power - that was really cool!" Yessss. I think one of my most favorite things about the mission so far has been when people pray for the first time - their prayers are so simple and beautiful and it makes me reevaluate mine.

 

Alan is doing great! We've been teaching him and 4 other little kids who live in the same house as him, and Alan knows everything now - he's getting interviewed for baptism tonight and then can be baptized in the next couple of Sundays. Sometimes getting support from the ward for baptisms can be tricky, so prayers will be appreciated muchisimo :)

 

Much love! Hope all is well :)

Hermana Reynolds

more miracles

Hey!

 

On Wednesday we were going to have a mission-wide Sister's meeting, but it got cancelled, so instead our district met at the church and we (the sisters) made lunch for everyone. Oh wait, So, that did happen but actually the story I wanted to tell happened at lunch the day before (Tuesday). We were eating lunch as a at the church ( since it was the end of the month and we're out of money we all just brought our own food to the church instead of going somewhere) and my compy and I brought cereal as part of our lunch. The other two sisters had brought it for us, and they accidentally brought the wrong box of cereal, but no biggy, right? So we're eating cereal and my companion all of a sudden yells "STOP EATING! Don't ask, don't look, just spit it out and throw it away" It turns out the box of cereal they brought was really old, and there was a dead lizard in it. Yup. Delicious.

 

A happier thing of this week was that we were walking down the street and a car pulled up to us and a the lady inside told us she was a member that had just moved back from AZ and that we should come over. Her mom was a less active member that we had been trying to find, and when we went over a couple of nights later we had a wonderful lesson with them, and they all came to church! Not only that, but the daughter brought a friend who isn't a member, and we're going to have a family night with them this week, and they told us they're going to invite their family and friends who aren't members. It was a super big miracle.

 

We also had some time one day and ended up knocking on the door of a woman who said that her parents were baptized into the church 15 years ago and eventually stopped going, but that the week before she had been talking to her husband and that they were wanting a church to take their kids to. We're going back this week and we're going to baptize them :)

 

Also, Alan, our handicapped investigator, is doing really really well. He came to church yesterday, as well as his step-sister and niece. It's always a super big miracle when people come to church because that's by far the hardest part about teaching someone, but they came and it was magical. Also, we have another investigator named Michael (who's a girl) and she came to church and she's been to mutual twice and loves it, but her family is moving to Austin in the next couple of weeks. Tragic. But, the missionaries there will get a gift-wrapped referral :)

 

Oh wait! This is really exciting! I talked our ENTIRE HOUSEHOLD into washing their hair with Honey. Score. I felt so very happy.

That's all :)

 

Okay, well I hope ya'll are doing well! I lost my camera  cord so  I can't send pictures until I find it.. sorry... but I love you :)

 

 

Love,

M'ana Reynolds

"And sometimes you have to kill Laban"

I don't even know where to start this week. At the beginning of this week everything was "normal," but then on Tuesday the craziness began. On Sunday my compy and I fasted for service opportunities that would bring about teaching opportunities. Then on Tuesday there was a woman in our ward who asked for help with English (There are many members of the English ward that don't actually really speak English. Still not sure why.) So we were talking with her and helping her when she got a phone call from the Elders. Evidently they were teaching her daughter-in-law, but some things happened so they wanted us to start teaching her. She'd been to church lots of times and was living the commandments so she was baptizable, so the Elders told us to get her baptized that Sunday. So, the next 5 days consisted of us working harder than I ever imagined was possible to get things worked out. It turned out to be incredibly hard to contact her, and the Zone Leaders and the other Elders were all working with us. On Thursday night she was supposed to have her interview, so Elder Rosero (on of the ZLs  who is from Uruguay) and us were waiting in the church for the investigator to come. She didn't show up, so we called and were driving around trying to find her, and then came back to the church and were talking with Elder Rosero. (side note - we all really love Elder Rosero because he's super great, but also has a wonderful accent - he never spoke English before him mission, so it's really great.) We ended up talking about Jorge and how that one time we had to go by his house 4 times in one day before we found him, and then he said "Sometime you have to knock on a door 4 times, and sometime you have to kill Laban." So that became our motto for the week. "We're gonna go kill Laban!" Lots of crazy happenings and miracles came this week. Ultimately, the investigator didn't get baptized, and that was a good thing - she needed more preparation. We did end up staying out past 9 (with permission) 4 nights in a row, and one of those nights we didn't even get home until 10:30. I learned a lot about the blessings that come from following leaders, and we saw a lot of miracles. Didn't baptize, but we sure learned a whole lot.

 

That pretty much was our week in a nutshell - in the words of Elder Rosero, "I love you all, be perfect!"

Love,

M

Tuesday was my six month mark, and we celebrated by flooding our apartment. I was sitting at the table, reading the Fam Bam that mom mailed to me, and I looked down and there was water coming toward me. I hadn't heard it because all the showers were on, but something burst under the kitchen sink and there was water gushing out (like what happened at Aunt RaeLynne's - remember, mom?). Anyway, we eventually stopped it but had a good inch of water in the kitchen. It was pretty exciting.

 

Also, sister Moore and I discovered that we really like singing together and we've been having lots of fun with that and we had a musical number at our last Zone meeting. We sang Joseph Smith's first prayer to the tune of Come Thou Fount, and it turned out rather well.

 

So, remember how I said we found Dominic last week? I have two more stories because of that.

 

Primeramente, we were teaching Dominic, and he seemed to know everything. We were going to review all the lessons, but we decided to just have him be interviewed and start the process of getting permission to be baptized. So we went over the interview questions, and then he had his interview, and after he left we talked with Elder Lindsay, who had interviewed him, and he told us there were a couple of things we needed to work on with him, but that technically he passed, but he wasn't sure what we should do because he was a little concerned. So he called the Zone leaders, and they called the APs, and the APs talked with President Maluenda, and then the next night Elder Lindsay told us that Dominic needs to wait 2 years before he can be baptized. We were pretty bummed, and we went and talked with Dominic about it and he opened up about some problems he hadn't told us about and said that he actually would want to wait 2 years, so in the end revelation is real and maybe I'll come back to Texas in a couple of years for his baptism :)

 

The second cool story is that when we were looking for Dominic, I was on an exchange with the STLs, and sister Perez and I knocked on the wrong door and this lady was like "Oh, are you here to see Alan?" and we said, "sure!" ha ha. We'll take about any excuse to get in a door. Anyway, we went in and they took us into Alan's room, and evidently he used to be super normal but then an accident or something happened and now he's lost use of his legs and only has limited mobility of his head and arms, but can use an iPad to communicate and understands completely fine. We went in there, and then his nephews wanted to be there, too. We had the sweetest lesson about the plan of salvation, and they all wanted to learn more. We went back once or twice more, but weren't sure what to do because he'd need a ton of family support, and we weren't sure if the family was willing. We went by on Saturday and brought a member of the bishopbric and had an incredible lesson with the family and they said if Alan wanted to go to church they would take him, but that he didn't like leaving his house and that missionaries from other churches had tried to get him to go to church and he had never wanted to. We went in and briefly talked with him and he said he wanted to go! So we worked things out and the mom brought him and he loved it. It was the first time in his life that he'd ever been and he wants to go back. We're hoping that the family will open up and want to start listening more, the little kids love it though and have been waiting for us when we come.

 

At first I felt a little awkward about the situation and honestly was thinking how the ward would think about it, thinking they would be like "oh, they're just teaching handicapped people because they're stuck into listening," but it has been such a sweet experience to be trusted with these souls. Moral of the story, don't be afraid of judgment and just love everybody.

 

Miracles happen :)

I love all ya'll ;)

M

like, another email

Howdy!

 

Quick update on training: It's possibly the most fun thing I've ever done. Our biggest problem right now is that we get along too well - like, we'll start laughing when we shouldn't and can't stop. For example, we'll be praying and we'll accidentally say something funny and then we'll start laughing and can't finish the prayer. The struggle is real. Also, yesterday in church we went to the gospel principles class and the lesson was on the Law of Chastity, and the first thing the teacher asked was "okay, so what's procreation?" And it just went downhill from there. I think all of the missionaries were trying really hard to keep it together. After about 15 minutes we just couldn't handle it anymore so we had to step outside in the hall and regroup and come up with a plan of how we would be able to participate without laughing. Also, I think we've been really exhausted this week, so that hasn't helped. But we've gotten a little better and the focus is improving :)

 

I feel like our area is improving and we're getting a better grasp of what's going down here, and we're seeing lots of miracles.
I know that cool things happened this week, but I honestly can't remember what. One cool story.. We found an old investigator named Dominic, and he's been taught everything twice. He's pretty prepared (with a couple of holes that need filling - like he still believes in rosaries and things like that), but he just got out of jail and is on Probation for 10 years, so he'll have to get first presidency permission to be baptized. He's super funny - he always refers to us as "man." He also may or may not be a kleptomaniac.. we're gonna have to figure that one out.

 

We had 2 blitzes this week (where other missionaries come and help us find investigators in our area), and because of that we had to spend a ton of time planning. By the time Thursday came around we were just done with planning and I never wanted to look at my planner again. But, we found 7 new investigators this week. Which is a lot. There were a lot of miracles involved in that, but sadly all of the times we found new people where when we were on exchanges or they were found my other missionaries for us,

so our goal this week is to actually find some people together :)

We've been biking a lot this week and I've come to really love biking - especially when we're biking home at night and it's quiet except for the birds and the sun is almost gone and the fireflies are out - it's kind of magical. The not magical part of our week is that we have weird bugs all over our house. Like, in our shower we found a bunch of weird black bugs, and some other bugs in the kitchen, and then we found a huge cockroach and an earwig and so I'm ready for that to be done.

 

Oh also we had interviews with the President this week and that was super great - I had a really long interview with him and he answered a lot of questions I'd been having, and I also got to train on Body Language to the missionaries who weren't in interviews - it was super fun :)

 

Okay, well lots of love from here :) Have a great week!

 

Hermana Reynolds

oh you know

Well, hello there!

Primeramente, here is my new address:

1912 Summer Breeze Apt A

Mission TX 78572

I'm serving in the city of Mission, in the zone of Hidalgo. My area is called "Palmhurst West," and it's brand new. Kind of.

This week I learned (once again) that I basically have no idea what I'm doing, but God is really ultra merciful.

So, on Monday afternoon they told us where everyone was going and they told me I was going to Palmhurst, and then people started saying "Oh! There's already a greenie there! You'll be finishing training her." So I was all mentally prepared for that. Then we went to transfers and I went up to the girl I thought I was going to finish training, and she and her companion told me that, no, they were opening up another area and I was getting a brand new greenie! Yessssss.

So, my greenie and I are whitewashing!

 

Her name is Sister Moore, she's from California, and she's super wonderful. The first couple of days I felt a little overwhelmed because she was super great and I was feeling like there wasn't a whole lot I could actually teach her. She's been so willing to jump in and act, and miracles are going to happen.

 

One of the first miracles is that our district leader, Elder Lindsay, was a missionary that was serving in Brownsville with me, so even though I didn't know anyone else in our new zone and district, we knew each other. We were friends before, and now we're tight and it's been such a blessing. We have many exceptional missionaries here in the TMM, and Elder Lindsay is definitely one of them. From the get-go here we've our district has had super great unity and a lot of focus, and I've seen a lot of blessings emotionally and physically and spiritually.   

 

Since we had little/no information at the beginning, our first efforts here have been valiant but a little pathetic. However, we're finally getting to know our members and our area and this area is wonderful. We have 23 active members in our area, and then 40 some-odd less actives, so we have lots of members in a small space (our area is mostly a biking area - we share a car with the other sisters that we live with, but their area is a lot further and bigger, so we bike/walk a lot. It's good :) ). So anyway, we've come up with some good plans and I am so excited to be able to work through the ward more.

 

Our fourth of July was pretty great - in the morning we went to the Stake Pancake and Breakfast Taco Breakfast (welcome to South Texas), where all of the missionaries sang the national anthem, then we went home and did some studies and then went to the ward activity. It was at the house of a member who has a zoo! like, seriously. He has this huge house out in the country and he has zebras and camels and horses and swans and probably other things too. It's not really set up like a zoo, but it was incredible. After that we went and did service with the elders (Scraping paint off of the garage doors of an investigator), got ice cream, and then went home at 6 to do weekly planning. We didn't see any fireworks, but we could hear them :)

 

Yesterday the 3 sets of missionaries that work in this ward met with the Bishop to get his vision and make plans for how we can work in this ward, then we had church, and then we went out working. We were having a pretty unsuccessful night, but then we found a less-active member who gave us rhubarb jelly, and then we were walking back to our car when we heard "SISTERS!" we looked over, and there were the AP's! They were at the house of the Stake President (who lives in our area) and they invited us in, and it turns out that they were having a lesson there with 2 recent converts along with 2 other missionaries. So the 6 of us were in the lesson, and then at the end they ended up thinking of 3 people they want us to meet with. It was such a big miracle and helped us feel like our efforts, pitiful though they may be, are recognized :)

 

Much love to you all! I forgot my cord to my camera,  but I'll send pictures next week :)

Love,

Hermana Reynolds

Re:

Bah ha ha ha ha ha ha! I am laughing so hard about the lady telling you that you should marry that elder. Ha ha ha.

I miss you.

On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 11:37 AM Megan Reynolds <megan.reynolds@myldsmail.net> wrote:

This week was another week of miracles!

Man, I don't even know where to start. Well, first of all, Transfers are next Tuesday. While I'm praying I stay in Brownsville, it's a possibility that I'm leaving, soooo, send all mail to the mission office until further notice. :)

 

Jorge! So, we've had a lot more luck finding him this week. His mom had a stroke and had ulcers and now has tumors, so he spends most of his time in the hospital with his Dad, and he's been pretty worried about her. She can't even talk right now, and it's all been pretty recent. So on Tuesday, elder Cruz and Gibson went with us to the hospital and they gave his mom a blessing. The whole family was really touched and it was a sweet experience. We've been teaching him and he is doing super well - he has a baptismal date set for this coming Sunday and if all goes well he can for sure be baptized. The week before baptism is always the most crazy because that's when Satan is trying his hardest, so if you could all keep Jorge in your prayers we'd appreciate it! He is just so very sweet - we taught him the Word of Wisdom and he told us that he hasn't been having problems with everything and was super committed to live it, and at the next lesson we asked him "so is everything still going well with the WoW? Are you having any problems?" and he said, "yeah, I have a problem... let me get the pamphlet." so he went inside and I was so very sad and just HOPING that it wasn't serious. he came back out and said, "so, my mom is really sick right now, is that because she wasn't living the word of wisdom?" So his "problem" was actually just a question. Also, we were teaching him about the Atonement, and I explained what it was and what it meant for us, and he was pretty silent and so we asked what he was thinking and he just said "Wow, I'm just thinking that God must love us so much if he's going to take all of that for us." He also has been reading the Book of Mormon and explaining/translating it to his Dad. He'll read chapters 2 or 3 times if he doesn't understand them, and he has such sincere desires to improve and get closer to God. So we'll be working and praying super hard this week!

 

We also have an investigator named Brenda, and she's super funny. She is curious about a lot of things, but also trusts us a lot and wants to learn. We taught her about the restoration and the Book of Mormon, and after the lesson on the Book of Mormon she was like, "okay, Wow. I'm going to do this. I'm going to read it. But I need you to tell me something else I don't know." "Okay, well next time we're going to talk about where we lived before this earth and where we're going after." "no, like something new, something that I don't know." "okay.. well remember how we talked about Joseph Smith and how he was a Prophet? We still have a living Prophet on the earth today." To which Brenda responded "WHAT????? Oh my goodness. Okay, like that was too much. I shouldn't have asked. I just need to focus on the basics. I'm going to read the Book of Mormon, and I'm going to pray, and, wow. yeah. I just need to trust you guys." ha ha.

 

Oh, another funny story. So remember how I spoke in church last week? So one of the other elders spoke, too. Yesterday, an older member of the ward was talking to me and said "you spoke last week, right? And the Elder, too? You too need to get together. I want to see you too holding hands, married in the temple. If you want you should tell him to come over and I can tell him that, too." Ha ha ha.... Oh, how I love the grandparents in this ward :)

 

--

Hermana Reynolds

This week was another week of miracles!

Man, I don't even know where to start. Well, first of all, Transfers are next Tuesday. While I'm praying I stay in Brownsville, it's a possibility that I'm leaving, soooo, send all mail to the mission office until further notice. :)

 

Jorge! So, we've had a lot more luck finding him this week. His mom had a stroke and had ulcers and now has tumors, so he spends most of his time in the hospital with his Dad, and he's been pretty worried about her. She can't even talk right now, and it's all been pretty recent. So on Tuesday, elder Cruz and Gibson went with us to the hospital and they gave his mom a blessing. The whole family was really touched and it was a sweet experience. We've been teaching him and he is doing super well - he has a baptismal date set for this coming Sunday and if all goes well he can for sure be baptized. The week before baptism is always the most crazy because that's when Satan is trying his hardest, so if you could all keep Jorge in your prayers we'd appreciate it! He is just so very sweet - we taught him the Word of Wisdom and he told us that he hasn't been having problems with everything and was super committed to live it, and at the next lesson we asked him "so is everything still going well with the WoW? Are you having any problems?" and he said, "yeah, I have a problem... let me get the pamphlet." so he went inside and I was so very sad and just HOPING that it wasn't serious. he came back out and said, "so, my mom is really sick right now, is that because she wasn't living the word of wisdom?" So his "problem" was actually just a question. Also, we were teaching him about the Atonement, and I explained what it was and what it meant for us, and he was pretty silent and so we asked what he was thinking and he just said "Wow, I'm just thinking that God must love us so much if he's going to take all of that for us." He also has been reading the Book of Mormon and explaining/translating it to his Dad. He'll read chapters 2 or 3 times if he doesn't understand them, and he has such sincere desires to improve and get closer to God. So we'll be working and praying super hard this week!

 

We also have an investigator named Brenda, and she's super funny. She is curious about a lot of things, but also trusts us a lot and wants to learn. We taught her about the restoration and the Book of Mormon, and after the lesson on the Book of Mormon she was like, "okay, Wow. I'm going to do this. I'm going to read it. But I need you to tell me something else I don't know." "Okay, well next time we're going to talk about where we lived before this earth and where we're going after." "no, like something new, something that I don't know." "okay.. well remember how we talked about Joseph Smith and how he was a Prophet? We still have a living Prophet on the earth today." To which Brenda responded "WHAT????? Oh my goodness. Okay, like that was too much. I shouldn't have asked. I just need to focus on the basics. I'm going to read the Book of Mormon, and I'm going to pray, and, wow. yeah. I just need to trust you guys." ha ha.

 

Oh, another funny story. So remember how I spoke in church last week? So one of the other elders spoke, too. Yesterday, an older member of the ward was talking to me and said "you spoke last week, right? And the Elder, too? You too need to get together. I want to see you too holding hands, married in the temple. If you want you should tell him to come over and I can tell him that, too." Ha ha ha.... Oh, how I love the grandparents in this ward :)

 

--

Hermana Reynolds

:)

Howdy, ya'll!

We just finished week 4 - only 2 more weeks left in the transfer. Super nuts!

We had Zone Conference this week, and it was pretty intense. Our Mission President is a very inspired man, and he's also very intense, so coming out of zone conferences and interviews always feel like a little bit of spiritual purging. But it's good :)

President talked a lot about faith, and how if we really have faith we show it through our works. So he talked a lot about obedience, and how we need to show our love for the Savior through our actions, and how this mission is a time to learn how to be obedient so that after the mission we're obedient to the ultimately even more important things (things that will help our future families - family home evening, daily prayer, scripture study, etc). That's one of the things I really appreciate about our mission president - he focuses on the after-mission. I've heard stories of mission presidents who are super focused on the mission and tell their missionaries to leave all other thoughts behind, but President Maluenda is very aware and focused on how the mission is going to help us be the mothers/fathers we need to be after. So I'm learning a lot, and it's cool to see how I really can be different because of the mission. Anyway, I learned a lot and left feeling edified and more faithful.

 

We went to Bayview this week! It's this little teeny town out in the middle of nowhere, but it's BEAUTIFUL (hence all the pictures). I've liked different parts of Texas, and Brownsville is much more fun than I expected, but Bayview is the first place I've ever though "I could definitely live here." It's tropical with lots of citrus trees, and the lots of land are all really big so the neighbors are relatively close, but not suffocating. Also, all of the houses are built along a Resaca/lake, and it's like a little bit of Paradise.

 

So remember the story about Jorge? The guy the Elders found? So we tried by every singe day this week and we could never find him/he had to leave or couldn't talk. So we were pretty sad/frustrated, and just wanted to find him. Finally, on Saturday we were determined to find him, so we stopped by 3 times, and the last time it sounded like maybe people were home, but nobody was answering. Ugh. So we walked to another part of the neighborhood, and did some other things. The Zone leaders (who found him originally) called to see if we'd had any luck, and so they ended up coming. Elder Cruz knocked down the door (almost literally) and we finally got the (very-drunk) dad to open the door, and told us Jorge was sleeping. After a lot of persuasion, the Elders talked him into letting them go wake him up, and we talked with him for 10 minutes and made arrangements for him to come to church. We had two people who previously said they could give him a ride, and when Sunday morning rolled around BOTH of them fell through. Earlier that morning I had poured my cereal and was saying a prayer over it, when I felt the impression that I needed to fast. I was trying to justify it away "but I already poured my cereal!" but decided I should do it. So when all the craziness of finding a ride started happening I was so grateful I had that prompting - we called EVERYONE we could think of, even our less-active members and nothing was coming through. I was pretty frustrated, I felt like we had worked so hard to get him to come to church and he was ready, and we couldn't find anyone. Finally 1/2 before church, the Elders found an older member to take him. We all met up at Jorge's house, and seeing Elder Cruz come out of the house with Jorge was one of the happiest sights of my life. Church went really well! I gave a talk on member missionary work during sacrament, so I got to sit up on the stand and Jorge was paying a lot of attention, and after church he said he loved it (and he wasn't on drugs this time - hollah!). It was such a miracle and it was a really big lesson in "after ALL we can do."

Also, yesterday we found a cute little family that wants to learn more and the sister of Sarah (The mystery girl we found who had been taught by elders), but we still haven't found Sarah... ha.

 

Well, believe in miracles! They happen!

I love you all - keep up the good work :)

Love,

Hermanita Reynolds

So, somewhere in the past couple of weeks I finished 1/4 of my mission.. Yup. Time is going just a bit too fast.

 

We had some pretty interesting appointments this week, and the first ones involving drugs since I started my mission! The Elders told us they had an investigator for us  that they had taught a couple of times, and so we were going to have a lesson with them and trade off. We met him (Jorge) at church, and he seemed super nice, but maybe a little mentally slow. At the lesson it was the same, and he had a hard time remembering, but mostly understood the principles and seemed eager to learn more. So we set up another time to go by, and when we did we could only stay for a couple of minutes because he was leaving. We talked for a couple seconds and then he had to go get something in the other room, and Hna Quintero said "something's different.." and when he came back and we talked for a minute more, something WAS different - He was totally normal! He wasn't at all mentally slow, he'd just been using drugs.. Es por eso... So, yup. Gonna have to work on that.

We also met a guy named Josue who was interested (mostly because he doesn't want to go to Hell), and we stopped by again and started talking to him about church and things and asked how interested he REALLY was. He sat there for a minute and then said "well... you see.. I smoke weed. I was in the army and I can't sleep or be normal without it. I'm not a pothead though!" Ha ha. So, gonna have to work on that, too. But he's willing to try out church and to learn more, and his sister-in-law said she'd come too if his wife came, so we'll see what happens. They're the neighbors of the mystery-girl Sarah, and we still haven't ever been able to find her again. Maybe she was a ghost...

 

We also have an investigator named Michael, and he started out as an agnostic, but now he prays and reads the scriptures every day, and it's been cool to see his thoughts and feelings change. However, he's super intellectual and so he has tons of questions about the church's history.. He wants to know everything. he's been reading "Our Heritage," and he wants to read a biography of Joseph Smith and the Joseph Smith papers. He has a master's degree in History, so he loves learning and research, which is good, but we're trying to help him understand he needs a testimony, not just information.. It's been interesting teaching him because he is so very intellectual, and most of our other investigators aren't. So it keeps things interesting :)

 

I think I told you about the big family of girls we had a couple lessons with in Spanish? We taught them again with the Casa Linda sisters (who teach in Spanish where they live) so they could get to know them and start teaching them, and it was pretty crazy. There were 4 missionaries, Gina, and then 6 of them. So there was this huge group of girls all trying to teach and learn, and they kept asking questions and we'd have to explain to the little girls in English sometimes, and were trying to keep them involved, so it was pretty exciting. They said that the other sisters should come walking with them on Tuesday and they could talk more, so they said they would.. and then we're actually doing an exchange tomorrow, so I get to go walking/teaching with them. I'm not sure how intense of walkers they are, but they said they usually walk for 3 hours. so. yup. it'll be great!

 

The missionaries have been doing cross-fit in the mornings, and we've been going. It's pretty painful, but I'm getting a lot stronger! Plus, being in pain together as a zone has really unified us ;) Oh, we're also getting zone tshirts that I helped design, so next week I'll send pictures of how they turned out! The month of Spanish is coming along.. Mostly it's just hard when we're with the other missionaries because they all talk to us in English, and we have to respond in Spanish, but other than that it's been really good and I'm learning lots!

Well, keep on keeping on :)

Lots of love!
--

Hermana Reynolds

Hello! I have some wonderful stories this week - fasten your seatbelts ;)

 

On Thursday we decided to try and find a less-active family up in an area where we don't usually work, and when we arrived there we found this girl named Sarah. She seemed familiar with missionaries, and when we asked her if she had talked with missionaries before she said that two men with nametags like us had been teaching her and she was going to come to church with them (and it was our church). Se were trying to figure out who might have possibly taught her, and NONE of the elders knew who we were talking about .. she didn't end up making it to church, but we're trying by her again tonight and hopefully we can figure it out! Weird miracles...

 

We went and visited the family of the stake patriarch, and he used to work with president Kimball (I think) with the "Lamanites," and since sister Quintero is Mexican he just loved her. At the end of our visit he said "Sister Reynolds, you're very blessed because you get to have one of Lehi's kids as your companion" :)

 

We also had a lesson with one of our investigators last night at a park, and it was kind of flooded and there were lots of mosquitos, so we ended up having a lesson in a gazebo and drenched ourselves in repellent. The funny thing was that we didn't have chairs, so we were all just sitting on the ground. The lesson went really well though - we hadn't had a lesson with him in a long time, but he is progressing really well! His name is Michael and when we met him he had recently changed from being Atheist to being Agnostic, and he is progressing in really incredible ways - it's super amazing to be a part of it.

 

Okay, well I gotta run, but I love you all! The 4 sisters that live in our apt are doing an English fast for a month... so hopefully our Spanish is gonna improve a lot. Yikes! we started today and it's a little daunting, but it'll be good ;)

Love you all!

Love,
Hermana Reynolds

New Transfer!

Hello!

Happy Memorial Day yesterday! The libraries were closed, so I'm emailing today. :)

This new transfer is going to be amazing! My new companion is Sister Quintero, and she's from Spanish Fork. She and I get along really well, and the two other girls in our apartment are sister Whitten and sister Angus, and the 4 of us have a lot of fun. We are always laughing, but we work really hard, too. It's great.

Yesterday since we had more time for P-day we went to the mall. It was a pretty bizarre feeling going there - I haven't been anywhere remotely like a mall since I left for the MTC.

After we came home and went out and worked, and we went and visited a less-active member. He's just 18 and lives pretty much by himself. It's sad, but he's super cool and we had a great conversation. As we were about to leave, he said "hey do you guys want a papaya?" and he went and got a papaya for us from his tree. Papayas supposedly really aren't that great, but everyone here gives them out. So we thought it would be funny to give them to the other sisters when we got home. We walked in the door, and said "We have a present for you!" Sister Angus was like, "Is it a papaya?" and then sister Whitten said "We have a present for YOU!" and they brought out another papaya that one of THEIR members had given them. So now we have 2 huge papaya on our counter. Yay for Texas.

The past few weeks had been pretty rough with finding people, but we've been working really hard and are finally seeing some progress and results. It's been such a miracle to FINALLY start finding people again.

I love Texas! I'm just so very happy here :) Miracles are going to happen this transfer!
Hope all is well :)

--

Hermana Reynolds

Hollah!

Hey family!

 

Man, this week was a whirwind. We did pretty normal things for the first couple of days, and then my companion got called to be an STL so she had to go to training in McAllen, so I was in a trio with the two other girls in our apartment, sister Bentz and sister Whitten. We had some great adventures traversing around Brownsville together.

Also, after the training, our district leader gave us the challenge to use better referral questions (instead of things like "do you know anyone on this street" to  things like "do you know anyone who has lost a job"), and also talked about the importance of using the Book of Mormon. He gave us the challenge to come up with lots of new referral questions to have ready so that we can use them, so we spent a lot of time coming up with those. We got pretty dried out of ideas, and we settled that we just need to start asking "who do you know?" and go from there ;)

But, yesterday we contacted this house and the lady was super not interested, but sister Pickett asked "do you know anyone who is sick who maybe needs some help?" and she was like "Yeah, actually, I work with sick people all the time! Let me give you people you can visit!" So we went in while she was writing down names and stuff, and then I was thinking, if we were already in her home we should share a message from the Book of Mormon. So we pulled out the Book of Mormon, and asked if we could share something. At first she was super apprehensive and was like "why would you use more than the bible? I don't understand!" but we talked about it, shared a story, and left her with a Book of Mormon. It was super cool, because she went from being totally anti other religions to committing to read the Book of Mormon. Pretty cool :)

 

Ever since the change of areas, sister Pickett and I have been doing lots of work with less-active members of the ward, and have made some really great frienships and things, but not a lot of progress as far as returning to church. We had been fasting and praying a lot for investigators and less actives to come to church. Yesterday morning it seemed like everything had fallen through, and we didn't have anything.. but we went to church, and it was so cool. SO many of the people we've been working with came! And the husband of one of the families came, who wasn't a member, for the first time in years. It was such a miracle to have our last week together be a week when we got to see some fruits of our labors here :) The Tender Mercies of the Lord are real!

 

Love you all!!!
--

Hermana Reynolds

This week will be short, but here's a quick story :) The other day we had plans to contact a less-active member, and so we went there and he wasn't home, but his wife was and so we started talking with her. She was pretty cold at first and said that she was a "non-denominational Christian along with her daughter," but we kept talking and then started talking about baptism - we explained that we help people prepare to be baptized and asked if she'd be interested in learning more, and then from behind the door we heard a "yeah, I would!" Her daughter had been listening to the conversation from behind the door and wanted to be baptized! Yay for miracles!

 

Next week is transfers, so things are probably gonna change up again. It's pretty exciting!

--

Hermana Reynolds

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

....

Probably the most exciting thing that happened this week was a zone exchange - everyone switched companions for 2 days - it was pretty crazy! I ended up with another greenie, so for two days we got to practice being not greenies, which was great because in 2 weeks I'm done with 12 week and can graduate greenie-hood! Yay! It was great - we even managed to teach in Spanish without our companions, and we saw lots of miracles.

Okay, I just remembered that there were a lot of other exciting things this week.. so enough about the exchange. On Friday, we exchanged back in time to do weekly planning. We went home, and sister Pickett and I started planning. All of a sudden we heard weird things happening with the other two sisters who live with us, and we heard sister Benz say to sister Whitten, "okay, go lay down!" and then she came in and said "Guys, sister whitten is high from her medication. I'm serious!" and... she was. She had been having kidney problems so got some antibiotics or something, and for some reason she had some crazy reaction and was crazy. She kept saying "I know I'm a missionary, and I know we need to do weekly planning, but I just feel a little weird," and then would start laughing hysterically and telling sister Benz not to call anyone, and was having her take pictures of her eyes because she thought they were dilated and stuff. She wouldn't stay on her bed, and whenever sister Benz tried to talk to us about it she would say "YOU GUYS ARE TALKING ABOUT ME!" and come in and get mad at us. She was super coherent, but just crazy. We eventually got things worked out and she finally went to sleep. And then we went to our next lesson... It was with a guy named Steven, who was baptized a couple years ago but never confirmed. The other Elders had been teaching him since he was in their area, so we were going to talk with him and kind of do a trade-off lesson. Evidently he had had a lot of weird ghost/devil experiences before and claimed to be able to talk in tongues. so we were talking about confirmation and the gift of the Holy Ghost, and all of a sudden he started talking in tongues (like... speaking some made up language.). and it was freaky. He said that it was a gift of the spirit and he knew that he already had the gift of the Holy Ghost because he could talk in tongues.. Yay for Texas! Things like that happen pretty often here, evidently.

Also... I'm gonna be 20 this week. That's all.

Love you! Can't wait to see your bright, smiley faces on Sunday! Yay!

Love,

--

Hermana Reynolds

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.