The Country

Hola, hola!

For my last six weeks in the mission I got transferred to CONROE! Conroe is a little town about 45 minutes away from Houston. We are still in the Spanish stake, and our area is huge! It’s mostly just a lot of little towns in the country. Even though I didn’t LOVE Canyon Lakes at first I was REALLY SAD to leave. (And to leave Hermana Calderon, but she is training and I am so happy for her trainee!!!) But, I know this is where Heavenly Father needs me to be, so I am happy to be here! And I will hopefully get to go back to Canyon Lakes for some baptisms :) I got to Conroe, and I felt so much love for all of the people here! My companion is Hermana Morales! I got put with another native speaker! She is awesome! She is from Arizona and is a little over halfway done with her mission. 

Hermana Morales ❤️ 

At one point we were knocking on a door and I realized I was cold! I think summer might be over! (Finally!!!)

We have some great investigators. This Saturday I will be having my first boda/bap! (Boda = wedding, When you are baptized you make a promise to keep God’s commandments, including the commandment to only have sexual relations within marriage. So, if two people are living together and want to be baptized they have to be married first. So a boda/ bap is when there is a wedding and then the baptism right after!) Her name is Keyonee, and she is so ready to get baptized! I love her so much! She is from Utah, so she has been around the church for awhile. She loves the gospel!

We are working with a lot of kids, so I am really happy about that! (Speaking of kids, the Canyon Lakes hermanas just set a date with Julian, who I got to teach a little bit before I left!) Two of our other investigators are Chris and Ariel, these cholo kids. We went to teach them, but they just wanted to run around the yard and punch each other. So we read the story of Ammon in the children’s Book of Mormon and then acted it out. They liked throwing rocks and pretending to cut off arms. They want to get baptized, but their mom wants them to wait until they’re older. A ver!

This week I have been thinking a lot about how much Heavenly Father loves us! All of us! He has a plan for all of us! He can make so much more out of our lives than we can by ourselves. My mission hasn’t been exactly what I expected, but Heavenly Father has put me around the exact people I needed and the places I needed to be. The gospel is amazing! I was sitting in sacrament meeting yesterday and I started tearing up because I realized I only have five more weeks! Ahhh!!!

I hope everyone has an amazing week! If anyone wants to write me a letter (I would love it) my new address is:

Hermana Bettridge
1900 Westview Blvd #811
Conroe, TX 77304
Que tengan una buena semana!


Love,


Hermana Bettridge


Fotos:

Saying goodbye to Luz! She will be getting baptized on the 11th ❤️ 

Saying goodbye to Hermana Cervantes and Juan Carlos

Chris, Ariel, and Jorge (Jorge got baptized a few months ago)

We made slime at our dinner appointment

Ya me voy ✌️

Hola, hola!

Well, I received the sad news that I am leaving Canyon Lakes and Hermana Calderón. 😭 Tomorrow I will know where I’m going and who I will be with. So, stay tuned! I am sad, but I know Heavenly Father has a plan for us that is better than our own. I am excited to finish the last six weeks of my mission off strong! I know I will see miracles! On the bright side, I am coming back to Houston after Christmas with my family to show them the mission!

This was our last day on campus

Our investigators are doing great! Juan Carlos is doing so well! So is Luz, we taught her the word of wisdom and she literally threw away all of the coffee and tea in her house without question. (It’s an extra big deal because she is Colombian, and they love their coffee!)

Remember Karina from last week? Well she is super cool! We went over to teach her family some more. Her mom, Sara, came in for the lesson. They are all so excited! It turns out they all went to the cultural celebration before the temple dedication for one of the temples in Mexico. They remember that they got to hear the prophet speak and felt a lot of peace. They didn’t get baptized because Karina’s dad wouldn’t let them. (But he is still in Mexico, and she is an adult now.) I know great things are going to happen with her family!

I don’t have a ton of time to write because I have to pack.

I love you!

Love,



Hermana Bettridge

P.S. I can hopefully go back for Luz's baptism if a member can drive me!


Fotos:

Last day on campus 

Elder Munoz’ funeral (complete with Vampire teeth)

The hermanas

This is Elder Taylor (who is now brother Taylor.) He was the mission vehicle coordinator. But, they finished their missions. My favorite quote from him: “you might get towed.”

Albert

Best friends forever ❤️

7 semanas más!! 😟

Hola, hola!

This week was amazing!!! So many miracles! 

Our Dia at noche latina! 

We are teaching Luz, and the English elders are teaching her husband. Luz told us she really wants to get baptized, but she wants to do it with her husband when he is ready. So, we thought she would have to wait a little bit longer. But, Charlie told us he was ready! So they will be getting baptized together on November 11th!!! They are so excited! And they are even more excited to go to the temple and be sealed after a year! While we were teaching Luz the Plan of Salvation she told us she was sad for her grandma and everyone that didn’t get to learn about the gospel. So, we got to teach Luz more about temples this week! She was so excited she was tearing up!! She is so excited to do the baptisms for her ancestors once she is baptized! She said she wants to go to the temple every week. She is about halfway done with the Book of Mormon, so she is excited to finish it before her baptism. 

Juan Carlos is doing great !

We kind of had to drop all of the other people we were working with because they weren’t wanting to keep commitments. But, we found some great new people this week!

We found some new people on campus! I really love contacting on campus and talking to people my own age! We also started teaching a lady named Veronica and her kids. She was living in another ward, but she just moved here. She has an 8 year old daughter and a 10 year old son. So, we are helping the kids prepare for baptism and helping Veronica come back to church.

Last Monday we got a call from a missionary serving in Los Angeles. She told us her mom lives in our ward boundaries, and has been inactive for many years. But, her mom had just emailed her and told her she was ready to come back to church! Her mom asked if she could send the information for where the church was and what time it started. So we visited Sinja! She is amazing! She has gone through some really hard things. During Harvey she was scared her house was going to flood because the water came halfway up her yard, but she had some personal experiences that reassured her of Heavenly Father’s love! Everything was fine, and her house didn’t flood. She was so excited we came over, and is excited to come be a strength to the ward. This Sunday was stake conference, and it was kind of far away, but she came anyway! (And brought her mom, who hasn’t been to church for several years!) We are going to keep visiting her every week because she said she doesn’t remember that much.

But, these aren’t even the biggest miracle!!! So on Friday we got a call from one of the sets of English missionaries. They told us they had just knocked into a hispanic woman who wanted us to come by. (Now, this happens a lot, and the english missionaries get really excited but it usually turns out that the people aren’t interested and the missionaries couldn’t understand them.) But, this lady is so legit! Her name is Karina, and her family investigators the church when she was a teenager. Her sisters got baptized. She never did, but she would go to church every week and did personal progress and everything! She moved here when she was 17, and she didn’t know where the church was. So, she stopped going. She was SO EXCITED when the elders knocked on her door! She said she wants us to come and teach her whole family so they can all be a part of the church! (She is now married and has two kids, and her mom lives with her!) 

This week we had our noche hispana party at church! It was super fun! Everyone brought food from their country, and there was music and dancing. Luz came with her husband, and a lot of people brought there friends!

Also, we had zone conference this week! President Peterson talked to us about repentance. We talked about how repentance is NOT confessing sins or stopping doing what’s wrong. Repentance is changing to become like Christ. It is a lifelong process. We have to repent every day!

I love being a missionary so much! I know I am going to be super sad to take my tag off in 7 weeks, but my mission has taught me how to be a better missionary when I don’t have a tag on! Nothing could ever stop me from sharing the gospel. Next Monday I will know if I am finishing my mission here, or if I am going somewhere else for the last six weeks. I hope I stay here with Hermana Calderón! But I am happy to go wherever I am needed.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Bettridge

Fotos:

1. The hermanas of the zone at zone conference!
2. Us!
3. The district!
4. It’s us in a cup; USA and Mexico!
5. Stake conference with Sinja and Maria!

Enviado desde mi iPad

Canyon Lakes

Hola, hola

We went back to Spring Texas to see one of Hermana Calderon’s old investigators get baptized.

Luz is doing awesome as well! She LOVED conference! She decided she wants to be more faithful about reading the Book of Mormon, so she read 50 chapters last week! She is amazing, and I feel so blessed that I get to teach her!

Our other investigators aren’t progressing as much right now, but we have been out finding new people! Our English class is also going great! 11 people came! (That’s huge because no one was coming when I got here!) We also started teaching an English class a public school. We have around 20 students in that one! Life is great in Canyon Lakes!

This week I started reading the general conference talks. I was really able to relate to Elder Jeffrey R Holland´s talk. He spoke about becoming perfect, eventually. In the mission field your faults are magnified, and it is easy to get discouraged and to think about everything we should be. Christ commands us to be perfect, and perfection seems like an impossible goal. But, we shouldn’t be discouraged. (That’s what Satan wants!)

Elder Holland taught that “Jesus did not intend His sermon on this subject to be a verbal hammer for battering us about our shortcomings. No, I believe He intended it to be a tribute to who and what God the Eternal Father is and what we can achieve with Him in eternity. In any case, I am grateful to know that in spite of my imperfections, at least God is perfect--that at least He is, for example, able to love His enemies, because too often, due to the “natural man” and woman in us, you and I are sometimes that enemy. How grateful I am that at least God can bless those who despitefully use Him because, without wanting or intending to do so, we all despitefully use Him sometimes. I am grateful that God is merciful and a peacemaker because I need mercy and the world needs peace. Of course, all we say of the Father’s virtues we also say of His Only Begotten Son, who lived and died unto the same perfection.”

In the Book of Mormon, Moroni teaches that we can be made perfect in Christ; it isn’t something we can do on our own. Perfection is something we can obtain only as a gift from Him.

Elder Holland illustrated this principle by recounting a New Testament parable. “A servant was in debt to his king for the amount of 10,000 talents. Hearing the servant’s plea for patience and mercy, “the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and … forgave … the debt.” But then that same servant would not forgive a fellow servant who owed him 100 pence. On hearing this, the king lamented to the one he had forgiven, “Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee?”

If 100 pence was equal to $100, then 10,000 talents would equal around $1 billion dollars, something beyond our comprehension. It’s supposed to be; it shows how incapable we are to ever repaying the debt we owe the Savior, but how we are very capable of forgiving the 100 pence that is owed to us.

Elder Holland taught that “this isn’t a story about two servants arguing in the New Testament. It is a story about us, the fallen human family--mortal debtors, transgressors, and prisoners all. Every one of us is a debtor, and the verdict was imprisonment for every one of us. And there we would all have remained were it not for the grace of a King who sets us free because He loves us and is “moved with compassion toward us.” We may not be able to demonstrate yet the 10,000-talent perfection the Father and the Son have achieved, but it is not too much for Them to ask us to be a little more godlike in little things, that we speak and act, love and forgive, repent and improve.”

I love that! Heavenly Father loves us so much, and He just wants us to do our best! This video talks about this a little bit:  Click Here

I hope everyone has an awesome week!

Love,




Hermana Bettridge

Hermana Calderon and I wore matching dresses to MLC

Mi Quinceañera

 Hola, hola!

I don't have a ton of time today, but this was an amazing week! One change is that my mission will now have Facebook! That will be different haha! I don't know all of the details yet, but I will know more this week. 

Quinceañera

Something super fun was that we celebrated our quinceañera! (15 months in the mission.) Mine was actually a few weeks ago because I came in a few weeks before Hermana Calderón, but we celebrated together! The elders threw us a party for district meeting. They brought us Krispy Kreme, we had cake, and we took some fun pictures.

We found some cool new investigators on campus this week. I love campus contacting! We can talk to a lot of people who are open to hearing our message. A lot of them have a lot of questions they are looking to find answers to, so that's awesome!

The biggest news is Luz! She decided that she wants to get baptized! But, she doesn't feel totally ready yet. She did say she would prepare to be baptized on October 28th!!! We were so happy for her. We are excited to continue working with her so that she can feel ready.

But, the best part of the week was General Conference! I felt a lot of peace and got to hear some things I really needed to hear. One of my favorite talks was Elder Rasband's! You can watch it here:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/10/media/session_2_talk_8?lang=eng

Watching General Conference

I know that Heavenly Father has a plan for all of us! He loves us, and He puts the people we need in our lives.

I hope you have a great week!

Love,


Hermana Bettridge

The pictures are from our Quinceañera and from Conference!