Hellooo Family!
Week one in Pleasanton-check!
Sister
Rodriguez has been here for three months and has been dying to get a
new map for the area. The one we have is old and hard to read and SUPER
disproportionate. So we made some phone calls to other missionaries and
asked one Sister who was Sister Rodriguez's first companion here in
Pleasanton about places we might be able to find one. Nada. The
one Sister told us they never could find anything better for South of San
Antonio, and she served here for 7.5 months. Well...shoot. So Sister
Rodriguez suggested the HEB (if you don't know what that is, you're not a
Texan) in Pleasanton. After some quick prayers we ran in before we
headed home and were checking it out. TA-DA! We found a "South of San
Antonio" spiral bound map book that had everything that we would need.
So the next day we made copies and cut and taped and straightened and made
a grand map. I had the idea because that was what Sister Young and I
did in Palo Alto, and it was the best map I'd ever had. After we got it
all taped together we took it to the Office Depot by our apartment and
got a 3ftX4ft copy of it. Then we went home divided it and colored it
into sections so that we can save miles. Family, it is beautiful and
going to help a lot. Sister Rodriguez LOVES it :) So months of looking
and lots of missionaries later, we found, taped and colored a map in 2
days. In Danika's words: Huzzzah!
Tuesday, we had Zone Meeting. I thought a lot about
things we needed to do for this area while listening to the trainings.
Remember last week when I said going into the Conference I had the
attitude "if I don't touch anything, nothing will get broken"? I was of
the Opinion that I would just sit and let the work come to me, I would
let the natural elements of the area work their magic. ERRRRR! Wrong. We
were meant to work things through, to act and not wait as Elder Bednar
said in his talk in October 2013 The windows of Heaven "the
blessing that comes to us through heavenly windows may be greater
capacity to act and change our own circumstances rather than expecting
our circumstances to be changed by someone or something else." (http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/the-windows-of-heaven?lang=eng)
And so in Zone meeting while pondering on things again,
this was the answer I got (this is for you dad): by the time that I
leave Pleasanton, my fingerprints need to be all over this area. I have
to work, hard. And the more I work in this area, the more that I realize
it was not the perfect area that I thought it was. There's a lot of
things that need to be pulled together and utilized. There is a lot of
potential and work to be done.
However, while we were weekly planning a few days
later, and I realized that I shouldn't and wouldn't be leaving my
fingerprints all over, this area would need the Master's touch. Not
mine. It's like Elder Bednar said in his talk that I read " you and I
are much like the long, thin strands of glass used to create the
fiber-optic cables through which light signals are transmitted over very
long distances. Just as the glass in these cables must be pure to
conduct the light efficiently and effectively, so we should become and
remain worthy conduits through whom the Spirit of the Lord can operate."
For a long time my favorite Scripture has been 1 Nephi
21:16 "Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls
are continually before me" because it made me think about the nails
prints in the Saviour's hands, and how He literally could not forget us
because we were graven on the palms of His hands. I don't know if I ever
wrote to y'all about this, but in the MTC I was really struggling about
my third week in. Companion struggles, Spanish, homesickness and girl
issues resulted in a snotty nose and red eyed break down during personal
study, in my class room with my whole district. It was pleasant. Not
really, it was humiliating and overwhelming, and also a very defining
point that changed my life. I was reading through the talk by Linda
Reeves The Lord has not Forgotten You, and wondering why on
earth I was doing this. Did the Savior really know who I was and how I
felt right then? I felt so alone, and wondered how I could have charity.
As I was reading the talk these words came to my mind "Even as my
hands bear the mark, you must come to love others as I have loved you." I
had never heard this before, I had never read this before. I don't know
why I'm sharing this right now, I guess I've just been thinking about
hands lately. Christ loved us enough to take on the Atonement, all of
our sufferings: Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically. He loved
us enough to allow His hands to be pierced, for us. And that is the kind
of love that He asks us to have for each other. To really learn to have
Charity. Love for God, love for others, love for ourselves. But as
President Slaughter, and Sharlan, told me once, more
specifically, Charity is God's love for us.
Man, I just have so many thoughts running around in my head, so many things I've learned. Que Mas?
Oh
yeah, fingerprints all over. We've started to dissect our ward rosters,
probably about 2/3 of our members are not active, and probably half of
those are part member families. Oh yeah, and our area is huge. Sister
Rodriguez has struggled with this area the three months she has been
here because she hasn't been able to get a grip on it. There's just a
lot of it. And it's not very organized or sorted out into understandable
information. So who get's sent here? Me. Figures. Mostly missionaries
have just gone out and knocked and contacted. But we're moving away from
the culture of that as a whole. Most of those people that I saw
Pleasanton baptize before are now inactive, or missing. Sister Rodriguez
and I have high goals and high hopes for this area :)
Hahaha I've also been helping Sister Rodriguez kick the
use of the word "Freaking." She's learning English, bless her heart and
I explained one night what it was a euphemism for and she was a little
mortified that she had been using it. We all learn knew things haha :)
We've also attacked our area book. We've actually
ordered new ones because there are parts missing from them. And, there
are probably well over 1000 people to find and recontact in there. It's
massive, and a headache to sift through. We had so spend some time just
figuring out where some of these people lived because towns hadn't been
written down, and that makes it difficult because we cover about 10
small towns. When all is said and done, it will be a beautiful thing. It
was really interesting to go through the teaching records and read about
people, and then to feel the Spirit to know whether or not we needed
to put them at the top of our list to visit. Really interesting.
We also met with our Ward Mission Leader on Wednesday
to talk about things. Turns out he is the dad of some of the YSA members
I worked with in Palo Alto, small world. He was all excited to go home
and tell his kids that he had their missionary in their family ward. He
gleaned a lot from Elder Bednar's visit, and has a new perspective on
how things should go. We also got to go to Branch council on Sunday (PS,
I have six hours of church. I have had four hours before, but six?
Wheeee), it was fabulous! The stake is going to implement more aspects
from Hastening the Work because they received a letter from Elder Scott
and Elder Perry. That'll get ya going. We're meeting again next Sunday
with ideas for a Ward Mission Plan! THIS IS SO EXCITING! They mentioned a
lot of things that they would need that Sister Rodriguez and I had
actually already been working on. For Danika one more time: HUZZZAH!
Inspiration.
Well Family, I hope that's all. I've been learning a lot this week and am excited to keep soaking it up :)
Love,
La Hermana Montgomery
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