My Trainer's My Comp Again?!

 Hey everyone!!! Lots of big changes this week! It's been a good one though!

First off, we had transfers and I'm not in Santa Maria anymore! I'm now officially in my second area in the mission, Paso Robles!!

And Hermana Van Brocklin is no longer my comp! :( She was awesome and I'll definitely miss her but guess who my comp is now?! Hermana Silva!!!! Again!!! It's actually pretty crazy because she trained me for 2 transfers, we were away from each other for 1 transfer, and now we're back together, which pretty much never happens! We were both shocked by our transfer news haha but we're excited!!

In my new area we're in a car now! It's my first time having a car on the mission and honestly I miss bikes haha but at the same time I'm really not missing the freezing cold weather that came with the bikes. I haven't driven in so long so it's weird to be the driver but don't worry I haven't forgotten how to drive, we're safe.

I was sad to leave our friends progressing in Santa Maria, but I know they're in good hands and this is where the Lord needs me right now.

In Paso Robles, we have a few cute friends on date for baptism right now! All of our current friends on date live in San Miguel, a city near Paso that has a really good number of Spanish and Mixteco-speakers. Francisca is 19 years old and she's amazing!! If all goes well she should be getting baptized next week! Our friend Melisa also wants to be baptized, and her sister Araceli asked to be baptized too a few days ago in our lesson, but we still need to get them to come to church so pray that happens!

On Sundays, we have two church services. One at 11am, which is for the Spanish branch. About 12 native Spanish-speakers attend that one, so not as big as Santa Maria's ward, but that's about to change;) And we also have a Mixteco group come at 4, where we basically sit in the chapel and Zoom in to the Santa Maria Mixteco service on a TV to watch. We only had 2 people show up to that service, Francisca and a new member. Pray for more growth in that group. One of the main problems is that the Mixteco meeting time changed from 6pm to 4pm with the new year. The earlier time is rough for most our friends because they work in the fields until 3:30pm or later every Sunday. Also I got to give my first talk at church yesterday in the Spanish branch!

One of the guys we taught this week told me my Mixteco was good and he understood everything I said which made my whole day!! Given I didn't say a ton in Mixteco, but what I did say he understood, which is really relieving to hear especially since Mixteco is so tonal that sometimes we worry our friends struggle to understand us.

MIXTECO FUN FACT:

Ve'e = House

Ñu'u = Light

Ve'e Ñu'u = Church

So, they call church the "house of light" in mixteco.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

 I just want to share a quick quote about patience that I love!

"Patience is the strength to defer what you want now to get what you want most."

I know that the Lord sees a bigger picture than we do. His plan is perfect! My invitation for you all this week is to put off something good for something better!

I love you all!

Hermana DeMordaunt

jorge and alejandro and brother gonzolas

Carlomanuel

the neighborhood where most our cute friends live!

Ashlin & Irving

last language class together in Santa Maria :(

lucila and her family!!

MIRACLE Week!!!

 Hey guys!! Miss you all and hope you had a great week! This week's email is long but I promise it's good! If you don't have time to read anything else at least read the miracle!!

A few quick updates... transfers are this week so wish me luck! I'm nervous I'll be leaving Santa Maria and I don't want to go! But whatever happens I gotta trust it's in the Lord's hands!

Every time transfers are about to happen, most the missionaries go to Panda Express and get a fortune cookie just for fun so they can guess what's gonna happen at transfers based on the fortune cookie. I don't know if that's just a tradition in our mission or if other missions do it too haha but that was a fun part of the week haha

We had some super cool friends come to church this week and one of them was brought by our other friend, Carlomanuel, who's on date to be baptized right now! Carlomanuel's friend is named Diego and he's soooo awesome!!

MIRACLE THIS WEEK:

I want to share the MIRACLE that came this week!!! I feel like explaining it over email really doesn't do it justice, because so much of the miracle came from the power of the Holy Ghost that was felt in the experience, but I'll do my best!!

We do a lot of facebook finding in our mission. Which is awesome, but there are honestly a lot of times where the last thing I want to do is to stare at a screen and send pretty much the same message to a bunch of people. Without the face-to-face contact, it can be hard to remember that I'm messaging people behind the screen.

But wow, Heavenly Father really is preparing people. One of the friends I reached out to a few weeks ago is named Jesus. I invited him to church and he said he'd like to come but didn't show up that Sunday. I ended up trying to suggest having a video-call lesson with him the following week, and he agreed, so we called him last Monday night! He was super cool and excited to talk. He introduced us to his cute little 2-year-old son over the phone, and told us a little bit about his background and some really sad family struggles he's been through. It was a great lesson and we set up another for a few days later.

We showed up at his apartment a few days later and invited the bishop's wife to meet us there for the lesson. She met us there and she's AMAZING because little did we know that she hadn't even found someone who could watch all 4 of her little kids, so she had just taken them along with her without complaining. I was a little nervous seeing her show up with all her kids haha because I was hoping it wouldn't intimidate Jesus.

It turns out that was just what he needed! He and his little son were so excited to have guests, and the 4 kids became besties with his sons which was awesome haha because it kept him busy during the lesson. We taught a great lesson to Jesus, and at the end, he asked us if he could share something.

Jesus then said that a few weeks earlier, he had been feeling really lost and alone. He was feeling hopeless one night and prayed to God to send him a sign that he was aware of him. Right then, Jesus said that he got the first message from me on Facebook. He said that he had felt God's love so strongly and knew that he needed to learn about the church with us. He said he was super excited to keep learning and knew this is what he and his son needed.

The Spirit spoke so strongly in the room as he shared this story!! I felt close to tears and just so much love for Jesus and his son! He has truly been so prepared. I feel so humbled and grateful that Heavenly Father trusted me to be a part of that miracle, and that Jesus felt God's love so powerfully through my inital message on Facebook! I pray that we can continue to see him progress, and I am just so incredible thankful for his experience and for the power I felt in hearing it.

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

This one's long I know but I really wanted to share!! This week I listened to a super good talk by Elder Holland called "The Laborers in the Vineyard." It has a really beautiful take on this parable from the Bible and I definitely recommend the talk to anyone who can listen to it this week.

Just a re-cap on the story... a bunch of different workers were hired to go labor in the vineyard for the day. As the day progressed, more people came looking for work and were hired. Some started working when the day was almost over. At the end of the day, they all were paid the exact same amount, even though some had been working a lot longer than others.

There are a lot of really good ways that the story of the Laborers in the Vineyard can be interpreted, but I want to take the perspective of the people who worked all day and received the same wages as those who showed up right before the day finished. In some of the parables in the Bible, I tend get worked up about how unfair it sounds for the people who were followers all along! (think of some of the other parables.. like the brother of the Prodigal Son, the 99 sheep Christ left for the 1, etc.)

I think sometimes it's easy for us to get in our heads and wonder why those who stayed on the path and those who struggled for a while to get back on it could both receive the same sort of celebration from the Savior.

But then I thought, aren't we all sometimes those Laborers in the Vineyard who didn't find success until partway through the day? Or the lost sheep that Jesus Christ went out of His way to find? If we are all going to represent that beggar at some point in our lives, and we want to feel Christ's mercy, why wouldn't we celebrate whenever He shows it to anyone else?! If He's showing mercy to others, no matter what point they're at in their spiritual progression, that means He's willing to show it to us too!!!

Elder Holland said, "We are not diminished when someone else is added upon."

My invitation for you all this week is to pray for ways to celebrate the success of others!! "[The Lord's] concern is for the faith at which you finally arrive, not the hour of the day in which you got there."

I love you all!

Hermana DeMordaunt

Photos:

tortilla-making with the district!

fortune friday

fun alleyway

comp beach pic:)

district activity by the beach!

flashback film to Hermana Silva and I with Liz, Ashlin, and Irving!

"Good Tortilla"

 Hellooo everyone! This week has been awesome!! I'll just share a few thoughts I had during some of the lessons!

We had exchanges this last week and we taught a sweet mom named Viviana who wants to get baptized but can't because her boyfriend won't marry her. It's causing a lot of family problems and it's sad to see. He said he will go to church with her, but only to the catholic church, so she can't come to our church even though she still wants lessons from the missionaries and to be baptized. She shared a few thoughts that were really powerful. She talked about some reasons that her testimony had been strengthened that this church is the church of God. First, she said how she was inspired by the idea that we don't baptize babies, because she saw the importance of agency!! She also talked about how she knew that it was God's church because of missionaries like us. How it just makes sense that God would want His gospel to be shared and spread around the world in every possible way. I felt so much joy hearing this from her and knowing that just my being a missionary for the Church is a way that I'm testifying of it's truth to others!

A few days ago Hermana Van Brocklin and I found a cute family as we were biking along the street, and they speak pretty much zero Spanish, pure Mixteco. Generally, the Mixteco-speakers we work with speak at least a little Spanish and we can do most our teaching in Spanish, but not these guys. It made me really grateful that I knew how to do a contact in Mixteco with them, because I'm sure they wouldn't have given us their number and address if we had only spoken Spanish to them. It felt like their demeanor toward us really changed as soon as we started speaking Mixteco. It reminded me of the scripture in D&C, chapter 90 verse 11:

"For it shall come to pass in that day, that every man shall hear the fulness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language, through those who are ordained unto this power..."

Even though we can generally get by in contacts and lessons with Mixteco-speakers who have picked up Spanish by speaking mostly in Spanish (with a few Mixteco phrases thrown in here and there), I recognize that the Spirit can testify with even more power when we as missionaries are doing our best to speak in these people's native language. We ended up having our first lesson with the pure Mixteco family on Sunday in their house, and it was such a beautiful experience! I still have a longgg way to go with my Mixteco teaching (and Spanish too hahah), but even as Hermana Van Brocklin and I struggled to find words as we showed pictures of Christ and explained His sacrifice, I knew that the Spirit was there because these people recognized that we were doing all we could to communicate with them in their native tongue. Also thank goodness for gospel pictures hahaha

My mission has also helped me come to appreciat Book of Mormon videos on a whole new level, because they help our friends who can't read still come to understand the Book of Mormon! Before my mission I thought they were just cool videos, but now I see the magnitude they have, and that technology can have for good in general!

We made homeade tortillas for our district activity today and that was super fun!! And speaking of tortillas...

MIXTECO FUN FACT:

So there are a lot of words that don't exist in Mixteco. Our friend Alex, who teaches us, said that there isn't even a word for "food," they just say the name of the food they're talking about.

My fav food name is the one they have for bread.

tortilla = "xita"

good = "va'a"

bread = "xita va'a"

So basically when they say "bread," they're just saying "good tortilla" hahaha

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

Lately I've noticed myself doing something I should NEVER do. I've been second-guessing a lot of our spiritual experiences.

Sometimes we find friends in really cool ways, where it feels like God put us in the right place at just the right time. Sometimes we have lessons that leave me feeling like I'm on fire!!! The Spirit is so strong!!!

And then, sometimes those people we find or teach stop answering our calls. Sometimes they don't show up at church like they said they would. And I start to think to myself that maybe God didn't guide us to that person, it just happened, and then it ended.

My comp and I are excited after leaving a lesson and start talking about how this person is going to progress so fast, and then I say to myself that I can't let my heart get too invested yet because they might not. I start to hesitate to share finding or teaching stories in my email, because I feel unsure if the person will keep learning with us and I don't want to end up disappointed.

But this week I had a strong impression come to me. If I felt the Holy Ghost testify to me through a lesson, or if I found a person in a miraculous way who ended up not progressing, it was STILL A SUCCESS. It was STILL A MIRACLE! Because it impacted someone else, and it was a part of God's plan! I was put in someone's path in the right place at the right time for a reason. And even if for whatever reason they didn't leave feeling the Spirit speak to them because they weren't ready to receive it, I felt the Spirit! And THAT is a miracle!

My invitation for you all is to recognize the promptings of the Spirit and miracles in your life and write them down!! Don't convince yourself that it was a coincidence, because it wasn't!

I love you all!

Hermana DeMordaunt

1-Translating for Sacrament Meeting

2-exchanges with hermana nelson and treats in a cute part of guadalupe:)

3-rootbeer floats

4-comp pic at the dunes

5-dinner with the other hermanas:)

6-our friend Alejandro brought us a fruit platter

7-exchange day with hermana morgan!

8-sand dunes!!

Brand New Bikes😎

 Hey everyone!! Hope you had an amazing week!

Ok exciting newssss... we got new bikes!!! The mission got us these two matching bikes that are literally brand new so that's excitinggg! Haha I'm way more excited about this than I should probably be. My bike won't be breaking down twice a week now haha.. hopefully..

We put one of our friends, Alejandro, on date! He's super cool and has come to a few lessons at the church and then had a few over video call. Sadly he's had struggles getting to church on Sundays so we're trying to figure that out, but keep praying for him and his progression!

I had two exchanges this week, both with Hermana Nelson! They were super fun and the day we were in her area, I was assigned as the driver, so I drove for the first time literally in 5 months! Haha I was worried I forgot how but don't worry we survived. I'll probably be having a lot more exchanges with Hermana Nelson because both our comps are the STLs and they have to go on exchanges with a bunch of other companionships.

On the day that Hermana Nelson and I were in her area, we went to a little city called Guadalupe and it's literally the cutest I love it! It was fun to go finding there and there are so many pretty fields where a lot of the hispanics work. We did some finding in a Lavanderia and this cute mexican store. It was fun becuse everyone's really nice there and not a lot of missionaries have been in that area to do finding, so each time we contacted someone in spanish, they'd look at us with wide eyes and be like, "You speak spanish?" Learning new languages is so cool.

Our entire mission, and specifically zone, had a really high goal for number of people found this week, and there were so many miracles!!! Our entire mission found more this last week than we've found in a month before! It's amazing to hear the success stories from everyone and how Heavenly Father truly is hastening the work!

Mixteco has been going well!! I still have so much to learn but I'm memorizing the basic phrases for teaching right now and I can say prayers in mixteco so that's good! Hermana Van Brocklin has amazing spanish and mixteco so she's a great example to be around!

SPIRITUAL THOUGHT:

This week I want to share a part of a scripture I read in my personal study that I love!! It's in Ether 12:37, and it says,

"And because thou hast seen thy weakness thou shalt be made strong."

To me, this scripture really emphasized the importance of humility! We aren't going to stretch and grow if we aren't willing to take the time to reflect on ourselves and find ways we could improve. This doesn't ever mean we should be beating ourselves up for our imperfections, but instead having the confidence in ourselves, and more importantly in the Lord, to recognize our imperfections and ask Him how we can be strengthened.

Humility does not equal weakness. It actually brings greater strength! Not just worldly strength, but godly strength!

My invitation for you all this week is to find a "weakness" and ask the Lord how you can turn it into a strength! He sees the potential in us!

I love you all!

Hermana DeMordaunt