Hermana Inman Letter December 30, 2013

Feliz Navidad, Prospero Ano y Felicidad


It was so fun to see you guys on Christmas!! You guys look good :)

So I'm back in Spanish work!! Back in Oceanside!! It's great!  We've picked up 7 new investigators in the past week and a half, and we set a baptismal date with Jacobo :) for February 8th!! This will give him enough time to change his work schedule and be able to stay for the full block of church.  He came to church yesterday right after work and made it to the majority of sacrament meeting, it's better than nothing!! :).  

 

Leti is one of our investigators and she is the strongest, most golden investigator I have ever met. She and her family want to be baptized so bad, but her boyfriend and father of her children refuses to marry her, and she can't separate from him either because she has nowhere to go, and she wants their kids to still have their dad... it's a frustrating situation, but the Lord will help her to be baptized soon.  

 

THE WORK IS SO GREAT!! There were so many times this week that we prayed for small little miracles and they happened right away.  Like the other night we had 5 minutes left until it was time to go inside, so we prayed that God would place 2 more people in our path that night so that we could reach our goals before we went inside.  As soon as we ended the prayer, somebody got out of their car by us, and then right after they walked away, somebody rode their bike and parked it right by us. We had several experiences like this. 

 

 

Hermana Woodruff is from Ohio, and she is the hardest working missionary I have ever met.  She is hilarious and obedient and I love her to death and hope I get to stay with her for awhile. It's going to be a great transfer. I'm still a sister training leader and start exchanges tonight! 3 a week for a couple weeks! Hermana Magana is a STL now, too, so I got to see her the other day at our meeting :) that was fun. 

 

Thank you so much for the Christmas presents :) I am so so grateful.  Thank you thank you thank you.  I'm sending out letters to reply to each of yours, but you all will have to give me a couple p-days to get them done! 

 

Box tickets to a Suns game?!  That sounds like a blast! And Parkers baptism and little Christmas at grandma and grandpa's sounds so fun too!! I love our family! I haven't been able to look at Jesse's harmonica number yet, but I will try to, I'm sure it was great!  Good luck on the job application to camp geronimo! 

 

I love you all and hope you have a fun and safe new years! 

 

I'm out of time, talk to ya next week!

con mucho carino y amor,

 

Hermana Inman

Hermana Inman Letter December 16, 2013

call me HERMANA Inman :)

It's transfer time!  And I'm getting transferred! I was bummed at first but now I'm actually really excited, because there's a huge chance that I'll be put back into SPANISH WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!! Another weird thought- this will most likely be my very last area in the mission. So weird. Tomorrow the mission is having a big Christmas Program with talent show and spiritual program and thoughts, too.  Then we'll have transfers and I'll find out where I'm going. I really do feel like I have given this area everything that I have to offer, and I think this transfer is an answer to my prayers.  I think maybe the Lord just wanted to see if I would keep pushing on and working even when nothing was happening.  The area is about to BOOM with investigators, we got so many referrals from members this week and we have appointments set up with some potential investigators, so I know Sister MacKay is going to rock it and lead out the area strong.  She's a great missionary and I will miss working with her. Mom you asked how tall she is haha she is 5'11" (I can never remember which apostrophe goes where). I'm glad you got the santa picture :) that was at the ward Christmas party! It was funny- we had just met a man in the ward a few nights previous, and when we went in to see Santa, he looked awfully familiar haha we said "Santa, we feel like we've met you before!"   I got the Christmas packages!! Thank you!!!! I'm waiting to open them until Christmas!! :)

 

People here decorate like they do in Arizona, some go all out, some hang up a strand of lights, some people's houses turn into the North Pole, it's fun.

Because I am getting transferred, I have no idea what time I will be skyping or how.  Hopefully my new companion already set something up. We won't be having p-day on Monday next week but will be having it on Christmas Day.  So, there won't be any emails or letters next week, JUST SKYPE :D. (On Christmas). As soon as I find out I'll try to have a member text you or something, but if that doesn't work, just be on standby... sorry :/. 

 

I'm glad that you had so much fun with Torie and Jesse's party! That sounds like a blast! I'm jealous!  We'll have to have another one when I'm home, and when Jake's home!  That's awesome that Jesse could bring some family names to the temple! Way to go! Isn't family history so much fun?! We're already seeing results from the family history pilot program- people talk to us for a few minutes out on the streets about their families!! It's amazing!  People are excited to learn more about their families.  "The spirit of Elijah is the Spirit bearing witness of the divinity of the family."- Elder Nelson- if people can begin by feeling the spirit of Elijah, then they'll have a desire to keep feeling the spirit and sharing that with their ancestors by doing temple ordinances. Elder Richards made an interesting comment last week at our conference.  He said, "our jobs as missionaries is to bring people into the gospel so that they can perform temple ordinances for those on the other side of the veil." Anyway, that's my family history schpeal for the day. OH, and that's sweet that we're related to Captain Jones! (Mayflower) Who knew? Good find, Torie.

 

Cool that you got to meet the guys who are doing the temple windows!

 

I'm so excited for Jennifer (Matthews) Nichols and her family :) what a beautiful experience.  Please tell her congratulations for me.

I am so grateful to have an advocate, Jesus Christ, who stands by our side no matter what.  He is there to help us every step of the way, and to lift us up when we trip and fall.  I know He is close to Jesse, and to you, and me, and to each and every single one of us who reaches out to Him.

I'm grateful for this time of year, to celebrate our Savior Jesus Christ.  I love Him and wish I could give Him more. What a miracle.  The greatest Christmas Miracle of all is exactly that- CHRIST, and His atonement for us.

I'm SO EXCITED to see your beautiful faces on Christmas :D

 

I love you!

 

Love,

Hermana Inman

 

 

P.S. Congratulations to Torie for making the Principle's List and for getting into NAU!! You're a rockstar!

 

 

 

Hermana Inman Letter December 9, 2013

Feliz Navidad!

I got to go caroling with the Spanish elders this week!  It was fun to sing hymns in Spanish again :)  I actually had an opportunity almost every day this week to use my Spanish in contacts on the street! Somebody even told me it was perfect haha.  I even got another Hispanic man that tried to set me up with his son.  Something about white girls who speak Spanish... creeper magnet material.  That's so awesome that the ward went out caroling and handing out Joy to the World DVD's!! The ward sounds like it is so missionary minded, and just on fire!  Way to go guys!  That sounds like a fun Christmas activity.  Our stake just had a huge Christmas musical production for the community and it was packed with visitors not of our faith. It was great!  Remember Claude?  He even came!! Lots of friends from people in the ward came, too, so hopefully something comes from that :)  they each got a copy of Joy to the World as well.  

It sounds like you guys are going to have a fun Christmas party this weekend!  Let me know how it goes! Is it cold down there? I can't even imagine going to -7 degree weather like Jake; I'm freezing over here in the 50's haha.  In my defense though, it's a wet cold from all the ocean humidity which means it's actually colder than a dry 50 degree temperature.

I got the package you sent with the Rivers, thank you so much!!! :) that was perfect!  The sheets are greatly appreciated, and I love the color!  We decorated our apartment with the fun decorations you sent, and the fuzzy socks are the best, and the treats were so tasty :) thanks a million! Thanks so much for helping me with my BYU applications.  We hear back in March, right?

Elder Richards from the 70 came this week to explain the actual pilot program we will be doing with Family History.  It's not something entirely new, but we will just be putting more emphasis on family history in our finding efforts so that people will feel the Spirit of Elijah and then they'll ask questions about why we do family history, which then gives us the opportunity to share the gospel with them.  We'll just be helping people get started by creating accounts on familysearch.org and getting them acquainted not only with the website, but with our consultants as well who will help them each week to do genealogy, while we come on separate days of the week to teach them the "why" of genealogy.  Nothing crazy, just a way to track the effect family history has in our finding efforts.  It works!  People are usually more willing to talk to you if they're talking about their families, I've seen it happen quite a bit!

I don't have any cool tracting stories this week, but I have a small experience that strengthened my testimony of prayer.  We were weekly planning on Friday and we could not figure out what a less-active lady in our ward needed to be taught- we felt like we had shared just about everything with her that we could.  So we decided to say a prayer and ask Heavenly Father what she needed this week.  After our prayer we just knelt there in silence and waited.  Then after a couple minutes "family history" came in my mind, and without telling sister MacKay, I turned to her and asked if she had thought of anything, to which she answered "family history."  It was just a cool little experience that showed me that this is truly the Lord's work and He guides it, especially when we pray with sincerity of heart.

Thanks for sharing with me the stories of Peter & John, and Stephen.  It's true, it really is a privilege to be in the service of the Lord, and even more so to be persecuted for His sake.  I wouldn't want to be doing anything else right now than serving the Lord, and I need to be more grateful for my trials.  They can only make me stronger, right?! 

I'm glad to hear that Jesse and Torie are so dedicated in church.  I'm proud of Jesse for honoring his priesthood and being worthy to prepare the sacrament each Sunday.  We all depend on worthy priesthood holders to be able to partake of the sacrament each week!  I'm proud of Torie for working so hard on her personal progress!  Keep it up :).  I'm also proud of Jake, I've always looked up to him. 

I'm healthy, the cold is going around and Sister MacKay has had a cold this past week, but so far I've been fortunate to not get a cold, just a few sniffles and coughs here and there.  I'm doing okay... I can't say this past week was much better, but I know things get harder before they get better, so I know it'll all be fine! Onward! I appreciate your prayers :).

I love you all and miss you!  Hope you're staying warm and drinking lots of hot chocolate! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Inman

Hermana Inman Letter December 2, 2013

It's Christmas Time!!!

Hey guys!

I'm glad you had a nice Thanksgiving!  I did as well, we went to 2 houses, and it felt nice and homey with everyone's family around and the Christmas music playing, and they cooked my favorite Thanksgiving foods, it was great.  It's hard to believe that it's already Christmas time again! Congratulations on finishing the 5K!!! You guys rock! Congratulations dad for coming in first in the jeans section! haha that's pretty funny. I hope I get to do it with you guys next year :)  that'd be fun.  Do the missionaries in your ward have a lot of investigators to teach? What do they do to find new investigators?

Minus Thanksgiving, this past week was rough.  It becomes really discouraging when you don't have any real investigators to teach in over 2 months.  People let us teach them every now and then but they don't really have any desire to change and become a part of Christ's church.  We had a ton of doors slammed in our faces this week and a lot of rude people encounters.  Since we don't have people to teach we walk around contacting the people in the streets or we're knocking on doors most of the time.  We've started teaching the ward council families the missionary lessons so that we get to practice teaching to somebody; plus if they can see that we are good teachers and when they feel the Spirit that comes when we teach the pure doctrine of Christ, then names may come to their mind of people we can share the Gospel with.  We're working with what we've got... We had a breakdown/meltdown this week, but we got Priesthood blessings, and in my blessing the Lord promised me that there are people in my area that he is preparing to receive the gospel, but that I just need to be patient and keep [diligently] looking for them. If that means I have to keep knocking doors and walking everywhere and talking to every single person I see, then I guess I'll do it!  The words to the song "I'll go where you want me to go" always come to my mind when things get extra hard:


1. It may not be on the mountain height
Or over the stormy sea,
It may not be at the battle's front
My Lord will have need of me.
But if, by a still, small voice he calls
To paths that I do not know,
I'll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:
I'll go where you want me to go.
[Chorus]
I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,
Over mountain or plain or sea;
I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord;
I'll be what you want me to be.

2. Perhaps today there are loving words
Which Jesus would have me speak;
There may be now in the paths of sin
Some wand'rer whom I should seek.
O Savior, if thou wilt be my guide,
Tho dark and rugged the way,
My voice shall echo the message sweet:
I'll say what you want me to say.

3. There's surely somewhere a lowly place
In earth's harvest fields so wide
Where I may labor through life's short day
For Jesus, the Crucified.
So trusting my all to thy tender care,
And knowing thou lovest me,
I'll do thy will with a heart sincere:
I'll be what you want me to be.

I signed up for this, and it was in the job description.  I am still grateful to be the Lord's servant and wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now or be doing anything other that what I am doing right now.  Thank you so much for sharing your testimonies with me in your emails this week, they are so uplifting and encouraging :). 
I'll be eating lunch in The Bridges this week!  If you don't know what that is, you can probably look it up online, but basically it is one of the richest places in all of Southern California- just a neighborhood full of rich people, and we just happen to have a few members in there, so we'll be dining at the bridges.  Not too shabby. I'm glad the Rivers were able to stop by and drop my bag off for me.  They're great people.  Thanks for sending me a package :)  I haven't gotten it yet, but I'll be seeing them tonight.  Brother Rivers texted us last night and said he had a package for me and he wanted to hear about the guinea pig cage, and I couldn't remember what that was, but I'm pretty sure you're talking about the live dinner that I passed outside a few months ago and took a picture of?


You asked what I would want for Christmas, and the only things I can really think of right now are: downeast basic tees/wonder tees that I use to layer under other tops, in white and any other color.  A new skirt and shirt would be nice, or a dress-I'm kind of tired of my clothes. Maybe some sunglasses? I can't really think of anything else I really need.  Maybe some cute earrings? But my skin breaks out with normal earrings- it turns out I'm allergic to certain types of metal? So maybe if you find any hypoallergenic earrings or something that wouldn't bother sensitive skin? Maybe some new cd's? Or, we're allowed to use iPods now, so if you just put our church music onto my iPod and sent that to me that'd be cool, although I have no idea where i put my iPod before I left.. I don't know.  Those are the only things that come to my mind.  I have enough food and shoes (weird, right?), I think just some fun stuff would be nice.  I have just about everything I need.  Who do I have for Christmas this year?

I love you guys and miss you! Thanks for all of your love and support and prayers.  I'm so excited to skype with you on Christmas in a few weeks! :) I hope you all have a great week and enjoy this Christmas season!!

I am so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ, and for our Father in Heaven who loves us so much that He gave His Only Begotten Son, so that we could live with Him and our families again someday.  I know the Book of Mormon is true and I have seen the guidance and peace it brings to my life. 


Love,
Hermana Inman