My Zone

Rancho Cucamonga B zone!

Fwd:

Back to Rancho :)

Hey Everyone!

SO i wrote you all about 3 days ago so i dont have much to day BUT
I wanted to update you all that i am back in RANCHO!

haha after some crazy moving arounds and working with some of the sisters I am back in rancho in the YSA ward :)
I was just in Chino Hills for a little while, but we had some really great experiences and in just a few days i loved the ward and the area. I will say the only down side was that it was brutely hot there, like 110 most days. One night we were walking up a hill to go to some guys house, it was about 8:45 and when we got back in the car we looked and it was 96 degrees still! I was also sad because the one week i was gone, it poured down raining and our whole zone went and played in the rain :( But the people were so kind and fun in Chino, so on tuesday when we called our mission president to see what was going on, i was a little sad when i heard that i as being transfered back to rancho. It was definitely bitter-sweet. I Love the sister i was with and i love chino hills, but rancho kind of feels like my second home now, and so i was sad, but super happy at the same time.

And the best news about coming back was that i got to go to the temple today!!!

I love going to the temple SO much! it is so peaceful, and you just learn so much :)

But thats about it.
It was great to hear from you all!

hope you are doing great

Sister Rebecca Redd

Becoming a Chino Champion for the Week

I dont even know where to start this week...

I guess first thing is first..I am in CHINO now :) haha 

So here is the story. Last Monday at the end of our Zone activity sister Price and I got a call from our mission president. He was talking to sister price so i could only hear half of the conversation. At first it was just a normal conversation but then i hear Sister price was telling him that we didn't have a dinner appointment. Then i was pretty excited because i thought he was going invite us to dinner or something...He did not. He asked us to come into his office so he could talk to us. 

I won't lie i was pretty nervous but on the drive over there Sister Price and I couldn't figure out what he could possible be mad about. Turns out, 2 sisters in Chino were really struggling and so he asked me to come down to chino for a week and work with one of them :)

So..I am in chino. For at least a week, maybe until the transfer is over, or maybe longer. We don't know yet haha but it has been fun!

So this week was crazy and full of packing and unpacking and then repacking as my mission president tried to figure out what exactly was going to happen. But once i got down to this ward it has been great. We have been working hard and we have already seen miracle in short time that i've been here. One in particular was that we were able to find a new family to teach, which is AWESOME! because this area is a little bit harder to find investigators then most. And the Dad of the family is so prepared to hear the gospel. In our first conversation we had he told us about how he was looking for a church with a few specific things. Two of where that he wants a family oriented church and a church that believes that our bodies are temples. I was pretty sad to leave the Deer Creek ward with out much notice, and i still kind of hope i can go back and finish the transfer there, but it has been so amazing to see the confirmation from God that i needed to be here this week.

I love being a missionary, and i love seeing the miracles that i know still happen.

I know that God loves each of us, and that he has a plan for each of us. And i am so glad that i get to play a role in the plan he has for other people.

I miss you all, 

Sister Rebecca Redd

Fwd: FLORIDA

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rebecca Redd <rebecca.redd@myldsmail.net>
Date: Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 1:58 PM
Subject: Re: FLORIDA
To: Michelle Lima <michelle.lima390@yahoo.com>

a little somethin somethin from the homies ;)

 

Hey Everyone!

I don't have a lot this week, haha it was just another week of missionary work :) But it was great haha. The usual in missionary work is still awesome.

 

I wrote on Tuesday so I will start with Wednesday, just a quick story.

I was on exchanges with a sister and the day had been going kind of rough, and we didn't really know who we should go visit next, so we decided to walk around a neighborhood for a few minutes and talk to people in the street. So we are walking around, and we turn a corner and there is a HUGE huskie standing in the street, and the thing looked like it was gonna kill us. I looked over at sister bell and said "either this dog is gonna kill us or he's gonna be super nice" we then took a step closer and the dog growled a little at us. We took another step and then he walked right over to us and let us pet him, But right when we went to pet him another huge dog started barking and running at and we freaked out. It was pretty funny and a little scary cause the dogs (There ended up being 3 that ran out) looked like they wanted to eat us, But right after they ran out so their owner and we got to talk to the lady for about 20 minutes about what we do as missionaries, and the sisters are going back to talk to her more this week :)

 

On Thursday Sister Price and I gave a training in our Missionary Leadership Council, and it went really well :) I was so nervous though haha. I thought my ability to speak in front of people would get better on my mission, but it definitely has not. I still get super nervous in front of big groups of people.

 

The rest of the week was pretty average, just visiting people and teaching them, it was great!

 

Since my email is so short this week i'll add really quickly a quote from a talk that has really stuck with me this week..

actually there were a few things I really liked from the talk, If you have time, you should read it but if you don't, here are a few highlights...

 

"everything Heavenly Father does is ultimately for our benefit, even if we cannot understand why. And since God's thoughts and ways are higher than ours, we need to elevate our lives to be more in harmony with His plan for us.

 

"The Lord has placed currents of divine influence in your life that will lead you along the individual plan He would have you fulfill here on earth. Seek through the Spirit to identify it and carefully follow that direction that the Lord has put in your life. Align yourself with it. Choose, willingly, to exercise your agency to follow it."

 

 "How we choose to respond to these experiences determines, in a large part, our happiness. And if we spend our lives wondering while we wander, we may miss out on wonderful opportunities for spiritual growth.

 

 "Often the deep valleys of our present will be understood only by looking back on them from the mountains of our future experience. Often we can't see the Lord's hand in our lives until long after trials have passed. Often the most difficult times of our lives are essential building blocks that form the foundation of our character and pave the way to future opportunity, understanding, and happiness."

 

haha okay I think i gave you half of the talk right there... but I just really liked the whole thing. I feel like I have really come to understand that more and more lately. We don't always understand why things happen the way they do, but if we trust the lord, and have the faith that we are in his watchful care, then we can be happy no matter what is happening. I think that has been my favorite thing I have been able to teach people on my mission. That no matter what is happening in life, that when we are aligned with God's will, we can be happier.

I love and miss you all so much!

Sister Rebecca Redd

Another week in Rancho.. haha I am starting to think that my mission president just puts me in an area and forgets about me. This is only my second area, and i have spend 5 transfers in both haha. It was a great week though, apparently transfer 5 is the lucky one, because this week was great!

Nothing too exciting happened until Wednesday, so ill start there.

First thing Wednesday morning, i woke up and got going, but it was really weird because Sister Price didn''t get up. I worked out in the living room and started getting ready and she  still wasn't getting up, about 20 minutes into studies she jumped up and threw up in the bathroom. Apparently she had gotten some kind of food poisoning, but after that she felt great and then started the day. Normally i wouldn't include this but it was super cool because i pushed all of our plans back in the day, which caused us to drop some things off to the institute director at the exact time that 6 non-members were showing up to the institute building! it was so awesome, sister price and i split up in the room, and the institute director and i got to talk to this girl for like 45 minutes about how God answers prayers, and sister Price talked to a guy about the gospel in general. But we got to talk to them all and those 2 of them ended up being interested in learning more!  it was awesome :)

On Thursday Sister Price and got to teach one of our investigators that we met the day before, His name is Xavier, he is a little quirky, haha but he is pretty cool. He would make a good missionary thought because he is extremely comfortable with LONG silent pauses.. We would ask him a question and he would stop, wait a minute, turn and stare the window, then wait some more, THEN answer the question..It was great. We also had a few other lessons, but the next miracle was that we went to an institute class that night to try and meet some of the new kids in our ward, when randomly a non member showed up! He apparently had taken lessons before but said the missionaries stopped coming by and he didn't know why, so were going to start teaching him!

Friday and Saturday were a little slower but we met a few more awesome Potentials so we are pretty excited :)

Then on Sunday, we had church and everything, that was normal but after wards we went to go visit someone who lives way up on the mountain and sister Price and i stopped and took some awesome pictures while we were up there, ill make sure to send them :)

But that brings us to Monday, which was AWESOME! i love p-days that fall on holidays because they always seem to end up being really fun. First a few of the sisters all went shopping at goodwill and that is always really fun :) but then our zone went to the park and played soccer. The best part though was that 2 pastors interrupted our game and asked if the could barbecue for us! we of course said yes haha, and we spend the rest of the afternoon cooking and playing volleyball. It was awesome, the 2 people kept saying we were their adopted kids for the day since all of their kids were off in college :)

That was basically the week, it was awesome though, i wish i had more time to tell you all the crazy things that happened, but this is the best summary i could do :)
anyways, thanks for always writing and emailing me,
i love you all so much!

Sister Rebecca Redd