Hermana Inman Letter October 15, 2013

It's go time.

We set a baptismal date with Sina, our investigator from Iran!! November 16th :).  He came to church again and stayed for all three hours. We got him a Book of Mormon in Persian and his eyes lit up and he was so excited to read it in his own language! The ward has welcomed him with open arms and are so eager and excited for his baptism!  They haven't had any baptisms since the beginning of the year and then 2 weeks ago Kris got baptized, then Sina will get baptized, and the elders in our ward have an investigator getting baptized the following week! Exciting things are happening over here in the Olivenhain ward. We've been trying to work with this part member family in our ward since we got here, but they've been so busy that we've only been able to meet with them once.  The stake president talked to them on Sunday and then told us that they're all ready to go and would like to start taking the lessons again! :) His name is Claud and his wife Jill is a member. Claud actually went to general conference in Utah last weekend- he might as well be a member already.  We're excited to start teaching him!

I got the chance to learn a little bit more about family history this past week as we were preparing to teach a recent convert about it.  As I was looking through our family history on my account I was so excited to see so many pictures and names of our ancestors! It sounds so nerdy but family history is so cool!  I was looking at a couple different names and their information and it was fun to see "last updated by toriecamilleinman" next to their name :).  Way to go Torie! You are so awesome!  I'm sure you've got a huge fan club waiting for you on the other side.  I'm so proud of you for taking family names to the temple that you found and prepared yourself! That is so neat! You'll have to tell me how your talk in stake conference goes! I'm sure you'll do a fantastic job.  Good job in your band festivals, too!

The primary program was yesterday; this ward has 180 primary kids. Can you believe that?! They blew me away. These youth are so strong and have truly been saved for these last days.  They were so strong and powerful as they sang their primary songs and recited all 13 articles of faith (little sunbeams, even!). I don't think I've ever cried in a primary program before, but I came pretty close this time!  I'd like to think it's because of the strong spirit, and not because sister missionaries tend to grow extra tear ducts on their missions. 

The weather here has been SO NICE.  We decided to do a car fast this past Wednesday and walk everywhere we could so we could talk to more people and save miles.  The one day we decide to do that it pours down rain the entire day. It POURED. But we knocked doors and walked around anyway! It was actually pretty fun. 

 

I'm so happy for Jake and his baptism and for all the wonderful things that are happening in his ward! He is such an awesome missionary!  I'm also happy to hear that our other missionaries Dom and Alex are doing well :). I'm totally jealous but not even surprised that Jake's mission gets the iPads and that Jake gets to train on it. Lucky.  That's so great that Garrett Brown is going on his mission!! Good for him! He'll do a good job.  Yay for Richard Alldredge who just finished!  He emailed me a few weeks ago and said "you're on a mission? since when?" haha I told him to give you that huge hug mom so I'm glad he did. 

 

Happy Birthday Grandpa! 

 

It sounds like that butterfly atrium was awesome!  I'm glad Jesse is enjoying school and seminary.  And thank you for looking into schools for me. That'd be cool to be Torie's roommate :) we'd have fun! 

 

I'm doing well and I am happy to be here.  White people are cool too.  I'm still very well taken care of and the members are so generous.  The other week someone bought us like 2 1/2 weeks worth of groceries.  Then last night we got presents at a dinner appointment- that was new and totally fine with me :).

 

I love you all and miss you!  Keep being so awesome.

 

Love,

Hermana Inman

Hermana Inman Letter October 7, 2013

Good, Busy Week.

Hey!

 

This week was a lot better.  I even got a chance to work in my old area in Spanish for 24 hours on exchanges!  Then we had conference, which will brighten up any week.  We're starting to be familiar with our area and the members, so that makes the work move forward at a faster pace as well. And we got to go to the temple on Tuesday!  Kris is still as awesome as ever.  We taught him on Friday night and he let us try on his marine gear which weighs just under a million pounds. Then we had a really neat lesson about the Priesthood, which he should be getting on Sunday :).  What a champ.

 

We've been teaching this man named Sina from Iran.  He asks really deep questions and there's a little bit of a language barrier, but we're doing the best we can!  He came to church last week and watched all the sessions of conference!! We're teaching him again today and are hoping something touched his heart as he listened to the words of the Prophet and his apostles. Speaking of General Conference, wasn't that the most inspired and spiritual conference EVER?! It was SO GOOD! I loved the emphasis they put on member missionary work, how we need to all come together and be equally yolked.  It's true, we can't do it by ourselves anymore!  We need your help! Some of my favorite quotes from conference were:

 

     "when we partake of the sacrament we renew not only our baptismal covenants, but all covenants we have ever made with God." -Carole M. Stephens (RS Presidency)

 

     "the past is to be learned from, not to be lived in" -Elder Dube quoting Elder Holland

 

     "first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith"- Deiter F. Uchtdorf

 

I have a lot of other favorite quotes but I don't have time to write them.

 

If you read in Mosiah 2 you'll find lots of similarities between the old-school, Book of Mormon general conference, and modern-day general conference! It's neat!

 

Way to be an awesome missionary mom! 2 Book of Mormons in a week! That's awesome! Way to go! :) Keep me updated!

My Pday is on Tuesday next week because of the holiday, FYI.

 

I'm glad you got the email and pictures from the members here!  They seriously take such good care of us. I love you! 

 

I'm glad to hear you got the expedition back and working well! I'm also happy to hear that Jesse and Torie both enjoyed conference :).

 

So, it's been a year!  Officially!  How crazy. Not sure how I feel about it haha it feels good and I feel accomplished to have made it this far and yet it's a scary and sad feeling to know that I only have a few months left.  I'm grateful for this opportunity and plan to give it my all.

 

I love you all and am grateful for your prayers and thoughts and for all you do to give your support. Have a great week!

 

Love,

Hermana Inman

Me and my Verdecito

Missionary gone Marine

The force is strong here

Hermana Inman Letter September 30, 2013

a whole new world!

So here it goes.

 

They whitewashed me into a new area- and an english area. My companion is an english speaking missionary so I can't practice with her and because I am now called to serve in English I have to sacrifice language study time. It's a difficult change not working in Spanish work, opening up a new area, and training. I'm an emotional roller coaster. My companion is Sister MacKay (pronounced Mackey) from Kaysville, Utah. She says she doesn't know Rick and Tammie. I'm serving in the Olivenhain ward, in the Del Mar Stake.  Let me tell you about our stake. $$$$$$$$. and that about sums it up. You know those 5 million dollar homes you see on TV? Yeah, that's my new area, and I walk inside those homes each day. It's quite the contrast from what I've been used to this past year (year! next week is my year mark!). But, these members are truly wonderful and are treating us like celebrities. We're the very first sister missionaries they have ever had in their ward and they are thrilled to have us :). We share the ward with 1 set of Elders. We're fed well and everyone wants to help. And guess what? We just had a baptism on Saturday! We moved in on Tuesday night and they were like, oh, by the way, you have a baptism this saturday! Luckily, the members had already put together most of the program so we didn't have to stress too much about it. It was nice :) his name is Kris and he got baptized within 3 weeks of hearing the gospel. He went to his friend's mission farewell in our ward and asked how he could "be converted."  How awesome is that!

 

Elder Pendergast is my zone leader down here haha.

 

Thank you for the goodie package!!! That was a pleasant surprise :). Adolfo, (our convert from Escondido) sent me a package with a birthday card and an electronic english-spanish translator! haha he's the greatest.

 

The general relief society broadcast was wonderful! I loved President Monson's talk the most about prayer.  We take prayer for granted and I think we could all put more sincerity into our communication with our Heavenly Father.  Watching the sister MTC choir made me cry.. I wished I was in their shoes and had 18 more months left ahead of me.  Watching the broadcast also made me think of you mom, which also made me cry. To be honest I haven't had a hard time with homesickness while out on the mission but since we normally watch the relief society broadcast together I realized how much I miss you! But, I'm still trying to stay focused and am still happy to be here at this time.

 

Dad I'm glad you had a safe trip to San Diego even though there were some mix-ups with your flight and hotel and everything! That's such a long way to walk to conference! But hey, good work out, right? Speaking of workouts, my new area has nothing but hills, which makes running so easy and fun! But, it's doing great things to my body so I'll take it haha.  Running is actually kind of enjoyable now that I've done it for awhile and I never thought I'd say that! I'm glad you were able to make it through your flights, too. Which year did you graduate from Midwestern? My ward mission leader graduated from there and wants to know if you were in the same graduating class. His name is Brother Belnap.  I don't know if that sounds familiar?

 

 

I'm so happy for Torie and Jesse and all of their accomplishments! They are such hard workers and great examples.

 

I love you all and hope you have a great week! Don't worry about me, just keep me and my companion in your prayers, please, that we may have unity and the Spirit and stay focused. Thanks :)

 

Love,

Hermana Inman

Kris = Baptism

Hermana Inman & the Ocean

At the General Women's Conference Dinner

Hermana Inman Letter September 23, 2013

Big Changes!!

It's transfers and big changes are happening!  I'm training a brand new sister starting tomorrow, and I'm white washing. (We will both be new to the area, and both Hermana Magana and I are leaving, so brand new missionaries will be put in our area as well). AND, there are 14 sisters coming in, and only one of them is a spanish speaking missionary. There are 4 Spanish sisters training, which means 3 of us will be switched over to English work ..... I really hope it's not me. Hermana McBride is training as well! Transfers are tomorrow, so I'll let you know what happens next week. Bah! 

Thank you for the slippers, lip gloss, and chocolate! I have been wearing the slippers and lip gloss every day :). Each time we come home for dinner or when we're studying in the morning, we wear our slippers and rest our feet, and it feels wonderful! That was a very thoughtful gift! Thank you! The other day after dinner we were out the door and ready to work and I looked down and saw that Hermana Magana was still wearing her slippers, and I was like, "you're going out like that?" then she turned around and looked at my feet and it turned out that I was still wearing my slippers too haha we had completely forgotten that we were wearing them and almost ended up prosteliting in slippers! I wouldn't mind that so much.. Thank you for your sweet, kind letters as well :).  The Primary sent me a package of letters, and that was fun to receive!

We started teaching Juan this week, and he came to church again yesterday! He's so awesome! We also started teaching Betty and her son Israel.  We met Betty in a parking lot after one of our appointments fell through (no coincidence) she agreed to meet with us a couple days later.  We taught her the Restoration and they loved it. She told us about some of the trials they are going through right now, and that she was actually looking for a way to get closer to Christ that very day when she met us.  Her son Israel is 8 years old, and we're so excited to teach another family! We're bummed that we have to leave and that we won't get to see their progression in the gospel though.  We're teaching her again tonight and will be picking up 2 new investigators as well :) those lucky missionaries who come here have the perfect set up right now. 

That's wonderful that you and the ward are having so many missionary opportunities! I'm sure the missionaries in your ward are so grateful as well. Keep it up :)

I love you all and hope you have a great week! Thanks for all that you do for me! 

Love,

Hermana Inman

Hermana Inman Letter September 16, 2013

I'm Old.

 

Thanks for the birthday wishes! I had a nice birthday, the members gave me some cake and sang to me (Mexicans have a different birthday song than the one we all know! I recorded it (3 times), but I can't figure out how to send videos home, so eventually you'll see it when I send my memory card home. At the end of the song they make you bite into the cake and then they shove your face in the cake, but I was too fast, so nobody had the chance to :) only a little bit of my nose. I didn't receive any birthday mail, mail takes at least one week to get to me after you send it, but I'll probably get it this week or next week. Actually, Hermana Farr sent me a birthday card :) that was fun! I was surprised she remembered when it was!  

They took a couple parts of our area this week and gave them to the Elders, so Eliza (the lady I talked about last week) is now in their area.  It's kind of a bummer, but then again it's okay because we picked up more investigators this past week! We got a referral on Friday for a family. A young couple with two little girls and they have some friends who Freddy works with (Freddy is the husband, Sarahi the wife) who has introduced them to the gospel. They went to church last Sunday and loved it, and they requested the missionaries to come over and teach them. Their family has recently gone through some large trials and realize that they need Christ to be a bigger part of their lives. Freddy is not Hispanic, but speaks it fluently because of schooling, and his wife Sarahi is from Mexico and can speak very little English.  It's a cool situation but kind of weird because he talks to us in English and she talks to us in Spanish so our lessons are in Spanglish. But, the gospel is the same in every language, right? We also met a young man in our complex the other day and invited him to come to church.  His name is Juan. He accepted and came to church yesterday, for all three hours, and loved it! He was crying throughout the class because he was so touched by the Spirit and he said that from now on he'd be at church every Sunday, even if that means he has to work all day and all night.  His dad will be joining us next week as well :) good things are happening!! 

Dad, which mission did you serve in? The bishop's wife is from Argentina and is a convert, and would like to know which mission you served in because maybe you were the one who baptized her mom! Also, do you ever watch "The District?" The tv show about the life of missionaries in San Diego? Well the sister on there, Zalvadar or something, is from Argentina, and didn't you baptize a family with that name? 

The members here are great, I love them so much and we have good relationships :) that is key! The Spanish is going pretty good, my companion is still awesome and we're hoping and praying that we get one more transfer together! Transfer calls are on Saturday, so we'll find out if we both stay or not.  

Those miracles you shared with me are amazing!!! The Lord truly loves you and is looking out for you :) be sure to give Him thanks! 

I love you all and miss you!  Thanks in advance for my birthday present :) I have the greatest family EVER!

Love,

Hermana Inman  

 

 

Hermana Inman Letter September 9, 2013

Well, this will be the last email I send to you until I turn 22... Man! I'm such an old maid! 

We picked up 3 new investigators this week! Veronica and Cecilia (mom and daughter) and Eliza. We found Veronica outside her apartment last week and we went to teach her the other night. We taught her the restoration, and the spirit was so strong. She would like to be baptized but she has to discuss it with her husband who is very Catholic... so we'll see how that goes. She and her daughter listened so intently and it was such a neat lesson. There is power behind the first vision.  Eliza, our other new investigator, is AWESOME! The other day she was walking down the street and saw the Elders. She ran down the street to catch up with them, dragging her granddaughter. When she finally caught up to them she found that they couldn't speak Spanish, so she just gave them her address and told them to send other missionaries over. We went by her house on Saturday but she wasn't home, so we left a note that told her who we were and left our phone number. Not even 10 minutes later we get a phone call and it's Eliza. She asked if we could come by that day at 5pm but we already had a booked night. We invited her to church and she said she'd come if we could find her a ride. We found a ride and she came!! And she stayed for all 3 hours and loved it! It turns out that she just got here from Mexico, and in Mexico the Elders were teaching both her and her husband and they were at church regularly and were working towards baptism! She had been talking to her daughter that Saturday about how she wished she could find missionaries to teach her here in the United States, and then that same day when she went on her walk, she found the Elders!!!! THESE THINGS DON'T JUST HAPPEN! The members were so kind and friendly to her. They asked her if she was here to stay, and she said "yes, I'll be here every Sunday." :)))))) YEAH! We'll be seeing her tomorrow to start teaching her. 

 We had to stop teaching Jacobo because even though he is praying and reading the scriptures, he refuses to set a baptismal date, and until he does, there is nothing else we can do for him. But, it was a graceful drop and we're still friends, and says he'll still try to come to activities and eventually church when he can get Sundays off. As for our other investigators, we haven't been able to see them this week.... But, the work moves forward and we find more people who are truly prepared to receive the Gospel. The other day we went to try and visit Amanda, but she hasn't been at home. However, there are these 2 men that are always working outside at her apartment complex, and they're always friendly and talk to us for a couple minutes. Well, on Saturday

, one of them saw us coming and came up to us and asked, "hey, where is your church? I read the bible and stuff and I want to come to your church." How awesome is that?! He also wants the missionaries to start coming over to teach him. The bummer is that he lives in Riverside, which is a whole different mission, but the good thing is that he'll receive the gospel either way.

Hermana Magana is still awesome. We've got this companionship unity thing down to a "T."  This whole week we've been saying the exact same thing at the exact time, all day long. It's kind of weird. My Spanish is pretty good, I guess. It's always a working progress, but I've gotten a lot more compliments lately, and I can't seem to carry out an intelligent conversation in English, so that's a good sign :) my companion is helping me learn a lot of vocabulary. We got another elder in our ward, so now our ward has 8 missionaries! 

I'm glad to hear that the family is doing well. I'm glad Jesse's birthday party went well :) he's so funny! Who does he even text? I'm excited to read his letter. How is Dom doing? I know you send me his emails every week, but I honestly don't have time to read them... That's wonderful that our family has been able to enjoy the temple so much lately :) I miss the temple, it brings so much peace into our lives and opens up windows to divine guidance and direction. 

I love you and miss you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Inman

Hermanas Magana & Inman

Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Hermana Inman and Elder Pendergast

Hermana Inman with Parrot

Hermana Inman Letter September 3, 2013

Hola.

Hey! How was everyone's Labor Day? They switch our P-days when they fall on holidays.. more people are outside and at home so it's a good opportunity to find people to teach. This past week was a little rough, but it didn't get me down. We dropped several investigators, including Daniel, the one we just found and set a baptismal date with. We couldn't get ahold of him at all and he wouldn't return our calls... we're pretty sure that it's because of his girlfriend who gets super jealous (he told us about her and told us that it might be a problem), and also, his family is all part of the Jehova Witness church, so you can imagine he had no support in his decision to learn more and be baptized. It just means that right now is not the right time. We had to reschedule with Lucy for next Monday, and Jacobo is doing well! He promised to ask for work off on Sundays and he has been reading in the Book of Mormon and praying. He's stubborn... but we're working with him. We spent a lot of time working with less active members this past week. We also had zone conference this past week, which is always fun and inspiring. Some of my friends are going home within a couple weeks, so that was fun to see them one last time. Does anybody know why sister missionaries can only serve for 18 months and not 2 years? We get jipped! So not fair! I need more time!!! Time is going by way to fast and it's not okay! I'll be home in 7 months! Or less! With the mission changes and divisions, they cut a few transfers one week short, so it cut off like 3 weeks of my mission! Not cool! I need more time! Ah!

Anyway, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE FOOD PACKAGE!!!!!!!!! That was awesome!!!! We had chocolate chip pancakes the other night and it was so good! I'm excited to make the other things you sent me as well. Thank you so much :) we've got a super tight budget as missionaries, so it's a huge blessing and treat when we are given food haha. I ate octopus this past week... and soupy ceviche which is basically shrimp with cilantro and limes and other ingredients... it made me sick haha but I'm fine now. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSE!! He'll have to tell me all about his party. I'm sure it will be tons of fun. Mom your candy wrapper story made me laugh pretty hard- people looked at me in the library haha. Torie and Jake sound like they're doing well and I'm happy to hear it :) 

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love

Hermana Inman