"Branch Therapists" 1-30-2012

Hola todos!    

     This week was a little hard. We weren't able to visit with a lot of our investigators this week because they 1. cancelled or 2. weren't there. Some of them for the second week in a row. This is frustrating because 1. they usually stop progressing 2. They come up with all these new doubts 3. It makes it really hard to help them because we almost have to start over sometimes. Most of our investigators right now seem to have anxiety problems over the idea of leaving being catholic (even though theynever go to church). One investigator, Alejandra, has lately taken the "oh it's all the same" stand point. For example we explained what happens at church and then she proceeded to explain about how really it was just the same as the catholic church. The standpoint of "All churches have the same God so it doesn't matter what church you go to". That's probably one of the most common viewpoints I hear. 

     The past few weeks we've been sort of the branch therapists listening to everyone complain about each other and it got me a little discouraged I think. I'm feeling better about things now and hopefully thinks will continue to improve. One good thing about being the branch therapists is that some of the less actives are coming back now! We had a really good session...lesson with one of the less actives on Saturday. She came to church the week before and paid her tithing. She said she felt happier all week long! She's planning to keep coming, start bringing her kids to the activities again, and help her 8 yr. old son get baptized as soon as possible. She came to church again yesterday and came on time for the classes this time! Another woman came again for the second week in a row too. She said it's part of her new years resolution. So that's good.

    Jose came to church again too and brought 3 of his grand daughters. They all seemed to love primary. We felt last week that we should tell Jose that if he doesn't make the decision to get baptized soon we wont be able to keep stopping by because we've taught him almost everything we can and we can't help him progress more w/o baptism. It made him really sad because he loves our visits. We're hoping that this will just give him the little push he needs and that we wont actually have to stop visiting him. About baptism he says it will be "soon" but that he will let us know when he's ready.

     I've been working on overcoming feelings of discouragement, lack of motivation, and lack of faith. It's one of the challenges of being in an area for so long - especially one where everyone around you is so negative all the time. So my studies have been a little more focused on that lately. It's helping. I think it's interesting...even though I feel bad about losing motivation temporarily I think maybe I needed the down in order to better understand how to get back up. I hope maybe I can help all the other discouraged people in the branch a little better now. They're coming up with a branch mission plan now! well at least they've started. They invited us to branch council yesterday. I saw a lot of discouragement but hopefully coming up with a plan will help. 

Branch President: "Lets try to put a goal for when the branch can be a ward. What do you all think? how long?" 
Ward mission leader (muttering) "300 years". 
<Branch President proceeds to give him a little whack on the shoulder>

I thought It was funny. I don't know if anyone else noticed.

Thanks for all the e-mails and letters! Kevin: It sounds like you had lots of fun at the Klondike Derby! I testify to the fact that wearing more socks doesn't necessarily make your feet warmer. Megan: Homecoming? whats that? but mint chocolate is good. We'll see if I make it. It depends on how persistent they are at finding me and putting me on the plane. My area is pretty big...hmmm

I love you all and hope everything goes fantastically these next few weeks! I'll be praying for Grandma hope it all goes smoothly! Talk to you next week!

Hermana West

"Steadfast and Immovable" 1-23-2012

Hola familia!

    I heard about all the snow Seattle got this past week! Craziness.  This week we had a lot of less-actives at church! One of those things that doesn't count as a number but still makes us feel good.All three less-active member lessons we had this week came! One of thecouples came for the second week in a row and another one stayedthrough sacrament meeting for the first time in 6 months. There were also a bunch from the Elders half of the area there for the second week in a row. Hopefully they're back for good and be a little more"steadfast and immovable". There's been a lot of problems with gossip and bad feelings between the members so we're hope it continues to get better.      


Still having a problem with getting our other investigators to church though (other than Jose who came again for the 16th time I think). They all seem to create these huge obstacles in their minds that aren't actually good reasons to not come to church. One couple says they don't want to come until they're more united as a couple,another couple has a different excuse every week mostly having to dowith family being in town or needing to babysit grandchildren, others I think it's just laziness.     


The family I talked about last week who came to church for 5 months but got offended asked if there was anywhere else they could go to church. That made me kind of depressed especially because we had some other investigators this week mention how important things like charity and love were. A lot of the people we teach understand these two principles better than a lot of the members here. Sometimes I feel like the branch impedes the missionary work. I'm trying really hard to stay positive though.     


Marina, who we've been teaching with her kids, finally read this past week! Her kids have been reading but not her. We could really tell the difference! She seemed way more willing and seems to understandbetter now the importance of actually following Christ instead of just passively believing. She was also more open to come to church than before. It's interesting. I can almost always tell the difference when people (including less-active members) start reading in the scriptures and praying. Those are the things that help motivate real change, invite the spirit, and make you stronger.   Well I hope you all have a fantastic week! 


love,

Hermana West


pictures!

Truck fail?

Me in front of the Woodstock Opera house. It's used in some of the
scenes of "groundhog day"

What it's looks like driving around in my area. I really liked the
way the sun was hitting the fields this day so I had my comp take a
picture

"found an old investigator (Rosa) " 1-17-2011

Hola familia!

      So my e-mail is coming Tuesday this week because yesterday the libraries were closed. Yes it snowed about 6 inches on Thursday and it's snowing again today! I think that means it's officially winter. Snow isn't as fun as a missionary. Luckily though, it hasn't been as bad as last year (yet). I'm really relieved that the grad school stuff is done. Now I can have normal preparation days. I've had a little bit of a cold this week which is mostly just annoying. I hope it goes away soon.

      This week has been interesting and has had it's ups and downs. The biggest blow this week was that Maria Mendoza (one of our investigators who's been progressing pretty well and said she wanted to get baptized) moved without telling us where and since we only had her house number we can't get a hold of her. We're not really sure why she didn't tell us. So that was really hard for us. We're a little bit closer to putting a baptismal date with Jose. Now he's saying 2 or 3 months instead of "summer". So that's a small improvement. We were pushing him really hard to set a goal for baptism at our last lesson but he still said he'd just let us know when he's ready. He went to visit his daughter this week and ended up going to church in Elgin with her. But he told us he likes it here better because he's used to it. So that's good :)

      We had a lot of less active members at church this week! Three families from the elders area and one from ours. On Friday we'd left just a small note on the door of this couple's door (Alicia and Carlos). They said it helped motivate them to decide to come to church on Sunday! It was her first time coming in about a month and I've never actually met him so it was his first time in a LONG time. They recently got into a car accident too where their car flipped over a bunch so that also might have given them a little motivation :). We're hoping they'll continue to come. We had another really good lesson with another less active yesterday. She stopped coming because of all the gossiping and she "just couldn't stand it anymore". She says she knows she needs to come back especially because her son just turned 8. We had a really nice lesson with her and she says she going to come to church! So hopefully we'll see her Sunday too.

      We found an old investigator (Rosa) this week who were being taught about a year and a half ago and had come to church with her "esposo" (Juan) and children for about 5 months. They stopped coming because of the gossip and "hypocrisy" of some of the members. I think gossip is probably one of the most destructive (non-physical) forces ever. So they're like all the less active members only not members. So I guess that makes them "less-active investigators". They never got baptized before because they we're waiting on divorce papers from Mexico to get married. We met with Rosa on Wednesday and she told us everything. She says she's willing to get over it but that Juan really wants nothing to do with the church anymore. It's a really sad situation. They both read through the entire book of Mormon and it's really obvious that Rosa still has a testimony of it (we're not sure about Juan). She got really sad when she started talking about how they used to be so excited about getting sealed in the temple. We told her that she can still have all those things but that she (and Juan) might have to start with something a little bit smaller (i.e. starting to read and pray again) but that starting to do those small things would help them both get over the negative feelings they have. She admitted that they had stopped reading and praying since they stopped coming to church as well and said that she'd like to start over again. So we have really high hopes for her! and hopefully we can meet with Juan sometime too - he's going to be a little harder though I can tell. Also they are planning to get married in February!

Well I hope that everything goes well for you all this week! Love you!

Hermana West

"Jose decided to offer a prayer" 1-9-2011

Hola Familia!

     This week has been surprisingly warm for January (in the mid-upper 40's). Everyone's been talking about how unusual it is. I'm happy though. Hopefully it will stay that way as long as possible. It's the first week now of Monday preparation day. It think it's going to be good. Apparently they're encouraging all mission presidents to have it on Monday so that the whole week is building up to Sunday without interruptions.
     Church attendance of the members was finally a little better this week and we had a really good testimony meeting! Jose came (as usual) and is continuing to see miracles with his family. He told us of an experience he had last week with his youngest son. They were trying to take a tire off the car but for the life of them couldn't get it off. After working on it for about an hour his son was about to give up, but Jose decided to offer a prayer afterward his son tried again and it came right off with little effort. He was really happy about this small moment he was able to share with his son to teach him the power of prayer. Maybe we can get him to sit in with us too on the lessons. We told Jose that his example is really making a difference and now hopefully we can convince him that the next thing he should do to be an example is get baptized :). We've been trying harder to get our other investigators to come to church but they all flaked out on us when we talked with them on Friday and Saturday. Hopefully next week.
    Last zone conference the President and Sister Doll gave us all a Book of Mormon highlighting challenge to do by our March Zone Conference. I've been really enjoying it! At first I thought it would be a bit tedious but it's actually kind of cool so I thought I'd share with you all in case you want to do it too. They told us to take a paperback copy of the BoM and read it going through highlighting in 4 different colors: 

1. Names and pronouns referring to Jesus Christ (don't get too caught up on if it's talking about God the Father or Christ) 
2. His words (as spoken by him or his prophets when they say "thus saith the Lord") 
3. His attributes 
4. Principles and doctrines contained the the BoM. 

At the bottom of every page tally up the total number of items referenced. It's been helping me read it with another perspective in mind and I feel like I'm learning a lot from it. Of course if you all wanted to do it you wouldn't necessarily have to finish it in March :)

Hope you all have a fantastic week!

love, Hermana West

above freezing + sunny - wind = warm 1/4/2011

Hi family!

      This week has been slow again. With the Holidays and kids being on break from school a good portion of our investigators told us that they probably wont be available until AFTER the holidays are over. And I think some of them went on vacation without telling us because they're not there for their regular appointments and, as usual, no one answers or responds back to our phone calls. Maria is one of them. She said she would come to church but didn't. We tried calling Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning with no response. And she wasn't there for her appointment on Monday. We hope everything's OK. I think it's probably just laziness so hopefully we can find her again this week and instill some motivation in her. Hopefully this coming week we'll be able to find our investigators again because it's COLD! Today's nice though; 35 degrees and Sunny (abovefreezing + sunny - wind = warm).      We had a really interesting appointment with Jose this week also. The good new he told us was that his daughter (and I think her family) who live in Elgin went to church on Sunday too! We'd been wondering about her ever since we gave the referral to the Elders. Good things apparently! The bad part is that near the end of the lesson while we were talking about baptism again his wife sort of exploded on us... saying that 8 years old's don't know enough either and sarcastically saying that Jose should get baptized to "see if it makes any difference"....among other not so kind things. We're not really sure what to do. We think she's holding a lot of pain inside from something because emotionally healthy people don't usually lose it in front of guests. She still doesn't want to talk to us though. Everyone in his family keeps telling him reasons why he shouldn't get baptized so it's confusing him a little I think. So I'm a little sad about that this week.      Well I'm trying to stay motivated. It's hard because a lot of the leaders in the branch seem really hopeless (about the less-actives and the branch growing in general). We tell them ideas and they take sort of a negative outlook on it. We're trying though. It's a little overwhelming sometimes but it's definitely improving. Slowely but surely.     I hope you all are excited for school again! haha. Have a great week!love,

Hermana Kristen West