July 28, 2014

Hello family!

This week was really good, we're still finding more people to teach which is great! Nothing happens in missionary work until you have someone to teach. Alondra's baptism was moved to August 9th because they went out of town but it's still on! We're really excited.

On Friday we went to a member's house and baked cookies with her and her husband who isn't a member. We shared a short message then got to baking! It was really fun :)

On Wednesday while I was on exchanges with Sister Dowd, we stopped at a gas station to get gas and decided to run in to get a drink, it was particularly hot. I didn't get anything because I had a water bottle in the car, while Sister Dowd was paying, two police officers walk in, sunglasses and bulletproof vests and all, very intimidating. And one of them looked at us and says "I'll buy it" We were all taking off guard and Sister Dowd says "no that's okay, thank you though." The police officer then says "no, I want to. (looks at me) and what are you getting, Sister?" I said I didn't need anything and he told me to go grab something. As soon as I opened my mouth to object he says "Now!" So I mumbled a "yes sir" and got a Gatorade as fast as I could. He turned out to be a member of the Church in another area, it was the nicest and scariest thing that happened to me that day.

We also had a conference with our mission president and he talked to us about how we could work with the members better to help the people we're teaching. I love conferences and meetings with our mission president because he gives us a ton of new ideas about how we could be working harder and smarter!

I am loving this time of my mission and I wouldn't trade it for the world. I can't believe I've already been out for nine months and only have nine more left. I still feel like I'm just starting. I am learning more and more every day and I love it!

Love,

Hermana Granado

July 21, 2014

Hello family!

This week was so good! Hermana Martinez and I went on exchanges for a day so I was with Sister Dowd. I'll be with her once a week for the next three weeks or so (just like I was with Hermana Magnusson). Sister Dowd is also my roommate (she took Sister Tauteoli's place) I'll attach a picture of us.

We got to make some cookies for our investigators and the members in our ward who are less active and the ones who are active and help us a lot. We saw a lot of success from that! One of our new investigators called us to see when we could come and teach her family, a less active family asked to set up an appointment for us to come over and a member called us to see if she could come to any appointments or help us teach any of our investigators. Not sure what we put in those cookies but we might make them again soon for some more people!

We also got to do some service at a senior center. They had some paid entertainment booked but they cancelled so we did it for free! We sang hymns- some in Spanish, some in English and a missionary sang in Samoan. Then another one of the missionaries did a violin solo- it was really cool and the lovely little ladies at the senior center loved it!

Some fun things coming up- we're having a visit from Elder Evans, who is the Executive Director of the Missionary Department for the Church. So he is basically in charge of missionary work. And he's coming to speak to us! So that is exciting. That will be on August 28th. So in order to prepare for that we're having our zone conference this Friday where we'll meet with some of our district leaders and zone leaders (who are just normal missionaries but have more leadership responsibility) and our mission president. We usually do it every 3 months or so but we're doing it a little earlier in anticipation for our visit from Elder Evans.

A little side note: remember how I showed you the tan line on my foot when we skyped on Mother's day? Well it's gotten more and more defined as the summer has gone on and my roommates or other sister missionaries, when they see my feet they always comment on it. Always. Without fail. I think it's embarrassing but they're all really impressed and jealous of it. I guess that just goes to show how little entertainment we have as missionaries.

And remember how I used to tell you how I'm self conscious about my Spanish? Well that hasn't really changed much. But last night the other sisters who are serving in our ward (they're both native speakers) were telling me that it's good! One of them said that when they heard me speaking Spanish at church she noticed that its improving. The other one told me that she called a member on the phone the other day and the member thought she was me! And She's from Mexico! That made me feel a lot better about my abilities :) I just am so grateful because I want to be able to communicate with the people I'm serving! I want to get to know them and their concerns and I want to be able to say the things that will help them. But it is something that I will have to continue to work on throughout my life. I am really grateful for this opportunity to learn the language though! When people ask how we learned so fast and we tell them that we had 6 weeks of training and then we just study an hour a day and talk to people, they're really impressed at how much we know! It is all the Spirit and I am definitely getting divine help so that I can talk to and teach the people here in California! What a blessing.

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week.

Pictures:

1. Me and Sister Dowd

2. The lovely Hermana Martinez

3. Making cookies!

July 14, 2014

Hi family! I hope everything is going well, this week has been a really good one for me.

My new companion is Hermana Martinez, and she's awesome! We're getting along great and she is teaching me so much already. she goes home in September so she doesn't have much time left on the mission but she's a really hard worker which is awesome! We're already really good friends :)

Lately some of the missionaries I know have been going home before their mission is finished and it just makes me really sad because I love my mission so much! I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. It's hard, as you've probably gotten from my emails, but it's so worth it! I hope you all can tell how much I love being a missionary. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn and grow and become a better person. I'm learning so much about other people, about myself, and about my Savior. I am eternally grateful that I made the decision to come serve a mission. It is one of those things that I don't know where I'd be without it!

A little about my new companion: Hermana Martinez is from Puerto Rico, she's 21, she is almost done with her mission but really focused on missionary work which is awesome! She's so nice and funny and we just seemed to click right away. She's 4'9" so I feel abnormally tall standing next to her but I'm sure anyone would. She's just about the cutest thing to come out of Puerto Rico since those coqui frogs!

Germany won the world cup! Honestly I'm just glad it's over. Every time we'd try to visit people, they'd have it on and the last thing they wanted to do was turn it off and talk to us. Plus one of my roommates is from Germany so she was super happy.

This week is going to be great, I can just feel it. We already picked up three new people to teach, one of them came to church yesterday and really like it! An we're working on planning Alondra's baptism for the 27th. We're really excited!

Everyone try to stay cool this week, I have no hope so just soak up some AC for me!

Love,

Hermana Granado

Pictures:

1. For those of you that don't believe I'm in the DESERT 

2. Me and Hermana Martinez, my new companion!

3. One of my very BEST friends, sister Tauteoli. She was my roommate but just got transferred.

July 7, 2014

Hello family!

Happy late 4th of July! Hope you all had good, safe fun :) We had to be inside by 6pm for safety but before that we celebrated the American way! We went and got hot dogs for lunch and picked up a slurpee on our way home. Then the member that was supposed to give us dinner that night went out of town but she ordered us pizza for dinner. Overall it was a very unhealthy, greasy holiday. What's more American than that?!  I have to admit, it's a little awkward celebrating American Independence with a bunch of Mexicans/Hispanics. But they love any reason to have a fiesta so all was well :)

In other news, I'm getting a new companion on Wednesday. It transfer time again, crazy that six weeks have gone by already. Hermana Thomas is headed to San Bernardino and my new companion will be Hermana Martinez. 

Hermana Martinez goes home soon and I've met her a few times. She's from Puerto Rico and is tiny but a definitely a fire ball! I'm excited to see how we work together. This is the first time I've stayed in an area and gotten a new companion, up until now I've always been the one to move! So we'll see how I do when I have to take over!

Yesterday we had what we thought was a great idea! Until we carried it out. We decided to walk after church. Walk everywhere. And since church ends at 2pm that meant walking at the very hottest part of the day. (115 yesterday). We thought we were going to die. Finally we decided to ask someone for water. They took one look at us and handed us a cold water bottle. Then we got to talk to them for a little bit! Needless to say we got in an extra workout.

And since we've been walking a lot, we've met a lot of really interesting people. I love my mission!

Oh, and the heat? This is nothing. They said August is when it really gets bad. So I'll be here for the worst of it. It's just as hot as Arizona but I feel it more here since I'm out walking in a skirt all the time. And it's more humid here. Humidity is NOT my friend.

Everything else here is going well. We have a baptism coming up in a few weeks. Her name is Alondra and she is 10. Her mom is a member of the church but she hasn't been active for a long time. But since we've started working with them, the mom is coming back to church and is now active! and Alondra is really excited for her baptism :)

The other two we are working really closely with are Edith and Lucy. They seemed like they were really close to baptism when I got here but now they're feeling some doubts so we're still teaching them and trying to help them in any way we can.

Also, our mission is starting something called "JustServe" which is where we are going to start working with the leaders in the communities where we're serving and do community service 8-10 hours a week! Especially since the hours of 1-4 are really hard to find people at home because they're working or al school, we will take that time to do community service during the week then go teach people when they're at home! We haven't done anything with it yet because they're still trying to kick it off and find service projects for us to do. But I'm excited!

Wish me luck on this next week and on my new companion. I'll let you know how everything goes!

Love,

Hermana Granado

Pictures:

1. Hot Dogs on the 4th

2. Hermana Magnusson, who is my companion for one day a week when we do exchanges

3. Me and Hermana Thomas at the ward talent show after a long, long day of walking

4. The 4th of July - red, white and blue. (with Hermana Zamora and Hermana Pesqueira who are also serving in the same ward as me and Hermana Thomas)

June 30, 2014

Hey family,

Today is my eight month mark! So that means that a month from now, on July 30th, it will be exactly half way through my mission! Crazy! Your nine month mark is a pretty big deal, especially for us sisters because it's your half way mark and everything just seems to fly by even faster after that. or so I've heard. But a little something cool for me is that July 30th is actually the anniversary of the day that I got baptized! So my nine month mark as a missionary and my 3 year mark as a member all in one day! It's going to be pretty special :)

This week was a good one! We all got a little chance to talk to our mission president for a couple minutes which was good. He helped me a lot and answered some questions I had about how I could be better.

We also got the chance to attend the Palm Desert Stake Conference, that is just where the leaders here in the local wards get to speak and I love it because I feel like I learn so much!

Last Monday was CRAZY because we had two lessons scheduled during the time that we have to prepare for the week. Every Monday is when we do laundry, wash the car, clean the apartment, write home, shop for food, and anything else we need to do. Then at 5 we're back to work. So needless to say that time is precious and is packed with things we need to do. But last week we also had to make time to teach two lessons because those people weren't available at any other time during the week. It was such a blessing to be able to help them and sacrifice that time. But man were we running all day!

Next week we will get transfer news, these six weeks have sure gone by fast! I'm pretty sure I'll be staying here since I just arrived but we'll see what happens! I'm really close with my roommates so I hope they stay as well.

Oh! I have a story. Yesterday we went to go visit a few people but none of them were home or opened the door for us. Since we didn't have anything else set, we decided to just walk around and see if we could find anyone outside to talk to (which hasn't been very successful lately considering the heat) but nevertheless we braved the scorching temps and walked. And walked. And walked. And finally we saw a lady watering her plants or washing something out, so we went up to her and asked if she needed any help. She looked up at us and furiously said, "Help? Washing this out? Are you crazy or just stupid?!" I couldn't think of anything else to say except to offer our help with anything that she needed, she said a few more things and we ended up just walking away before we made her more angry with our willingness to serve. But I'm glad we tried to talk to her!

Speaking of the heat, It's supposed to get up to 115 on Wednesday where I'm at. Wish me luck!

Not much else to report on... any fun plans for the 4th of July? Send pictures!

Love and miss you all!

Pictures:

Me with my companion, Hermana Thomas and Me and Nadia who I taught in Rialto and was baptized last week! :)

Love,

Hermana Granado

June 23, 2014

Hey family,

It's officially summer! I don't have a lot of time. I took some pictures but forgot the cord so... next week!

Some things that happened this week... Remember how in my last email I talked about Nadia? She is the daughter of the lady who wasn't interested but then we gave her info on a place for rent and she asked us to come back. Well she got baptized this week! And I got to go! Which doesn't always happen, especially when you're as far away as I am. I had to get special permission to leave my area, I had to find a member that was willing to drive me to Redlands (more than and hour away) and we had to find someone to stay with Hermana Thomas and work in our area for the day. But thankfully we got all of that done and I was able to go! It was the first time I had seen in person someone that I taught get baptized. It was such a good experience for me to know that I helped her in some little way to get to where she is now. I love her and told her mom that they better invite me back when she gets baptized :)

It was my roommates birthday so the 4 of us went to Panda Express to celebrate. When we walked in we saw a guy and as soon as he saw us he goes "Hey sisters, how are you?" so we talked to him for a minute and he offered to buy us lunch. We thought that was a little too generous since there were 4 of us but he insisted. Then while we were eating I saw him walk by us and I said "thank you again, we really appreciate it!" then I saw something was in his hand and he goes "here, $50 each" and hands us gift cards! So crazy generous. We couldn't stop talking about it afterward! What a blessing.

We had some sad experiences this week too, not a lot of people are coming to church. Even the investigators who are really progressing and learning a lot and really want to change, they're not coming to church which is really sad for us. But we're going to keep working with them and hopefully we can help them to see the importance of it. Then yesterday we went to this house that we got as a referral, which just means that some missionaries talked to a person and they were interested about learning more but those missionaries aren't assigned to where the person lives so they get the person's address and it gets sent to the missionaries in that area. So we had never met this person but we were told that he was interested in learning more about the gospel. Well, when we got there he wasn't home so the lady there told us to come back in about 20 minutes. We went to go visit some other people that lived close by and decided to go back about 25 or 30 minutes later. When we knocked on the door the same lady said she would go check if he was home but someone else said "Who even are these people and why to they keep coming?!" so she came up to the door and goes "Who are you?!" so we explained who we are and why we were there and she said that she is his wife and that we needed to leave. So we asked if there was a better time we could come back and she gave us a not so nice response and closed the door on us. It's not the worst thing that has ever happened to missionaries but we were sad. But then we decided to walk around and ran into some really nice people who were willing to talk to us! So that was a blessing.

Can't think of much else that happened this week except that it was hot. Really hot. Welcome to summer in the desert! We walk by a swimming pool at least 5 times a day and I'd kill to go swimming right now!

We have interviews with our mission president this week, which I'm excited about. We each get a one-on-one time to sit down with our mission president, ask any questions we have, get advice or help on anything we need and just talk about whatever we're struggling with or would like to improve. The only one I've had was when I was five weeks out so I didn't really know what to do or say or ask. But know I have a ton of things I need help with and so I'm excited for that chance to talk to him.

Also, do you guys remember Haley Stewart? My roommate in college? She left on a mission on Wednesday! She's in the missionary training center in Provo, UT then she's going to the Spokane, Washington mission. She's so excited and I know she's going to do great!

Love you all and talk to you next week!

Love,

Hermana Granado

June 16, 2014

This week was good! Well, mostly good. Not a lot of our investigators came to church which made us really sad. And on Saturday I got a touch of heat exhaustion so I got really sick to my stomach and had a headache so we had to come home so I could rest a little bit. But I ate and got my electrolytes up and was okay to go  back out that night! I'm drinking tons of water but I guess my electrolytes just dropped too low...

Me and Hermana Thomas are working well together and learning to combine our strengths to help those we're teaching. When she goes on exchanges once a week I am companions with Hermana Magnusson - I will try to take pictures this week so you can put faces to names! I don't have much time but my bishop from Arizona asked me to write a letter to the youth about the ups and downs of missionary work so I will send that to you. You've already heard some of these stories but... enjoy!

Bishop,

The experience of being on a mission is nothing like I ever imagined and way more than I hoped for. It is the best and most challenging 7 1/2 months of my life thus far. Every day is something new and brings new challenges and new blessings.

We never really know what is going to happen when we step out of the door- one time we knocked on a door and a man opened the window of the bathroom while he was showering to tell us that who we were looking for wasn't there... Another time a man proposed to me on the street and while I was bearing my testimony that God loves him, he replied saying that if God really loved him, He would bless him with me as his wife... there are just some things we don't have answers for.

Then there are times when you think this might just be the hardest thing you'll ever do (because it is). Like when your "golden" investigator goes back to praying to saints. Or when they say they don't want you to come over anymore because they're going back to their own religion. When your investigator cancels their baptism and moves away without telling you. Or when your favorite family goes through something like a teenage pregnancy and it tears them apart. There are things we can't control that will break our hearts and make us wonder if we're making a difference.

Then there are times that give us those answers. That tell us that we are absolutely making a difference in these people's lives. I remember one night after dinner we got in the car and my trainer told me to pick who I thought we should go see. I sat there for a second trying to think who we had planned to visit that night but I just thought, let's try Veronica. She hadn't been home the last 5 times we tried to visit her so I was a little hesitant not wanting to waste time and I knew we weren't close to her house, but she was who came to mind so we just went. When we got there we realized we had forgotten the video we were going to show them. We didn't have a backup plan but knocked on the door anyway and someone answered! Well a little boy looked through the window and yelled "it's the church girls!" and Veronica came and opened the door. She and her husband are members but haven't been to church in a few years and their three sons have not been baptized. The minute we sat down she started telling us that not 10 minutes before we knocked on the door their youngest son, who is 9 years old, was asking if he could get baptized and what he needed to do to be baptized. Then we knocked on the door. She started crying and said that it never fails, whenever they need help or they're going through something the missionaries come by. It meant a lot to her that we were there and we set a date for all three boys to be baptized and the family came to church the next day for the first time in a long, long time. So cool to know that I can be that person for someone else, to help them when they need it. And that while I was sitting in the car trying to think of where to go, and she came into my mind, her son was asking what he needed to do to get baptized and she was wondering how to help him. Heavenly Father is mindful of EVERY ONE of His children. He loves us so much (the three boys are now baptized).

Another time, we were talking to one of our investigator families and the mom was on the verge of dropping us and going back to the Catholic church but she didn't because she said that when she looks into my eyes she can feel the love of God. What a blessing to be called and set apart as His servant to help others feel that love!

That same night I had forgotten my planner (don't ever do that) and since we were both new in the area we went to the only other place we knew how to get to. As we parked we noticed a "for rent" sign next door so we remembered that one of our street contacts was looking for a place to rent. We wrote down the information and went to visit the person we came for. The next day we went to that street contact to give her the rent information. When she opened the door she started saying every reason in the book why she didn't want to see us anymore. We told that was fine but that we had some information on a place to rent since we knew she was looking. Her entire face changed, she took the information and we were able to keep teaching her. Her daughter is getting baptized next week and she will follow soon. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

This mission is totally different than what I expected. It is so challenging and it pushes me to my very limit! But it is so worth it. I am helping people gain eternal salvation! Why would I ever want to miss out on this opportunity? I am grateful everyday for the decision I made to serve a mission and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else at this time!

Love,

Hermana Granado