CA Week 6

Hello family!

This week has been good. As of today, I am now officially on my second transfer of my mission! Woohoo!

Alot of things happened this week- we had a really good fhe with a really great family in the ward and his (the father's) nonmember mother was there as well, she's a sweet woman, 3 boys are so cute and gave really powerful, simple testimonies of the Gospel. It was amazing to watch, especially to see their grandmother sitting in and listening to them bear their testimonies of the Gospel. They are amazing little missionaries already. The Spirit was strong. 

Another great experience I had this week was in exchanges on Tuesday. I had a sister come to train me for a day. She is an incredible missionary. Her name is Hna. Zamora, she's from Mexico. It learned so much from her. She opened our area and has baptized almost 20 people since she's been out on her mission, so I've heard alot about her before. We were talking about how sometimes missionaries tend to limit themselves by their weaknesses and say things like, "well, I'm just shy, or I'm not a people person, so I can't really talk to people", how it's hard to go out of our comfort zone, and so alot of the times, we just stick to the missionary work we're comfortable with, but don't push ourselves to go much further. In Alma 26:5, it talks about the harvest and how the field is ripe, but we have to work hard, labor with all our might, and then the harvest is great! I love studying the harvest because it proves how much work there really is, if you want it enough to work for it. I was really excited to go finding with her as well. We went to an apartment complex to find a potential investigator and ended up knocking the rest of the apartments there. I realized that she would just talk to them enough to find someway she could relate a gospel principle to them and then would just start bearing testimony. It made contacting alot more spiritual and more powerful than I had done it before. I still feel a little uncomfortable when I do door contacts, so watching her made me want to knock until it wasn't awkward anymore, or until I just let go and let the Spirit take over. 

This transfer, I really want to focus on becoming an instrument in the hands of the Lord. I know part of that means forcing myself to go out of my comfort zone and letting the Lord know that I want Him to use me. I was studying in PMG the other day about the Book of Mormon and one of the things it says that stood out to me is that reading the BoM is one of the best ways you can grow closer to the Savior and recognize His Spirit in your life. I know that's true- it's what I'm out here teaching to other people, so I made a goal to try to finish the Book of Mormon by Christmas! Hermana Mulitalo is trying to finish it before she leaves after this transfer, so we're working on it together (only, I'll be going a little slower). I'm really excited. Elder Holland gave a talk in the MTC where he talks about the need to push ourselves as missionaries if we expect miracles to come. If I really want to be Heavenly Father's instrument here, I have to do what it takes to get there, and generally that means more than just being a "good missionary" that does the "missionary things" and not limiting myself to what I can do here. Anyways, that's just something I've been thinking about this week. 

We got to visit our investigator, Isis', family this week. We made several stops by to try to see her, but were not able to see her until yesterday! It was really good though because we got to talk to her sister and her sister's fiancee. We want to try to teach them as well. Her whole family is really nice to us and I think they've gotten really used to us coming around, which is great. Her sister also just had a baby and they talked about starting to go to a church again- so I think we're here just at the right time. Their mom (Isis and her sister's) is a cake decorator and she said she might be able to teach us a little bit sometime. I'm all over that!

Another exciting thing that happened this week is that we had one of our investigators at a Relief Society Activity on Wednesday. It was so awesome to see members take her under their wing. It was even better when a couple days later, one of the hermanas in the ward asked us who she was, and if she could have her phone number so she could talk to her or visit her. Another recent convert said that she wanted to come with us to visit her as well. Imelda (that's our investigator's name) has 4 kids, and 3 of them came with her to the activity and played in the gym with kids there for mutual, etc. They all loved coming to church! We were even able to do a mini-tour with her while she was there and show her the Chapel. She hasn't come to church yet, but step by step, she'll be there soon I'm sure. 

This week has definitely have it's challenges, but there are good things going on here. The work is moving forward. 

I love and miss you all so much!

Love, 

Hermana Laree LaPierre