Thursday, March 22, 2012

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

We attended a multi-zone conference for missionaries in the Tupelo and Huntsville-Madison zones on Tuesday (20 March). .

For multi-zone conferences missionaries attend the location that is closest to their residence. The Conference was held at the Huntsville Stake center building.

Elder and Sister Smalley, our AMA (Area Medical Advisors) attended.
He is a retired physician from Southern California serving a full-time mission with his wife. They are assigned to help our mission.
They live in Georgia and drove to Huntsville to speak to the missionaries.

Our conference began at 8:30 am and occluded about 3:00 pm. We enjoyed several special musical numbers and talks by Elder and Sister Smalley, Brother and Sister Clingo, and Sister Curtis. Our Mission President spoke on the Doctrine of the Father.


Here are the four of us: Sisters Hoyos, Sherwin, Kemp and Newmyer - ready for lunch.

In the afternoon, we held a Book of Mormon study; along with another special musical number and a talk by our Mission President.


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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

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Monday, March 19, 2012

Letter - March 19, 2012

This week has been very different because we had both transfers and a baptism. Transfers were on Wednesday so we all went up together to Birmingham.
My new companion is Hermana Newmyer from Utah.

We also have 2 other sisters with us Sister Sherwin and Sister Hoyos. Their area was double transferred so they are working really hard to keep up with those investigators that were already there and finding new ones.

The baptism on Saturday was great.
We worked hard all day to finalize everything and it all turned out really well.

Our investigator who was baptized said that he felt really great. He was telling us in the days preceding the baptism that his wife wouldn't be able to come because she had to work.
We really wanted her to be there to support her husband and to be able to feel the spirit there at the baptism.
So it was disappointing to hear that she wouldn't be able to attend. But that morning we prayed that Heavenly Father might open a way for her that she might
be able to attend the baptism.

Then when we walked into the room where the baptism was being held, there she was sitting there! It was really a miracle and I was so happy that she was able to attend.

The next day was Sunday and we called him around 10 just to see how everything was going, and he said he was ating he was confirmed. We talked to him afterwards and he told us he feels so great.

He really wants his family to be baptized as well because he doesn't want to follow the Lord's path alone, but he said that he would still continue and he has faith that one day they will follow.lready ready to go to church, which doesn't start until 12:15.

He was really excited to get there. It was great, in our Gospel Principles class he even bore his testimony. He was confirmed in sacrament meeting.

That has really been the highlight of the week. But we are still working hard and still finding more and more people.

There is an apartment complex we found a few weeks back that is filled with Spanish speaking people, so there is a lot of work there to do. We have found 2 or 3 people there who are really solid and I think will progress really well. There is a lot of potential there and if we can get a member in there I think it will do a lot of good.

We go out to Athens once a week. We usually just went to specific people that we already knew and didn't do much tracting. But as we were driving around, we saw a bunch of streets with Spanish-speaking people, so that's what we plan to do this Saturday to find more people up there. It might be hard to get them to church because it is pretty far away for them to drive down to Huntsville every week for church, but I think there is a lot of potential there.



Letter March 12, 2012 - en Español

I'm going to write my email in Spanish today-Dad and Andrew can translate for you!

Esta semana que viene será interesante. Las transferencias son miércoles y yo soy la única hermana que quedará aquí en Huntsville. Entonces, necesitaré saber todo acerca de nuestros investigadores y ayudar a las nuevas que vienen. Todo estará bien pero la extrañaré mucho a mi compañera.

Trabajámos duro esta semana para preparar a nuestro investigador para ser bautizado este sábado. Estoy muy animada por eso. El es el primer bautismo en la rama desde noviembre. Su familia antes no querían escuchar a nosotras nada más pero él es un buen ejemplo para ellos y dio su testimonio a ellos. Entonces, están más interesados ahora. Nuestra meta es que él se bautiza este sábado y que él les bautiza a su familia en la próxima transferencia. Su testimonio de todo es muy fuerte y él es maravilloso. Le enseñaremos esta noche. Y tratarémos de enseñarle todo para mañana para que él esté listo para su entrevista el jueves.

En las ultimas semanas encontramos un apartment complex donde casi cien por ciento hablan español. Es una gran bendición. Tuvimos problemas antes con apartamentos que no nos permiten a solicitar, pero hablamos con ellos en estos apartamentos y ellos están completamente dispuestos de permitirnos a entrar y enseñar. Sería una lástima si no pudiéramos pasar porque no hay otro lugar en donde hay tantos hispanos. Entonces estábamos allá mucho esta semana y encontramos a muchas personas, y sólo tocamos como 6 puertas. Todavía hay mucho que hacer allá.

Los miembros de esta rama son maravillosos. El viernes, Hno y Hna May nos invitaron a una cena en su casa para despedir a la Hna Nieves-ella regresará a la manzana del templo este miércoles. Y también tuvimos la oportunidad, todos los seis de nosotros, de enseñar al hijo de Hno y Hna May. El tiene problemas con salud y no puede salir de su casa o asistir a la iglesia. Entonces, Hna May estuvo muy agradecidio, y nosotros también estuvimos muy agradecidos para tener esa oportunidad porque él tiene un espíritu muy bonito.

La obra aquí siga adelante. Vemos milagros todos los días. Me gusta una escritura que encontré esta semana en Moroni 7:37-38 que dice que la fe trae milagros y si milagros no pasan, no tenemos la fe. Con la fe en Jesucristo y su expiación, todo es posible. Hemos visto milagros con muchos de nuestros investigadores. Especialmente el que será bautizado esta semana. Dios les ama a sus hijos y nos da muchos bendiciónes para que podamos compartir este mensaje por ellos.

Letter - March 5, 2012

This week has been pretty crazy, but it has been good. We have seen so many miracles occur here. The work has been great.

On Tuesday, we started teaching a new family that we found-that I told you about before in the previous letters. There are tantas personas in their house, so it's hard to teach all of them at once the same lesson, so we're still on the first lesson even though we've been there 3 or 4 times. But it's still good. The last lesson we had, Brother and Sister May, members from the branch came with us and it was so great. Hermana May is from Argentina and she was able to share her testimony of her conversion when she was 18. She told this story because my companion had asked her a question. We were talking about it afterwards and she said that she thought it was a weird question to ask at the time it was asked, but she did it anyway because she felt that she needed to. Then I told her that I felt the spirit telling me to ask the exact same question at the exact same time, she just beat me to it! That lesson was a great spirit
ual experience. The 3 we were teaching at the time I think could really feel the spirit. Then we talked about the restoration and testified of Joseph Smith and the spirit was so strong.

That day we also found out that one of our former investigators passed away on Sunday. I had never actually met her, but we called them up on Sunday to see if we could drop by this week and visit. Her husband called us back and told us the news. So we went to her funeral on Thursday. It was in a Catholic Church, so we had to get special permission from our mission president to go to it. We were allowed to go, but we were not to preach or proselyte under any circumstances in the church, which we weren't planning on doing anyway, but it was good to know. So we went and brought a card to her husband and we were able to talk to him for a minute. I think it was a nice gesture to show that we still cared about him and his family.

On Friday, most of our day was taken up because of the weather.
We woke up and we were able to get personal study done, but at around 9am our weather radio went off with a tornado warning, so we all had to get into a room without any windows in the most central part of the apartment, which for us is the laundry room inside the bathroom.
So we had all of our backpacks and 72 hour kits in the bathroom and we all piled into the laundry room.

We didn't stay there for long though because we in a second floor apartment and our district leader told us to go down to ground floor. So we went down to get to know our neighbors, but nobody was home.

So we went over to the office and we found all of the management in a nearby apartment and they let us in to ride out the storm. There are also tornado sirens outside that sound very loud when there is a confirmed tornado, so that was going off like crazy.

Around 11, all was clear and we were planning on going to Athens to work with some members and investigators. But, we prayed about it and decided not to go. That night the weather got bad again and we heard warning after warning about Athens and there were confirmed tornadoes there--it was definitely a blessing that we didn't go there.

The weather was clear for a while, so we packed up and left our apartment to go study and plan in the chapel-a much more sturdy and safe building than our apartments! And we have some investigators right near the chapel. When we got there, the tornado sirens went off agian, so we stayed inside for a while. Then we went out quickly after the warnings were over and had some great lessons with 2 investigators down the road. The second lesson we had was with someone who was really progressing. She is really great and has great faith.

So there was damage from the tornadoes, but all of us were very safe. It hardly even rained where we were. We get weather alert texts to our phone and one of them said that a prison was hit hard and thousands of feet of fence were down. So Hna Schroeppel said, "think of all the prisoners that could've escaped!" Then I said, "Look on the bright side, think of all the ones who didn't escape." Then Hna Simpson said, "Is the prison half empty, or is it half full?!" We all died laughing.

We found another great area FILLED with Spanish speaking people this week. It was great. We've had problems being able to tract in apartment complexes because they all have no soliciting policies, but we talked to the manager of this new place we found and he is completely willing to allow us to come in. We found 2 new investigators there and we will definitely be spending a lot of time there this week.

We have 2 investigators with solid baptismal dates. The first one is progressing so so well and I'm really excited about it. We taught him and his family for only about 20 minutes on Saturday night with our branch president and his wife. Our investigator and his wife were both there. It was an accident that she was there that night and it was actually the first time I met her. I don't know what happened in that lesson or what touched her heart, but the next day was amazing. Our investigator called us Sunday morning and we thought he was going to say that he wouldn't be coming to church, but he was asking us if we could find rides for his whole family to come! There are 7 of them and they don't have a car. We were so excited. They all came and in sacrament meeting, his wife got up and bore her testimony! She said how grateful she was to the members and bore her testimony of Christ. It was amazing.

That wasn't the end of the miracles on Sunday though. There was a CES Fireside last night and we were inviting everyone and it looked like nobody was coming. But at the last minute we found out that one of our new investigators was coming-someone we hadn't even taught yet; we had only contacted him once. But he came and really liked it. It was in English and we tried translating it for him for a while. Whether or not we helped, he was really happy to be there and said that he would definitely be back next Sunday. We are definitely going to be teaching him this week.

Another miracle that happened occured on Friday. We have an investigator trying to quit smoking. So one of our elders and our branch president went to give him a blessing. They also set a more solid baptismal date for him. I really think he and our other investigator are going to be baptized. It is very exciting!

The work here is going so well. Heavenly Father is directing our every thought and footstep.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Friday, March 9, 2012

More pictures from Huntsville, Alabama

More pictures from Huntsville -



Sisters Schroeppel, Nievas-Mercado, Kemp and Simpson at their apartment.


And, here is a shot of the four of them during their early morning study sessions.









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