Week 62 (4/29/19): "The road of life is paved with flat squirrels..."

"... who couldn't make up their minds."

I'd heard this a while ago, but refound it this week.

But on a more spiritual note- "Only God can turn our mistakes into miracles."

We have had some amazing miracles this week. Where do I even begin? First, there's Crystal. She was a Book of Mormon request we got 2 weeks ago, and she is so prepared! We have met with her a couple times, and she wants to come closer to God in her life, and she is so receptive to the Spirit. We invited her to church, and to have a chapel tour on Saturday night. So Saturday, we go to get the building ready and the doors are all unlocked. (Turns out, there was a funeral a little earlier.) So we go in and get the chapel ready, set up a couple sacrament trays to explain the sacrament to them, open the baptismal font doors, and open the doors to the Relief Society room and the Young Women's room. As we go to leave, there is a man in the Primary room. Luckily the elders showed up, so we went in and asked what he was doing, and he said he had come in to pray. So I asked, "If you don't mind me asking, why did you want to come in and pray?" And from there, he asked what made our church different, so we explained about authority and modern prophets and the Book of Mormon. Then we offered to take him on a chapel tour! We went into the chapel and explained the sacrament to him, and he said he felt so good he wanted to cry. He even said, "Maybe I'll end up being a Latter-Day Saint." There is no way it was a coincidence that the one time the building is left unlocked (that never happens), we have set up for a church tour, and he walks in. It was so cool! The Spirit was so strong!

Also, we met a former who had been through a lot since last meeting with missionaries, but she is so prepared and wants to come closer to God! We are so excited! Plus, she lives in one of the outlying towns and she has not one, but two cars!! So she can help bring people to church!! Huge answer to prayers!

Probably the best moment of the week though was yesterday. The senior couple are leaving this week, and there is a family who they have worked with for a long time (close to a year) but who live pretty far out. It's a single mom and her six kids, and they don't have a car, so getting them to church is really hard. I think they've come (just the mom and mahbe one or two kids) once. So we met them on Saturday and just really wanted to surprise the Brandts by helping them get to church, since it would mean a lot for them to be able to see this family at church one last time before they left. They are so ready to get baptized, they just need to get to church! So we talked to our ward mission leader, since he has an SUV that would fit all of them, and he drove all the way out and brought them to church! They walked in during the sacrament hymn, and it was the best moment of my whole week. They were so surprised! And they just started crying. And afterwards, Sister Brandt just came up to me and gave me a huge hug. It was so cool to be able to do that for them.

It was just such a good week. The work is picking up, and we are seeing so many miracles!!! Life is good!

Sister Cate

Week 61 (4/22/19): "That one must be a teenager snail."

We had such a good week! It started off with a Book of Mormon request last Monday! We went and she was so excited to read the Book of Mormon!! She said she would take notes and everything! She is so prepared! And while we were there, there was a girl who was over at her house who came up and said that she'd read from the Book of Mormon before and gone to church with her Grandpa Ray! So we talked to her for a bit and determined that her grandpa is a member in the English ward! So we went by the next day and they are absolutely amazing! They are totally on board with having a Reedley branch, and are willing to help us reactivate people and get them to church! It is awesome!

I had a really cool insight this week. One of the ritual foods of Passover is the bitter herbs, which one of my religion professors said is like horseradish. So you put the horseradish in your mouth, and of course it kind of burns, and then you eat a piece of the matzah, the unleavened bread, and it draws all the bitterness out. And it reminded me that the Bread of Life can draw the bitterness of sin out of us.

Also, an abuelito gave us boquetes of roses on Saturday! They are gorgeous!

Have a great week!
Sister Cate

(There were a ridiculous amount of snails at this one house! It was awesome!!)

Week 60 (4/15/19): "No, not the plan of slavery! No thank you!"

This will be super short this week, since I've been figuring out college stuff, so time is short.

Biggest thing from this week- So a while ago, I put a free Bible on Facebook Marketplace, and last Tuesday, a man named Ushindi from Oakland (originally from Tanzania) messaged me asking if it was still available. So I asked if missionaries there could bring it, and he said yes! Then we talked for a while, since it took a while to get in contact with the missionaries there, and by the time we got in contact with the missionaries in Oakland, he had downloaded the Book of Mormon app (and changed the language to Swahili) and had started reading and loved it, had read some from ComeuntoChrist.org, and wanted to go to church! He is seriously so prepared and wants to know more! It has been so cool to talk with him and see his excitement for Jesus Christ and his desire to find the true church.

Also, we'd been praying for a family of 6, and we found a family of 6!! It was such a miracle!!

Love you, bye!!
Sister Cate

Week 58 (4/8/19):"This is why we argue- you like prime numbers."

This week has been awesome! And so is Hermana Sepulveda. Yesterday, someone we're teaching said that she's going to go far in the church (since she was so lovingly bold and had such a powerful witness and such a good knowledge of the gospel) and I totally agree with the principle of what he said. She has such an enthusiasm for the work and such faith. It has been such a strength to me.

Together, we've seen the vision for Dinuba- that within 18 months, there will be a ward in Reedley (like you told Elder Farnsworth) and so we are going to see huge growth. Me being me, I ran the numbers, and we need ~210 more members, which means that between us and Reedley, we need 12 new members a month. Which is really just two families. But it's cool to see how because we see the vision, that doesn't seem that daunting. We know that this is what needs to happen to realize the Lord's vision for this area, so we fully trust that it's going to happen!

On Saturday, we watched Conference with a less active sister, and she talked about how when the elders came over (we're working together), she just felt so much peace the rest of the night. And then after conference, she said that she's wants to find out for herself if this is actually true! She's totally coming back, and bringing her 3 unbaptized sons with her!

Another cool miracle, we watched Conference with a member family (mainly the hermana) yesterday morning, and that was the session Elder Christofferson spoke. It really hit her that she could hear an apostle of the Lord speak to her in her own language. And it was such a miracle that the one session of conference we were there (and they hadn't watched it on Saturday) was when Elder Christofferson spoke. Heavenly Father knew that this hermana needed that.

We met a really cool man this week. We were about to knock on his neighbor's door when he called us over and asked us about the plan of salvation. And we talked to him for about an hour, then an hour and a half (about the word of wisdom), and we're going back again tonight! He lost a bunch of his family about a year ago, and he really wants to know more!

There's been so much that's been happening, I can't remember everything. But it's been a really good week!
Love you, bye!
Sister Cate

Week 54 (3/25/19): "She's sick, and her turtle's blind."

Alternate title- "I can't be transferred. I have bonzai to plant."

But I picked the title I did because it is kind of fitting for this week. I took becoming as a little child to a new level this week. I was sick for most of the week, and when I get sick, I don't normally show symptoms, I just sleep. So I spent 3 solid days keeping the same schedule as a baby- sleeping, waking up to eat, being up for maybe an hour, then going back to sleep. But by Sunday I was able to be up for 7 1/2 hours straight, so I'm hoping to be back to normal by tomorrow. But I promise, I'm taking good care of myself, and I'm feeling a lot better.

We had a really cool miracle this week! We had an absolutely amazing lesson with someone named Marta, whose daughter we'd met a few days ago. We talked with her for a while about the Book of Mormon, she loved the First Vision, and wants to know for herself that this is the true church! While we were talking to her, she asked us for her own copy of the Book of Mormon before we even offered it! That never happens. And we invited her to be baptized once she knows it's true,  and she said yes! The Spirit was so strong!

Other than that, I have read the Olt Testament some as I've been in bed (Heavenly Father is helping me work on my goals!) and the main message I've gotten is don't forget the Lord! Seriously, that's the cause of most of their problems. And it made me think how that's the same for us. When we forget the Lord, when we start worshipping other things and putting them first in our lives, like work or sports or even school, that's when we have trouble. But when we remember Him, He causes walls to fall and kill 27,000 of our enemies. (See 1 Kings 20:30, or just the whole chapter)

Well, have a great week, and don't forget the Lord!
Love you, bye!
Sister Cate

Week 52 (3/11/19): "So the opposite of chaos is waffle."

This week was fun! We got to give our first training as sister training leaders, and we had a lot of fun with it. We were giving a training on teaching to people's needs, so we had people shoot nerf guns at a target in 3 different ways- blindfolded, facing the back and then turning and shooting, and then just regularly aiming. Then we talked about how it's the same way with teaching to needs- if you're not teaching to needs, it won't impact them as much, and it's like you're not aiming. So that was fun!

Oh, funny story from this week- last Monday, we had to go down to Hanford, and we had to take our car in because we'd gotten a flat tire. So at the end of preparation day, we called to check to make sure we could pick our car up and they said that the rim had bent, so it wouldn't be ready until the next day. So after a lot of phone calls trying to figure out how we were getting back to Dinuba, Hermana Harris' aunt gave us a ride. (Her aunt lives in the mission, about 45 minutes from Dinuba.) And we were going to have exchanges, but that didn't happen until later in the week. In the moment it was kind of stressful, but now we just laugh! Especially because all our stuff for exchanges was in our car, so the elders got that for us, and then we had to get the spare key to our apartment from our district leader, since we'd given them all our keys!

It has been a good week, crazy, but good!
Love you, bye!
Sister Cate

Week 51 (2/25/19): 🎶"A green bean, a green bean, I'll be a green bean for him!"🎶

Okay, this will be super short...

We had SUCH a cool experience this week! Heavenly Father totally changed all our plans on us! On Saturday, we were determining who would go with who on our first exchanges, and so we made a decision and prayed about it and got conflicting answers. We had previously decided and prayed about exchange dates and times and had gotten the answer that Heavenly Father trusted our judgement, and honestly, that was a necessary step in the process of receiving revelation, but we knew there was a change He needed us to make. And after an hour and a half of discussing and praying, we had changed a bunch of our plans, but they were so much better and much more what the Sisters need than before! And I don't think we could have jumped straight there, we needed to start with the plans we made before, then make changes. It was cool to see how the revelation came line upon line, a little at a time. We would change one little thing, then realize another little change was needed until we knew the Lord's will in full. I also learned that revelation comes as we truly seek for it. As we really tried to find out the will of God, He gave it to us, but only when we really wanted it. And there one point where we both felt like we needed to be in our area, instead of what we'd planned, and now we have a meeting with the Brandts to discuss some of the less actives in the English ward who are actually Spanish. So that was really cool!

Love you bye!

Sister Cate