February 17, 2014

I told President Castro, "Hey President!  Happy President's day!!"  I'm pretty sure he laughs at every single one of my letters....Hahaha.

Anyway.  This week.  SO great!! :)  We had a miracle yesterday....The Solvang Ward had its FIRST Spanish Gospel Principles class!!!!  Erik stayed at church for ALL 3 hours!!!  

We are teaching AMAZING people.  Just amazing people.  I can't even name them all off.  I love it here in Solvang.  This could potentially be my last week here though....in a week I will find out what's happening to me!  :)  I'm excited, I don't really care where go, or if I stay.  I just know I will be where I am supposed to be...but I wouldn't mind staying here.  I love it too much!!

Jen Brown wrote me a letter...I need her email.  It should be on my gmail account.  Would you mind getting that for me?

Too bad about the Volvo!!  But as Dad always says, "Free money!"  Hahaha.  Did I tell you that I am driving a BRAND NEW car?  It had about 100 miles on it when I first started driving it...isn't that crazy?!  I will never drive cars like the ones I drive on my mission...and I'm okay with that because I never want a brand new car!!  

I got a letter from Jon!!  Sounds like Vegas is treatin him very well. 

Did you ever tell Alan and Channing that I live literally a block away from where they took that picture in Solvang....I cannot tell you how weird it is that they were HERE.  What if I would've seen them?!  Crazy.  Just crazy.  

Anyway, I am sorry if this letter jumps around a lot.  My mind is every where.  I hope all of you have a great week.

Love,

Hermana Ah Mu

Feeding Ostriches February 2014

February 10, 2014

Well.  This week.  Very interesting.

Here's a few things that I hope that the Blue Springs 2nd Ward does for the missionaries:

I hope that you all support them in their efforts to be EXACTLY obedient.  

I hope that you all support them in their decisions on how to teach their investigators. 

I hope that you ask the missionaries about their investigators.  Who are they teaching?  What are the investigator's needs?  

I hope you pray for the investigators by name.

Pray for the missionaries by name.

Help them find and teach!  Knocking doesn't work any more.  There are those rare occasions, but it just isn't enough any more.

The reason I say these things is because a few of those things I wish we got more of.  A few of those things have brought miracles. 

We are trying to help our Spanish investigators come to church.  It's amazing that they are even considering church in English.  It's amazing to see them COME to church in English, even though we don't have headsets for translation and even though many of the members don't even look at them.  Including our ward mission leader.  We are working on doing Spanish Gospel Principles class.  We just need support.  We really want the members to be excited about Spanish investigators.  We hope to see excitement soon.  

I am doing great.  I am learning a lot.  I am learning what kind of member I want to be for the rest of my life.  I will seek to be exactly obedient.  I will seek to be trusted more that loved.  I will try my hardest to be supportive of the missionaries and their efforts.  I want to be someone the missionaries can rely on.  I want to help the missionaries find people to teach. 

That is about all I can say right now.  The work is moving along.  Yesterday I just loved seeing 2 of our investigators come to church.  They speak spanish, but they love the spirit.  They know this church is true.  They don't look at the people to determine what kind of church this is, they look at the doctrine.  This is a perfect church for imperfect people.

Have a good week.

Sister Ah Mu

P.S.  We live in our own apartment.  There are just two seperate apartmetns that the missionaries live in.  I know you asked me that mom. 

February 4, 2014

I don't have much time.  Here is the letter I wrote to President.

"This was a great week!  First, a miracle.  We were teaching Erik, and last week I think I mentioned he wasn't able to come to church because he was visiting his sister in Santa Maria.  Well, turns out his sister is taking lessons from missionaries there!  She is reading the Book of Mormon, and Erik was so happy.  He told us her whole countenance has changed.  She is kinder and receptive to the spirit.  Erik, I guess, got to meet the Elders that are teaching her!  I was so excited to hear that!! :D

Okay, We had an interesting lesson with Danny and Kathy.  We taught them the Plan of Salvation.  They had a lot of questions.  They have a hard time understanding the three kingdoms.  They say they agree all the way up to the Spirit world.  It was interesting because Danny said he doesn't want to live with God and Jesus Christ after this life.  So, Hermana Howell and I are re-evaluating what direction to go with them.  We are thinking of going over the nature of our Heavenly Father.  We let them know we are not perfect teachers, and the only way they can really know if this plan was true is if they prayed to Heavenly Father and kept reading the Book of Mormon.  So, we are hoping they did that this past week.  We will see tonight, we have a lesson with them this evening. 

Karen, we read with her 3 Nephi 11.  She LOVED it.  She really loves the Book of Mormon.  And we talked some more about baptism.  It was really cool, we always go in wanting to teach her something, but she always ends up teaching us what we were intending to teach!  She is so smart. 

We taught Cecilia.  We talked with her about prophets.  Cecilia really loves us to come and teach her.  But she has always told us she didn't remember what we had taught the lesson before.  Hermana Howell and I were thinking, "Maybe she isn't really putting this gospel first.  We need to really see if she is interested."  But then at this lesson Cecilia told us she has an illness where she cannot remember things.  She even forgets where she lives sometimes!  However, Hermana Howell and I really felt strongly that if she would put forth faith, then she will be able to remember the things we teach.  So we told Cecilia this, but she isn't ready to put full faith into it yet.  

Our lessons with Erik went very well.  We had a lesson at Bishop's house.  And Erik loved it.  We read Alma 22.  Erik picked out everything before we could even point it out, it was so cool!  He loved the fact that a king would give up his kingdom just to fully partake of the gospel.  Erik ended up coming to church yesterday!!  And he LOVED it.  We had a member in our ward translate for him.  Her name is Maggie, she is from Argentina.  And it turns out that she was really touched to be able to do that.  She went up and shared her testimony and said, "It has been 12 years since I have willingly gone up and shared my testimony.  But while I was translating for Erik, I could feel the spirit so strongly and I just knew I needed to come up and share my testimony.  And I want to do it in my native language."  And so she did.  It was so powerful!  One of the most powerful testimony meetings I have ever been in.  After the meeting Erik told us how amazing the meeting was.  He said the spirit was so strong!  He loved it!!  

I know that Hermana Brown going home changes things a bit.  But I know that this will work out, and everything will work out great.  I love Hermana Brown.  She is a fantastic missionary.  I hope to see her back here one day.  Hermana Prestgard will be just fine, I love her a ton.  It's nice that we already knew each other from Oxnard.  I am not worried about juggling the two areas, we will be just fine.  

That is about it for the week.  I am thankful for this opportunity I have to be serving a mission in the Great California Ventura Mission.  This is the greatest mission for me.  I love it.  I hope that you have a great week President."

Hermana Brown, one of the sisters serving in our ward, had to go home today.  So I am in another trio.  Hermana Howell, Hermana Prestgard, and I.  It will all be great.  We are over two areas, but it's the same ward.  If y'all have been keeping up on my emails, this has happened before.  I'll just become the queen of Emergency trios I guess.  Haha just kidding.  But I'm not worried, I know it will all be great.  I just really hate to see people leave.  It really makes me sad, can't help but cry with them and for them.  I never realized how hard it all could be.  And I'm not even the one going home.  

Well, have a great week.  I'm doing GREAT.  i'm healthy, speakin spanish, eating pastries, I'm a missionary.  Una misionera en la Gran Mision California Ventura.  Es un gran dia para ser una misionera.  Love you all!!

Love,

Hermana Ah Mu

January 28, 2014

Hola familia y amigos,

This week was great!!  The work is just moving along!!  I love it.  We were supposed to have our golden investigator at church yesterday...but he decided not to come.  HUGE disappointment.  :(  We made sure he knew of our disappointment, you know, that is important.  Our ward is just amazing.  I can't remember if I mentioned this, but we get to go to Ward Council, which is FANTASTIC!!  And it's so great to see the discussions in there...sometimes they get heated.  Haha, it makes me just wonder how other ward councils are!  Hahaha.  Dad, now I understand what it is like to be in that meeting...

How funny it is that you saw that sister that came to FIND me and take me to the Singles ward!  Hahaha, sometimes I think of them and wonder how they are!  I'm surprised she remembered me!  Haha.  

I'm glad to hear that all is well in Missouri.  And that Kristen and Emily are enjoying BYU-I do...I mean BYU-I.  ;)  You make sure to tell them NO getting married while I'm gone.  Tell them to email me!  I miss them.  I'll send them a picture to make their day!!  Hehe. 

Can I have Jon's address?  I wanna see how he is enjoying Las Vegas!!!  I can email him or just write him a letter.  But please get me his contact info!!  :)  Thank you!!

We are having lovely weather!!  Just beautiful.  I love it here.  Everyone!  Come to Solvang!!  it's SO fun!!! :)  It's really fun because we live like 2 blocks away from downtown Solvang.  It's fun!

 

We have Presidents interviews this wednesday!!  SO EXCITED.  And nervous.  I know, I'm still weird and confusing.  I'm excited to talk with him, but nervous because it has been so long since I talked with him last...I've changed a lot.  So it'll be interesting.  

Well, sorry, not too much to write.  Same old Same old....I'll include some portions of my letter to President so you can hear about the investigators...

"This week we had a couple lessons with Karen.  She is just amazing.  We read with her 1 Nephi 8.  She had already read it before, but we wanted to go over it because it has such great symbolism.  It turned out Karen had already figured out the symbolism, she is just so smart!  She really loves the Book of Mormon.  We had another lesson and talked with her about church attendance, the baptismal covenant and the importance of the Sacrament.  We had a member present (they are good friends now) and the member took it away!  It went so well, and we are working on a church tour.  Karen wants to, but she wants her husband to come too.  Which is understandable.  Karen knows just how important families are in our church.  She knows that this is for families, so she has been trying to get her husband more involved.  So have Hermana Howell and I.  When we see her husband, Carlos, we always try to talk with him.  Karen is so neat, she told us that she feels the spirit VERY strongly when she reads the Book of Mormon.  And then she said it was the same feeling she gets when she is around missionaries, and Maggie, her fellowshipper.  It was so neat to hear that.  Karen knows that this is true.  She is golden.

Erik came back from Mexico!  We were so excited to see him.  He actually joined us for the 2 lessons we had with Karen, and then we had a lesson with him.  We talked about how his trip was and if he kept the commandments out there.  He kept the Word of Wisdom, it was neat.  Erik was offered coffee by his family, but he said no.  And they all told him he was weird, but he just told them, "I don't drink coffee any more."  We were so happy to hear that!!  And we also told him we had prayed about a date for him.  We feel that the 22 of February would be a good date.  Erik said, "Hmm, I will pray about it and I know that the Spirit will tell me if it is right."  It was so cool!!  So Erik is praying about that as his date.  He was supposed to come to church yesterday, but he decided to go to Santa Maria and visit his sister instead.  We were very sad, we really hope he will come this next sunday. 

We met with Cecilia.  She is very neat.  She has so many questions about the plan.  But we showed her a visual and explained everything, showed her some scriptures.  And Cecilia told us she felt it was right.  So she committed to pray about it.  She is a cool lady, she has been prepared for this message.  She fed us dinner that night.  (Every time we have been there she wants to cook for us, but we always had a dinner appointment, so finally we accepted.  She was so happy!). 

Hermana Howell and I found this girl, Kyleen.  She is pretty young, 15 years old.  But she really wants to know more.  We gave her an Articles of Faith card, a Book of Mormon, and a Restoration pamphlet!  She loves it.  She said she wants to read it to find out more because she has family in Oklahoma who has the Book of Mormon.  We didn't find this as a coincidence.

We had exchanges with Hermana Siddoway and Hermana Linford.  I got to go out with Hermana Linford!  It was a blast.  We found some very cool people.  We found this girl, Belen.  She is super prepared.  She had the perfect questions.  We taught her the whole Restoration at her front door.  She just soaked it up, and we asked her if she would be baptized when she knows that these things are true, she said, "Well yes!  Of course I would!!"  She was excited to read the book of Mormon and pray about it.  And she is excited to listen to the other things we teach.  Belen really wants to know the truth.  We are very excited for her."

Have a great week everyone!! 

Love,

Hermana Ah Mu

P.S.  Something FUNNY.  Cecilia, the lady we teach.  Every time we see her the first thing she says, even before "hola" is, "Tiene un novio?"  "You have a boyfriend?"  Hahaha, we ALWAYS say NO!  That we have no time!!  She just tells us we need to get one or else we'll run out of time, get old and never have a novio.  Hahaha.  

January 20, 2014

Hola.  

Here is an excerpt from my letter to President Castro:

"This was a great week. We are teaching lots of people.  I love it!

So we are teaching Karen.  We have been teaching her since Hermana Howell and I got here, and she has been progressing the entire time.  But this past week we had lost her, we couldn't find her.  We went by multiple times to find her because she never forgets our appointments and we weren't sure what could have gone wrong considering the last lesson we had with her was the Word of Wisdom, and she loved that lesson!  But finally we found her, and she felt so bad.  But her new job just made her really busy.  But we managed to have a lesson with her and gave her a Proclamation.  We think that she will really like it!  She said she will read and pray about it. 

We met with a less active named Monty.  He is very cool.  He hasn't been able to make it to church because of knee problems.  He got surgery and now he is recovering.  So we came over and read a talk from the last General Conference: "You Can Do it Now"  Monty really liked it!

We met with Manuel.  He is cool.  He really is doing better now that we teach slower and ask lots of questions.  We taught him about Christ's Earthly ministry.  Manuel hadn't really ever read the Bible, so this was a really good lesson for him.  And he has agreed to a church tour!  We are excited about that. 

We met with this man named Ivan.  I feel like I have mentioned him before, he works for BYU.  He sells rare books to BYU.  And she he knows all about it!  Well, Ivan has a lot of potential.  He is a good man.  And he has many confusions on what God's plan is for us.  And well...really who God is.  And we really try to talk with him about it.  And he has told us that he has never talked to anyone about his beliefs until we came along.  So that is pretty neat.  We feel that he knows there is something different about LDS people.  We want to help him see why!

We had Stake Conference!  It was so great.  I loved it a lot.  We had a fantastic adult session in Santa Barbara.  It went really well.  There were many great speakers and videos shown.  I loved it because there was a youth speaker who talked about being anxiously engaged in hastening the work of salvation.  And she said, "That to me means we should be anxiously engaged in being a good friend."  Because that is totally missionary work right there.  And when are a good friend you will see that this gospel that we have would help everyone else around us, so we will share it by our example.  And by talking about it.  The Sunday session was great too!  I loved hearing from Salt Lake City."

That is pretty much my week.  I really love it here in Solvang!!  We have a lot of fun and the work here is just booming.  And I don't know if I have told you about our investigator, Erik, before...but he left for Mexico for a month right after we had finished teaching him all the lessons.  And so we were freaking out!  But turns out, today he is coming back!!  We are excited to see him and see how he is doing.  We hope that he kept in mind all the things we taught him before he left.  (aka: Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, Keeping sabbath day holy, etc.).  

I love my new camera!!!  So much!!!  I will definitely be taking more pictures haha.  I am on the lookout for a new case, I may buy one today because Hermana Howell and I are going to walk around Solvang today.  (We're buying more of the pastries from that picture of our party with Ivan).  Haha, it was YUMMY.  I hope that all is well in Missouri.  I am so happy to hear that the illness has left the Ah Mu Family!!  I am so happy to hear that Jason is going on a mission.  IT'S THE BEST THING.  I always feel so unworthy of the many blessings that come from serving the Lord.  I love it, and I know that I am in His field.  We have to leave the harvest to Him.  We just need to be those fully functional instruments for him.  

I have exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders this week.  The ones assigned to us are Hermana Siddoway and Hermana Linford.  I'm excited.  Exchanges really help me!  Also!!!  Presidents interviews are coming up NEXT WEEK.  We love having interviews with the mission president!!  The is one of the last ones I'll have with President Castro.  But anyway, those are some things I am REALLY looking forward to!! :)  Have a great week Everyone.  Enjoy the pictures...

Happy Martin Luther King Day!!  

Love,

Hermana Ah Mu

Our little party with Ivan.  He says if you're going to eat, then must do it right!  And serve it in a nice way.  Haha.

Hermana Howell and Hermana Ah Mu at the Los Angeles temple entrance.

Weekly planning.  It's a struggle sometimes, i needed some sugar.

Los Angeles Temple

January 13, 2014

Why Hello there,

iFeliz Compleanos papa!  Espero que tenga un buen dia.  

How's it feel to have a 20 year old daughter on a mission?  I bet you never even imagined that, huh?  Haha.  I hope that you have a great birthday,  I love you dad.  You are a big part of my life.  And it is because of you that I am here.

Sounds like it is still a bit chilly, huh?  It's like 80 here... :)

Oh yeah, this is the beginning to a new transfer!!  And I am STILL here in Solvang!!! :D  I am SOOO happy!!!!  I love it here.  My companion is still Hermana Howell too!  We will have some more fun this transfer.  I'm looking forward to it.  This area is a huge place of growth for me.  It's about the hardest time I have had so far, but also the most rewarding.  We see miracles, this area IS prepared!!  Heavenly Father really does prepare people.  There has been a promise made to all Hermanas that serve here.  (From President Castro)  If we are exactly obedient and work as hard as we can, we will see growth in the Solvang Ward, in the beautiful Santa Ynez valley.  So that's pretty neat.  

Thanks for the letters, I do have a question!  How'd you get my real address?!  Haha, did you google map it?  You should, the overview probably looks like a village.  It's cool.  I still haven;t gotten any package.   It doesn't look like I will get it until February....real bummer....I hope there wasn't any food in the package that would go bad.  If there was you should call the office and tell them. 

I forgot to mention, I got a FUN package from The Featherston's in the city that never sleeps (Winigan).  It was so great, I loved it!  I actually got it on Christmas Eve.  The Mission office couples place Mr. and Mrs. Clause and delivered all the packages they got to the missionaries all through out the mission.  It was sweet of them to do that, because it is an all day kind of thing.  

The temple.  It was SO great!!  I LOVED it!!  It was so fun to go there, we left about 8 am.  And got back around 6:30....it took forever, but it was worth it.  LA traffic stinks...and we weren't even IN LA.  Haha, I was so close to Beverly Hills and Hollywood...how weird is that?  That's something you hear about in movies, right?  Hahaha.  The video was AMAZING!!!  I just want to go back!!  I will try to go to the temple every week when I get home.  It would be so good for me.  

Well, I am not too sure what else to say.  But, I hope that you are having a great week.  I am sure that all is well.  Let me know if there is anyone else I can pray for or help out.  

Love,

Hermana Ah Mu