1/13/14

Well this week has been another fantastic one! One thing that was cool that we did was my companion and I made it a goal to talk to every single person we see on the street. Well, that's pretty awkward sometimes to just walk up to someone and be like "Hey, we want to share a message about Jesus Christ!". The first day we put it into action, the very first person ended up being super interested and even turned out to be spanish speaking!! This confirmed for us that the Lord is preparing people to hear His Gospel and putting them in our path, and all we have to do is open our mouths! so we kept doing this throughout the week, and ended up finding a lot of people who told us they'd been praying for an answer or a sign. What a blessing it is to be an instrument in the Lord's hands to answer people's prayers! However, this didn't mean a ton of progress for our work because they were mostly white people, so we would give the names to the English speaking missionaries. However we had faith that the blessings would come through our efforts. 

Sunday morning we get a text from headquarters that had a name and an address and said the girl had read some of the Book of mormon! This seemed to us a direct result of our efforts to open our mouths this week. So we went to contact her! She was pretty weirded out that we knew her name and everything but we got over the awkward pretty fast and I just said "Well, would you be interested in meeting 20 min a week for 6 weeks?" and she said sure! Before we left my companion asked if we could leave her with a prayer and she was like "Yeah I guess" but after the prayer we opened our eyes and she was crying. She said thanks so much, I really needed that, I'm going through a lot right now. What a strength to my faith to know that the Lord sends us exactly in the moments people need us. 

Another cool thing about this week was that we had a huge conference where members of the whole area came and we had some great speakers. The whole theme of this Stake Conference was missionary work and how the duty of members is just to invite people. All you have to do is say to anyone that you know, well do you want to come to Church with me and see for yourself what it's like? So I'm going to ask you: Will you do that? I promise as you do the Lord will put people in your path that need nothing more than to hear this message of hope and peace and eternal families and revelation. 

That's all the time I have. I love you all so much, thanks for your emails and support!

Hermana Hurley

Daily Mirlacles 1/6/14

This week has been smooth sailing and full of miracles. My favorite thing about being on the mission is feeling so close to my Heavenly Father and being so in tune with the Holy Ghost. In every moment of every day He directs us. It's amazing every time we show up at someone's house as a spur of the moment decision and find out we were an answer to the prayers or thoughts that they'd just been in the middle of having. 

Something funny that happened this week- so we were driving to an investigator's house and we see a huge flag from Spain outside someone's house. Since we teach only Spanish speakers we are always looking for little clues outside people's houses that they are Latinos. So we are super excited and jump out of the car- when we hear Spanish music playing from the open garage of the people next door! So we head over there first and start trying to speak Spanish to them- awkward thing is that they answer in English and say no one around here speaks Spanish! So we knock the Spanish flag house next door. He doesn't speak Spanish but his decease wife was from Spain. We asked if he knew any of his neighbors speak Spanish. He pointed to the house of the people we just talked to and said yeah! He's mexican!! And then pointed to 2 house across the street. We died laughing! Sometimes people just crack us up. Sorry if you thought that was gonna be a miracle story- but it was just too funny not to share!

Our investigators (the people we are teaching about the Gospel) are progressing really well! We are having a lot of success in the work! 

Don't forget the Lord loves you so much!

Love Hermana Hurley

1/1/2014

Ok, please forgive me for my lack of blog posts. Firstly thank you so much to everyone that sent me Christmas cards and packages! That means so much to a missionary!! 

I had a fantastic Christmas! It was a little hard being away from my family, but I got to skype them and that was fantastic! It is incredible to be on a mission and I love the work more every day. We just see so many miracles all the time. Last week, we dropped by on a member to give her tupperware and ended up having a lesson with a lady who is not a member that lives with her. We invited her to pray before we left and she just started crying and told us about how she wants to come closer to God. I am so grateful for those little times that God puts people in our path that are prepared to hear our message and have the desire to come closer to Him.

Another milagrito (little miracle) that we had was we were supposed to have a lesson with a teen from a new convert/part member family and her sisters friends were over and we talked them into a lesson and one of the boys was talking about how he has been thinking about being Christian lately because he wants to do anything he can to have the chance to be with his family forever. After our lesson I felt so good about it and prayed that we'd have the chance to meet with him again. The next day we found out that he called our member (his friend) at 3 in the am and said he couldn't stop thinking about it and he had a really good feeling in his heart. I know that God sends us exactly where we need to be in the moments people need His message.

We had a baptism this weekend and we are super pumped, he is the brother of the mom of this same part-member family. His name is Manuel and he is mega solid. We already have it set for him to receive the priesthood the next week and go to the temple for baptisms next months. When we told him about all that being set up for him he said : hermanas, muchas gracias por ayudarme con todo esto. (Sisters, thanks so much for helping me with everything) Ugh we love him so much. This family bought us victorias secret perfume and lotion for Christmas and our investigator gave us beautiful scarfs from Macy's!!!!!! He is so great! We had Mexican Christmas Dinner  with them which is turkey, potatoes, ham, tamales and mexican rice, cheesecake on Christmas eve (which is when the Latinos Celebrate Christmas!) It was so delicious that when we went over the next day we ate the leftovers for lunch and then played soccer with them and the Elders! Problem was, that night (when we were still full from lunch) we had dinner at another member's house. Tamales and pork again. It was so delicious but we had to force it down for the third time in 24 hours. The next morning we had a breakfast with a member and we were so sick of food we wanted to die. But we went and guess what she fed us. Yup. Mexican Christmas Dinner leftovers. So I'm never eating tamales and ham again. haha

So back to the Baptism. It was beautiful, and Manuel's two kids came, and our investigator (the teenager that we are teaching from the earlier story) really wanted to come too! This was shocking because he parents can barely drag her to Church and she only takes lessons with us because her parents make her. 

Well, she and Manuel's daughter came to Church Sunday and LIKED IT! and then we had a lesson with her on Monday and she said at the Baptism 'She felt a really positive feeling, and the room had more light". We were like- that's the Holy Ghost!! And she wanted to learn more about the Holy Ghost, which we'd already planned to teach. The Lord is so great! That was a huge miracle!

About my area a little:

I like cali, I've only lived in this little town manteca which is the size of conway but the avacadoes and weather are great. the latino people are so loving but the white people are colder than the southern hospitatlity i'm used to.

I have something crazy to tell you!

we had dinner with an english member and her son's name is nick and he's 17 and i was like whaaaaaat? then get this THE OLDEST DAUGHTER'S NAME IS EMILY!!!!!!!! and she happens to be an aries like me haha.

Out of time!

Love you all!

Hermana Hurley