Another Week!

Hola!


This week was a little slower than usual, but we still saw a ton of miracles!

The night of her foot problems a member brought us over enchiladas ❤️ 

Celebratory car selfie when she recovered

My companion has been having problems with her toe for a few months. We finally went to a podiatrist this week, and it turns out she had a giant ingrown toenail that had to be cut out! So that was sad, but she's pretty much back to normal now. The members were really nice and helpful. The Relief Society president sat with Hermana Peña that night, and one of her counselors went with me to our appointments.

We have been trying to visit several less active and part member families during my time here, but, people don't want to answer their phones or the door. So, we decided to tape up hearts on their doors when they don't want to answer 😂 (There is a picture example below.)

There isn't a ton to say about our investigators. It's been hard to find new ones and help those we have progress. But, Juan Carlos is doing great! We had a family home evening with him and his family last Monday and watched the movie "The Testaments." It is about Christ coming to the Americas. The Spirit was so strong! We also got to talk a lot about temples. His kids just went to Nauvoo for youth conference, and so he helped them gather the names of his ancestors so they could be baptized for them. He had a lot of questions about baptism/baptisms for the dead. After youth conference they had a testimony meeting for all of the youth that went and their parents. Juan Carlos went and his daughter bore a really powerful testimony about temples and how she hopes her dad will get baptized soon so their family can be sealed for time and all eternity in the temple. Yesterday Juan Carlos came to church even though his wife didn't come! We hope to set a baptismal date with him soon.

Our English class is also starting to pick up! We had two new people come this last week.

Last night we had a "Why I Believe" fireside with the Petersons. They talked about receiving personal revelation. And I got to see a lot of my friends!

Today is Pioneer Day! Today marks 170 years since the pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley to start their new lives! I am so grateful to my pioneer ancestors who sacrificed everything to walk to Utah after being forcefully driven from their homes. Despite all of the hard things that were going on, they had hope and knew it was more important to do the right thing instead of the easy thing so their posterity could grow up in the safety of covenants. Joseph Smith said, "Persecution has not stopped the progress of truth, but has only added fuel to the flame... No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”​​


It's crazy to think of how much growth has happened since the early days of the church. Over this past year I have had the privilege to work with many pioneers, first generation Latter-day Saints that are paving the way for their families and future generations. I love them and admire them. The challenges we face today may be different, but they require just as much courage and strength from the Lord.


After the martyrdom of the prophet Joseph Smith, Brigham Young led the Saints to Utah. He said, “we feel no fear. We are in the hands of our Heavenly Father, that God of Abraham and Joseph who guided us to this land, who fed the poor Saints on the plains with quails, who gave his people strength to labour without bread, who sent the gulls of the deep as Saviours to preserve the Golden Wheat for bread for his people and who preserved his Saints from the wrath of their enemies, delivering them. … We live in this light, are guided by his wisdom, protected by his strength.”

This is such an exciting time to be on the Earth! The heavens are again opened! Saving truths that had been lost and distorted have been restored. New scripture has been revealed. The Lord's kingdom is on the Earth again in preparation for His second coming. God has, again, sent a prophet to reveal His will and prepare us for what is to come!


I love all of you, and I hope you have a week!

Love,




Hermana Bettridge


Fotos:
Hermana Kiser! She is going home next week 😭 

Hermana Jones!

Hermana Black!

Albert came too! 😂

When people don't want to answer their doors we just put hearts on! 😂

Another Week!

Hola, hola!

As always, this was a great week full of miracles! This coming week will mark one year of me being in the field, (which means I go home in 142 days 😳.) But, that means I (almost) have officially known Amanda (Hermana Sheirbon) for a year! Speaking of, this last week marked four years from the time she got baptized!

Here we are during my training a year ago! I had the best trainer in the world! She taught me everything I know, and she taught me how fun missionary work is!

I haven't talked about him yet, but we have been teaching an "eternigator" named Juan Carlos. His wife and kids are all members. He now comes to church every week and stays for all three hours of church. He has a calling in scouts. He participates in class, and he bore his testimony about fasting in gospel principles yesterday. His daughter is on a mission, and she has started sending him weekly reading assignments that he completes. So, we know he is super close to baptism!

This week we visited some people who haven't been to church in awhile. We started teaching the husbands of two of the women we visited. We also passed by some people that the missionaries were teaching in the past, and some of them wanted us to come back and teach them again!

In Mark 12: 30-31 we read that Christ said:

30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

The commandments are instructions that ultimately lead to us being happy. But, we have our agency and can choose whether or not we are going to keep the commandments. Christ gave us the commandment to love but, like all commandments, we have to choose to love. Love is a choice. Yesterday in the car we were listening to a recording of a talk that was about that principle. It was really good! It was about how Satan doesn't want us to love. If Satan's plan had won we wouldn't have our agency. Because of that, we wouldn't have had the ability to love.

But, as Jacob says in the Book of Mormon, "O how great the plan of our God!" I know that we have a Heavenly Father that loves us all so much! Because He loves us, we are here on Earth so we can become everything He knows we can be. If we keep the commandments we will be truly happy and will live with our families and with Heavenly Father forever!

Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Bettridge

Fotos:

Here is Amanda (Hermana Sheirbon) at her own baptism four years ago! She secretly went to seminary with her friends to learn the gospel. Then she got baptized even though it meant getting kicked out of her house. 

We didn't take a ton of pictures this week, but so you know I'm alive we took this today 😉 Here's us with some kid Bibles

New Presidente

Hola, hola!

This week went super fast! It was also weird because we met the new mission President! But President and Sister Peterson are the sweetest and I am so happy they are here!
For the Fourth of July we had zone conference with them! They are from Philadelphia. He served his mission in Ecuador and is excited to use his Spanish here! Sister Peterson is a convert and also served a mission in Iowa! Super cool!

Later on for the Fourth of July I went on an exchange back in Bear Creek with Hermana Twitchell! So it was just like old times! We went to a BBQ and there were a lot of people from the ward there, so it was super fun to see them. We also got to see Uvaldo and his family. It was pretty much a normal day, there were a lot of fireworks being lit off as we drove home.

We only found one new investigator this week, but he is cool because we asked if he had faith in Jesus Christ and he said "of course, my name is Jesus." 😂 But he is cool because he already has a Book of Mormon and is excited for us to come back. We tried knocking some more doors but there aren't many hispanics here so that was awk. So looks like we will mostly be working with less actives and in the JAS (Jóvenes adultos solteros) branch. 😂

We got asked to speak in Sacrament Meeting for Canyon Lakes. We spoke about missionary work and it went really well. A few days before our Ward Mission Leader called us and said he wanted us to sing as well... so we called up the English elders that also meet in our building. We sang the medley of "As Sisters in Zion" and "We'll Bring the World His Truth." We taught the elders how to sing in Spanish and THEY DID SUCH A GREAT JOB! The Spirit was SO STRONG. I think it was exactly what Canyon Lakes needed. When we had practiced before the song kind of sounded iffy, so I am 100% sure there were angels there helping us out. It was a really special experience.


You know those stories every missionary has where it is randomly announced they will be speaking next? That happened to us in the JAS branch! But, jokes on them, we spoke earlier in Canyon Lakes and already had talks prepared! 😉


For my talk I based a lot of it off of Elder Holland's talk from October 2012 and it is SO GOOD! I highly recommend you go read it :)
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/the-first-great-commandment?lang=eng


Have a great week!


Love,


Hermana Bettridge

Carolyn with President Peterson and Hermana Kiser

Zone Conference pictures

July 4th fiesta

They like to dress like twins!

For P day today we drove to Sealy, Texas. It is the middle of nowhere, but there is a member there that works at this place that makes fancy sports cars even faster.

Canyon Lakes Week 2

Hola, hola!

This has been another week of trying to figure out what works best here, but it was a great week full of miracles! We were able to find six new investigators and had four investigators come to church yesterday!

We drive a mom car !

We got a new mission president! President and Sister Peterson came on Friday and the Mortensens left a few hours after they came. I haven't met them yet, but I will meet them tomorrow at zone conference. The APs put together a video for the Mortensens of all of us in the mission saying the mission statement. Here is the video for President "our discipleship is eternally settled."  Click the movie player to watch it!

We have a really great ward mission leader in Canyon Lakes. He is new too, and he is kind of intense but committed to helping us have success. He gave us blessings yesterday, and it really helped me feel the love Heavenly Father has for me and the potential this area has. He also invited a friend from work to come to church, and the friend came and brought his kids! We have an appointment to go teach them this week!

Joshua is doing good and is coming along in the lessons! His mom is super excited for the baptism and has started inviting all of their family. But, they struggle to come to church and didn't come yesterday either, so we will keep helping them with that. 

We are also going to start working more with the YSA. The branch has the records of 323 people, but the attendance yesterday was 38. We actually have a cool investigator named Angelica in the YSA who is engaged to a member. 

Yesterday in Relief Society the teacher showed a video. It was Elder Holland talking about how when his son was little he wanted to take him to southern Utah to show him where he had grown up. (Then there was a bunch of footage of southern Utah #trunky) They had a great time, and it came time to come home. They were driving back when they came to a fork in the road. Neither one of them remembered which way they had taken to get there. So, they said a prayer. They both felt they should go one way, so they started driving in that direction. Soon the road came to a dead end. It was clearly not the correct way. 

They turned around, went the other way, and eventually got home. On the way home Elder Holland's son asked why they had prayed and both felt they should go the wrong way. Elder Holland told him that Heavenly Father had given them that answer for their benefit. They just had to drive a few minutes before it was obvious that they needed to go the other way. Then they were able to have peace of mind and knew with certainty that they were on the correct road home. If He had told them the correct road to take they would have still been second guessing themselves the whole time and wondering if they were actually on the correct road or if they needed to go back. They would have wondered what would have happened had they taken the other road.

Isaiah 55: 8-9

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

I know that Heavenly Father loves us so much. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He has a plan for each of us. As we seek to do His will He will make more out of us and our lives than we ever could on our own. 

I love you all! 

Love,

Hermana Bettridge

Fotos:

Here is this pregnant cat that was following us around on exchanges

We tried to coax the babies out... no luck

Remember Maria from H3? She went to the temple to do baptisms last week! 😃