"Ask and Ye Shall Receive..."

June 8, 2015

 

Wow. What a great week of miracles! The Lord blessed us immensely with the little time we had to proselyte and we were still able to hit the standards of excellence! :) i'm still struggling to get through some health stuff but the Lord has been literally placing people in our path to hear the gospel. I don't have much time to explain ALL of the miracles we saw this week (it was INSANE!!!), but here is one of my favorites :)

Glenwood Springs sister missionaries

 

On Thursday, the zone leaders challenged us to go out and find a new super solid investigator and set them on date for baptism. We accepted the challenge willingly and prayed to ask the Lord to deliver us to that person. Well, after studies we went out and decided to go and tract at a new complex we had never been to before. We oym'ed (where we just see people in the street and go up and talk to them- it means "open your mouth") these to ladies sitting on the apartment steps and asked them to help us with the survey. They did and one of the ladies, Mara, told us that she had a young child pass away just a year ago. We transitioned into the plan of salvation and she became a new investigator. The spirit was so strong as we were talking with her and it was so apparent that she had been waiting for the knowledge of where her child is. So that was a miracle in itself.

 

 

Diana...who is preparing to serve on a mission in a few years.

 

Well, after we finished the lesson, we kept walking and just knocked on a random door. A young 12 year old boy answered and we asked him if his parents were home. He said his mom was and she came to the door. She was talking on the phone and just said, "pasale!!" (which means come in) without asking us anything of what we were doing there. She finished up her phone call and then started smiling so big at us and said "HI!!! AHHH! I'm a member of your church! You found me!" We were so shocked and found out that her name was Alma and she had just moved here from Mexico about 6 months prior. Apparently, she had been trying to get in contact with the church since she moved and hadn't been able to find it. She had been praying for the missionaries to come by and find her since they moved. We talked more with her and she is SUCH an amazing lady. She has had 2 open heart surgeries and is here in CO on precautionary terms in case her heart acts up again. She has an amazing conversion story and is the only member in her family. She had been praying for us to find them and said that she knew that we were led there.

 

Well, back to the 12 year old boy... Luis. Alma (mom) has been wanting missionaries to visit him and teach him so he can decide if he wants to be baptized! Well, needless to say, we jumped on that opportunity and taught them the first lesson. We invited Luis to be baptized on july 11th and he accepted. We also invited him to pray about Joseph smith. He agreed. We invited him to come to church this Sunday. He also included that he's been to church several times while he was in Mexico. (which is a requisite for baptism already completed.) It was such a miracle. Luis and Alma had literally been WAITING for missionaries to find them. On Saturday we went back to teach him about the BOM and Luis said he had already received an answer that the BOM is true and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. Wow, I think a baptism will be coming even faster than July 11th. Needless to say, the Lord completed that challenge for us. <3

 

Hermana T and I love Alma so much already!

I don't have much more time, but that was the greatest miracle of the week! On Tuesday we had sister's conference and Sister T and I prepared an awesome activity for all of the sisters about having the faith to become what the Lord wants to get through our trials. It went great! I also went on exchanges with Sister Moody until Wednesday here in Glenwood. It was so fun and I loved teaching with her! We had so much unity and taught some seriously POWERFUL lessons (one of which was to Reina- she is progressing so well and had already read the intro, testimonies and to chapter 3 in the BOM). The Lord is blessing us so much here in Glenwood. On Wednesday, we had specialized training's by sister and president murdock and we also got these cool little boxes installed in our cars that monitors reckless driving. THAT was awesome! I am so happy we got them... there are some pretty crazy missionary drivers out there! Haha.

 

 

Sister Training Meeting (Meeker North and South Zones)

We were also able to set 5 more people on date for baptism this week. Unfortunately, 2 others fell off because they didn't make it to church, so we have a net of 9 people on date for baptism now! We are being seriously so blessed for our diligence! This is week 6 of the transfer and my last with Sister Tycksen before I lose her to Brasil :( I will miss her so much but am so grateful for the transfer we have had together! :)

Have a great week... oh, and happy summer! :)

Love,

Hermana Pierce

​

"Sacrifice Brings Forth the Blessings of Heaven "

June 1, 2015

 

WOW! Tomorrow I hit my 11 month mark of being a missionary! I can't believe how fast the time has flown and wish it would just slow down!!!

This was SUCH an amazing week! We had a pretty rough go last week with our investigators, but we were so blessed for our diligence this week!

A HUGE miracle that we saw this week was Thursday. We had planned to basically tract all day so that we could find new investigators. We parked our car and just set off walking, oyming (which stands for "open your mouth"), and doing everything we could to put ourselves in the situation to have the Lord lead us to the elect. We oymed a ton of people and ended up teaching 8 lessons in one day! 2 of the 4 new investigators that we found that day we set on date for baptism for July 4th. They are really amazing and want to know so badly if this church is true. We had our follow up Book Of Mormon lesson with them last night and they are progressing so well! It was such a miracle to be able to teach literally all day and to find those that are prepared to receive the gospel. Afterwards, we oymed a lady named Blanca that was just walking through the trailer park we were in. We asked her to do the survey, and although she was hesitant, she did it. We got to talking more with her and she just broke down and told us everything. She said she was so lost in life and was looking for direction. When we shared a little bit about the plan of salvation with her and explained our purpose here on earth, she told us that she could start to feel a little bit of peace for the first time. She has 2 sons (4 months and 9 years) and she is struggling to escape from the grasp of her ex boyfriend who is now in jail. It was such a crazy experience to see that she had directly prayed us there. We have a return appointment with her on Wednesday at the church to teach a lesson. She is so excited to be able to escape for even just a moment in order to meet us this Wednesday and learn more.

Progressing investigators:

 

About 2 weeks ago we oymed two ladies in a parking lot- Veronica and Reina. They were on a walk and we did the survey and taught the first half of lesson 1. Reina ended up giving us her contact information and was interesting in hearing more. We set up a return appointment, but she ended up cancelling the day of. We tried for the next two weeks to get into contact with her but just couldn't see her. Well, on Friday night, we finally decided to go by her house one more time. We knocked and she was home! She let us in and we chatted and caught up for a while. She is so sweet and really loves to get to know us and hear about how we are doing as well. We transitioned into the first lesson and taught the Restoration. We reaaally stressed the importance of the restoration of priesthood authority. We asked Reina if she thought it would be important to have the priesthood authority of God here on the earth today and she responded by saying, "Well... I know that all of the other churches I've attended in the past do not have the true authority. There was a period in my life where I was truly searching for the truth, but never found it." WOW. Needless to say we JUMPED on that opportunity. I testified so powerfully that I KNOW that today we have the authority of God on the earth and that the TRUE church that Christ established is here as well. We transitioned into the baptismal invite and invited Reina to be baptized on July 4th. She said yes! We continued throughout the rest of the lesson and she had so many wonderful questions about the Book Of Mormon and couldn't wait to receive her own copy. She was so anxious to get one that we explained it a little more and then gave her one and committed her to read in the introduction and the testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith. We repeatedly just testified to her of the truthfulness of our message and guaranteed that it was exactly what she had been searching for in her life. We promised her that as she prayed and read in the BOM every day, visited with us, and came to church, that she WILL receive an answer that THIS is the true church. It was such an amazing experience to see someone truly "searching for the truth but not knowing where to find it."

Last week we had 1 person on date and now have 6 set for June and July. We also received a referral from the elders of two more that are on date that we hope to contact this week to add to our investigator pool. :)

 

Bonfire with the Larsen family

I have been focusing the past couple of days on truly striving to view others through the eyes of Christ. I know that as I have focused on aligning my will with God's this week, we have seen COUNTLESS miracles. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be a missionary at this time while the Lord's work is hastening so quickly! It is the greatest blessing in my life! I am so very grateful for all of your support and prayers. It makes all the difference to know I have an ARMY of support behind me. I love receiving emails and letters with your testimonies. It only strengthens mine even more. Thank you times a million! Make it a great week!

Love, Hermana Pierce

 

 

 

 

 

 

PIC: So since the end of March our mission has been doing a sacrifice of only drinking water and fasting through lunch every Saturday. Well... The sacrifice ended yesterday (the last day of May) so naturally, the first thing Sister Tycksen and I did this morning when we woke up was EAT CEREAL. It was the most amazing moment of my life and needless to say, I had forgotten what milk tasted like :)

"SACRIFICE BRINGS FORTH THE BLESSINGS OF HEAVEN!"

 

 

"Have the Faith to BECOME"

May 26, 2015

 

Hello one and all!

This was a really hard week for me specifically, but we are constantly seeing the hand of the Lord in our every day work :)

Let's start it off with a miracle! I'm going to take advantage of emailing on Tuesday and share a miracle that we saw last night! We had had the hardest week last week- it seemed like every single one of our investigators was dropping us and we just couldn't have any success finding new ones. Well, last night when we finished dinner, we were going to go and try to contact an investigator we hadn't seen in a while when I made a wrong turn. We just ended up following the road we were on and found a hidden apartment complex!! It was amazing and, of course, we thought the Lord had to have taken us there for a reason so we decided to tract it. We knocked on the first few doors and no one was answering. Then, finally a lady named Teresa answered and we were able to go inside and do the survey. We taught her the 1st lesson and invited her to be baptized. She accepted the baptismal invitation, but not the date. However, we had a great lesson with her and set up a return appointment for Wednesday! It was amazing and she seems like she is completely searching for the truth, but just does not know where to find it. THEN, we had a return appointment with a man we met earlier last week. He was one of the 2 new investigators we found last week and we had set up an appointment for Monday at 7:30 with him and his family. We had only taught him the 1st half of lesson 1 so we were excited to go back and teach more. We ended up having an AMAZING lesson with them! Although he had some REALLY tough questions, I KNOW the spirit was guiding us to be able to answer them. It was one of the first lessons Sister Tycksen and I were able to really teach in unison (since it was in English) and it was so powerful! I am so grateful to have such wonderful companions and truly understand why the Lord has commanded us to teach "two by two." His wife became a new investigator and we now have 2 more families to teach. Just when we were starting to get discouraged that we have no investigators that want to progress, the Lord gives us yet another tender mercy.

 

Sister Harper's birthday celebration

As far as progressing investigators go, this week Annie and Ivan fell off of the radar. After church last Sunday, we went over to have our lesson with Annie and Ivan, but Ivan's foot was really hurting so he didn't join us for the lesson. We taught Annie anyways. Tuesday afternoon we went over to try and visit with both of them together, but Ivan wasn't there. We taught Annie again and she was completely prepared for her baptismal interview. When we had finished the lesson, Ivan walked in and he was super disrespectful to us. He wouldn't even greet us or really speak to us. He told us that he was late for his doctor's appointment and that he would text us later when he got home so we could come over and talk. Unfortunately, he never texted us that night. We texted him anyways and let him know that we loved him and Annie and hoped they had a good rest of their day. Well, the following day, Annie was leaving on a trip for her school class for 3 days and Ivan refused to allow us to come and teach him. It was hard, but we continued to make daily contact so he could know that we loved them. We fasted through our lunch 4 times this week for him to soften his heart and to at least allow Annie to be baptized. When Annie returned on Friday, we went over to see them Saturday morning and asked if they were coming to church and Annie said she didn't think so. Ivan wouldn't come out of his room and we didn't get to see him before they left to go to the movies. We told Annie she had to come to church tomorrow in order to be baptized on Saturday. She told us she really wanted to still, but that it was up to her dad. Well, on Sunday morning, we were planning to take pancakes to them before church, but we felt the spirit tell us to just text them instead. We told Ivan that we hoped they would join us at church at 9 and that we would be at the doors waiting to greet them, like always. He texted us back a little bit before sacrament meeting started and told us that they were attending a different church that day and to not wait for them. It was super heartbreaking because they had to come to church on Sunday in order to be baptized in May. I was pretty upset, but I am working on completely submitting my will to the Lord's. I know that He is proud of us because we have literally done everything we possibly could for them since we first met them 2 weeks ago. So much has happened and it has all gone so fast, but we know that the Lord will deliver their hearts out of bondage on HIS time. My whole mission I have struggled with TRULY accepting the Lord's timing, BUT I KNOW that He will never forsake us. Even after that incredibly hard week where we felt like nothing we were doing was going anywhere, He still provides us with miracles every day. It was a faith building week, but I am so excited to move past this rough point and continue to help GWS blossom! :)

One more story from this week happened on Thursday evening. It was raining (like always recently) so we started tracting some indoor apartments. Needless to say, we were having no luck, no one was home or answering. There was this one door and it smelled like drugs and there was some rap music playing and ping pong going on and it seemed like a pretty sketchy party. We knocked on the door next to it and no one answered. So, we started to leave because we weren't going to knock on the partying door... then I felt the Spirit tell me that we NEEDED to knock. Those teenage boys need the gospel just like everyone else! So we put our fear aside and knocked on the door. (Sister Tycksen thought I was a psycho hahaha). Some older teenage/early twenties guys answered, kinda creepy, but we asked them if we could do a survey with them and one of the guys said, "Our friend Nico would love to!!" and they shoved him out. So, he was standing in the hallway outside of the door with us and the party continued inside. We did the survey and he was responding so well and asking great questions. We felt inspired to move onto the first lesson (restoration) and he was asking questions the whole time. Sister Tycksen recited the first vision the spirit was so strong, even while rap music was playing in the background. We were out there with him for awhile. His friends kept yelling some inappropriate comments to him, which was super uncomfortable, and we could tell he was embarrassed but was definitely different from his friends. We finished the lesson as his friends started coming out. He was planning to leave with them so we were too rushed to get his number or set up an appointment but we gave him the pamphlet, committed him to pray about it and then text us about the answer he received. Unfortunately, we didn't get to set up a return address or get his address, but it was one of Sister Tycken and I's favorite experiences of the week because we followed the prompting of the spirit and now one more person knows that the Priesthood authority of God is here on the earth again!

Thank you all so much for your great support and faith in me! Although it is often difficult, I KNOW that I am here for a purpose. There isn't a day that goes by where I don't thank the Lord for this wonderful eternal truth that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Make it a great week!

Love,

Hermana Pierce

 

PIC: This week we also had interviews with President Murdock and I got to run into this awesome Elder, Elder Cabas! We were in the same MTC district and he saved my life back when I couldn't understand anything in Spanish! It was so great catching up with him again! :)