Friday, January 29, 2016

Muriendo de frio!

January 25, 2016
Hello (:


This past weekend, since I last wrote, was good! 

Firstly, we did an activity in our ward where we went to visit menos activos. Ironically, a lot of the members that showed up to help us were menos activos... probably didn't want us to have to visit them (: One of our investigators even came to help us out! And it just so happened that one of the menos activos on the list that he had was his uncle! Unfortunately, his uncle passed away 9 years ago (part of the point of the activity was to clean the ward lists)... but it was pretty cool to discover that his uncle was a member of the church! 

Also... we'd been "muriendo de frio" (dying of cold) but it's started to get warm again. These past couple weeks we've been bundling up with our tights and coats (I wore the coat I said I'd never wear here...) It hasn't even been that cold... maybe like 50 degrees, but that's freezing in comparison to the consistent 70-80 degrees that we have! 

But we've been happy. We've found some cool people and we've put out a lot of goals for baptism. So hopefully some of these people will progress! We took a family to church yesterday and they were so happy because they have been so worried about their 13 year old son having good friends and he met so many nice kids and the amazing members here fellowshipped them so well and invited him to hang out with them and play soccer tomorrow!!! Ahhh if the missionaries bring people to church in our home ward, don't forget to fellowship them! Seriously, it makes all the difference. If people feel comfortable and happy, they can feel the spirit way better than if they feel lonely. But after that the dad told us that they were going to be at church every 8 days ((: Weird Spanish thing that they do, "every 8 days" is the most common way to say weekly, and every 15 days is biweekly. Strange, huh?

I've started teaching English classes here! One thing that I like to do is sing a hymn or primary song in English. I really like English classes because they attract people that might say no to us initially, as well as to the invitation to come to church, and yet, once they are inside we pray and sing a hymn, which totally brings the spirit and gets them interested in the message we share. On Saturday we sang "I Am a Child of God". I can't even describe how special it is to hear people sing that song. I appreciate the words of that song so much more now. I really have a testimony that we are all children of God. If we remember that always, it really changes how we treat people. 

Love you all! Have a great week!

Hermana Wolferts

The "Salt Lake City" of Mexico City

January 22,  2016
Hello!!!!

Wow.... It's been a while since I updated you all on everything! Things have just been crazy busy here... but crazy good!

My companion is Hermana Llaguarima! She is just amazing! We have seen some really cool things happen in this area together.

We learned some pretty cool lessons this week. Firstly, we watched a worldwide missionary broadcast entitled "teach repentance and baptize converts." I LOVED it. The point was that we need to teach repentance better and that repentance is critical. It was a good reminder because sometimes we teach like: HAVE FAITH (repent) and BE BAPTIZED!!!! And we don't really focus on the fact that repentance is essential before baptism and that repentance is a complete change of heart. It also made me think about my own repentance habits. Repentance is more than confessing our sins to our Heavenly Father. We have to change our behavior and our heart too.

We also learned that the Lord's will is what really counts. A lot of times when I think of taking the Lord's will into consideration, I think of those moments when I want to find people to teach or I want someone to get baptized, and it doesn't happen either because of the agency of other people or because it wasn't the Lord's will. But this week I learned that this works the other way too. My comp and I had decided to drop an investigator that didn't seem to be progressing. WE decided that it wasn't his time. But then this investigator sought us out this week and told us about some of the changes he's made in his life and how he is going to start coming to church every week. We were so humbled as we realized that we neglected to even pray about the decision to stop teaching him. Who were WE to decide that he wasn't going to progress without even consulting the Lord? With this story in mind I extend to you the invitation to invite people to hear the gospel and to pray about who is ready. I see SO many people who tell us that none of their friends will want to listen, and then we contact their friends and they accept us. It's not about what we think. The Lord is preparing EVERYONE.

Hermana Llaguarima and I set up an activity for the sisters where we focused on the positive things in our areas and in our companions. There is a lot of power in recognizing the positive and ignoring the negative. To prepare for this activity, Hermana L. and I looked for the good things in our ward and in our area. We really are blessed to be in a strong ward that wants to work. We decided that our ward was the "Salt Lake" of the stake and this zone and that we are blessed to work here. And it's not because this ward is perfect. I can tell you that it is nothing like good old Mountain Vistas (oh how I love our home ward). But with a positive perspective and by focusing on the blessings we have, we have become so happy and excited to work here. So whatever your challenge is now, ignore all the negative things and see only the positives. The same with people. In the mission, you don't want to be the comp who always criticizes, and it's not effective to do so. Miracles start to happen when you complement your companion. When you tell your comp that you love how they contact, they want to contact more. When you tell them how great they taught a part of a lesson, they have more confidence. The same thing applies at home, I'm sure (:

I hope you know that I have a testimony of this church and of this work. I was reading in Preach my Gospel and a certain part really stuck out to me. It said that the purpose of a missionary isn't to just baptize to have more members in the church or even to help people live better lives, but to help people to make it to the celestial kingdom. No one else can give that to people but us. No other religion, no other self help program... this gospel is the ONLY way. Wow... how that makes me want to talk to everyone. Missionary work is love. I feel so grateful to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord in this great work. This church is true. The Book of Mormon is true. I see it change lives in fast motion here in the field as people begin to read it for the first time. 

Well... we have to head out and save some souls (: I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Aubriana Wolferts


Wednesday, January 6, 2016

families can be together forever...

January 4, 2016
Hi Family!

So, as promised, I need to update you a bit on last week! I got to see a family that I had been working with be baptized! The dad was baptized on Saturday, and he received the priesthood and then baptized his son, niece, and sister on Sunday!

The coolest thing was that we didn't expect the sister to get baptized. She's had a testimony for a while now, but she hasn't wanted to get baptized because her parents have both passed away and were Catholic, and she felt like she would be betraying them. 

Well, on Saturday, she brought her daughter in for her baptisimal interview. During the interview, we were sitting with this sister, teaching her a little and talking about the baptism. She, once again, said that she wanted to get baptized and that her daughter really wanted her to get baptized too. She doesn't like to feel super pressured, but I felt prompted to talk about when she wanted to get baptized and how she could be an example to her daughter. At first she said that she wanted to do it eventually, but she still didn't know when. Then we talked about the importance of goals and not waiting to make these covenants. Then she said maybe the next week. I was actually super happy with that because I thought she would want to wait longer, so I settled down and said okay. But about 5 minutes later, she said "actually, tomorrow is better. I want to be baptized with my daughter and be an example to her." So we sent her into an interview about 15 minutes later, and she was baptized the next day!

Everything went pretty perfectly.... except we had to bucket out the water of the font for the baptism on Saturday (it wasn't draining fast enough) to try to fill it with water a little bit warmer... but as usual, the warm water is super tempermental. So it was pretty much freezing. We got it a little warmer on Sunday, but it was still decidedly cold. All in all, it was beautiful! I've been lucky to see success with families. Seeing one person baptized is AMAZING, but seeing a whole family baptized and knowing that they will keep each other strong and be able to be together forever is SUPER AMAZING. 

This week I found out I have changes. I'm pretty much positive I'll be going to Nesa! It should be cool! With only 20 sisters, and a little information, we can usually guess pretty well what's going to happen. Every Saturday night before changes, we get a phone call that tells us if we will be transferred, and if we need to bring our suitcases with us or not. If we don't bring out suitcases, it means we are staying in the zone; if we do, we are leaving the zone. The next Sunday morning is always filled with phone calls to find out who has what... and then we make predictions. We even wrote all our predictions out. Haha, it's like march madness, but for the mission.

After 4 transfers and not being changed for nearly 6 months, in this area, it's pretty hard to leave some of the people. Sunday after church was filled with photo ops and tears, saying goodbye is hard! I've come to love the people here and it's going to be hard to leave them. But I'm excited to see a new part of the mission and find the people that the Lord is preparing over there. 

I love you all. Have a wonderful week! Remember that the church is true, and that prayers work. My comp and I were reflecting on all the prayers we've said that have been answered, and there have been many. I don't think I mentioned this, but the family that was baptized were former investigators of Hermana Wong's and mine. To see them decide to get baptized after all this time is a miracle and I can't tell you how many times I've prayed for them. Also, we saw a couple of less actives that we have prayed and prayed for that have become active again, including 2 families that have goals to be sealed. SOOO COOL. The gospel is not just about going to church, my friends. It is about making covenants that will last forever and getting to be together forever, There is nothing that makes a missionary happier than to hear that people want to get sealed!!!

Okay, I love you all so much (: Have a great week. 

Hermana Aubriana Wolferts


Hermana Lambert and I are fabulous :)


"change is good"

My comp bought me this shirt because I have changes, haha... (: