Flashbacks, Racing, and Mini Miracles :)

Hey everyone :) we had another great week in Phelan!

It was full of miracles and it was just really cool to see how the spirit has been guiding us here.

I truly believe that the Lord has been shaping me my whole mission so i could come and help the work here. And the work here is really hastening so im excited to be a part of it :)

It was also fun this week because I got to see a lot of people i have previously served with, members and missionaries. On Tuesday sister Haven's and I had to go into Hesperia and get our tire fixed and while there i ran into Sister Johnson and some other people that i have served with. Then on Wednesday I got to go back to Mesa Linda for exchanges! It was sooo cool to be back almost a year later. I didn't think much would have changed, but it felt like a lot had. It was really fun to be able to drive down the streets and just think things like "Oh that's where we met so and so" and "this is where we would ride our bikes" and things like that. But the best part was being able to go back and see some of the people i had taught and be able to introduce them to the missionaries now. I was surprised by how many of the people actually remembered me and how they felt like we were still friends. It was exciting because i think it was a little taste of what doing missionary work at home will be like. Basically it was awesome!

Like i said though this week was FULL of miracles. 

Some were small things like we were able to find a house or that we were able to get a hold of people, but there were big ones too. One of which is that our investigator Quit smoking, and drinking Alcohol and Coffee! It was a HUGE step for her, but its so exciting to see how much happier she is and how much more the spirit is with her. I love her, and it was fun this week, sister Haven's and i were talking and its just amazing to see how the people you teach just become part of your family. 

Another Miracle we saw was that we were able to stop by a less active member's house that sister Havens had never tried and when we went to his home, his Mother-in-law answered the door. We talked to her for little bit and after a few minutes were strongly prompted that we needed to testify of God's love for her. We could then tell that she was fighting back tears and we told her that God had sent us to her son's house that day to tell her that god loved her. She then told us that the night before she had prayed for God to show her a sign that he was mindful of her. GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS!!!

To go along with that statement, the last miracle i will tell you about is that God answered Our prayers this week. Of course we always pray to be able to follow the spirit, but we made sure this week that we specifically prayed to find new people to teach. After our first day of these prayers, Sister Havens and I found a less active member who requested to go through the lessons with us. We were pumped, but we had been wanting to find a new investigator. So after discussion we realized we needed to pray specifically needed investigators to teach. That Day God lead us to 2 new people we will hopefully start teaching :) again...Gad answers our prayers :)

I was going to end on that miracle, but i think it needs to be noted that another miracle happened this week. One of the Redd boys finally got married! I think that was the biggest miracle of all ;) Congratulations Taylor and Catherine!

Lastly this Saturday was Sister Haven's Birthday, and in celebration we did a service project at a place called El Mirage. Its this HUMUNGO dried lake bed, so we from 7-12 were digging up plants our there. It was really cool though because they use the lake bed for all kinda of stuff (land car racing, parasail car things, flying planes, pretty much anything you could think of) and we got to see a lot of it. The best part though was that they let us drive our cars down there and our zone leaders let us go as fast as we wanted! haha I dont know if thats okay, but it was SUPER fun! 

Anyways it was a great week!

I love you all, thank you for everything :)

Sister Becca Redd

ps. i found my camera :)

and will upload a picture or two of what phelan looks like :)

If they upload in the right order, the first is one of what the dried lake bed looks like a bad road in Phelan, then what the good roads in Phelan are like :)

sorry all the pictures are just of dirt...that's all that's our here :)

Popped tires, Balloon Animals and Confrontation

Hey everyone!

so it was kind of a crazy week here. 

I dont even know where to begin! 

I will start by just saying thank you to everyone who wrote me last week!! you guys are the best and it was so good to hear from everyone :)

I don't want to go into a TON of detail...but i will explain the headline (? not sure if thats what its called) to my email.

Sister Havens and i had a super interesting lesson on Tuesday night, we were able to meet with a less active member and we wanted to talk to her about how we are able to be examples to our families, and how sometimes if we want others to change, we need to be the one they can look to. I think this hit home because she then proceeded to yell at us, and she is a scary lady. I started to apologize and tell her we weren't trying to make her feel bad, and she lightened up a little after that....but i think we almost got kicked out of her home. And just to be clear, i swear we were not being rude at all. we just read a quote to her that says something like "everything that happens in the conversion process must happen to you before it can happen to them- everything". She just didn't take it well... BUT it was an exciting day haha.

Also this week in Phelan a girl from the local high school passed away in a car accident. Since it's such a little town, almost the whole ward knew her and is struggling because of it. Sister havens and i weren't sure what we could do for the families we knew that were affected by it because most of them didn't want to talk about it. BUT sister Haven's had a balloon animal kit so we made a ton of balloon animals and delivered them to the youth in the ward. It was pretty fun, and they told us the really appreciated them, especially when they had to try to guess what the animals were haha. 

Our investigators are doing great! we've faced a few rocky spots with them this week, but Cheryl has committed to quitting drinking and smoking! so we are pretty excited :) It is so cool to see how the spirit tells people what they need to do. We hadn't even taught the Word of Wisdom yet when she told us, and its just a huge testimony to me that the Word of wisdom truly is a commandment of God, and thats how she already knew that she needed to quit :)

Now for the Popped tire... SO this week while driving down the roads of phelan, sister Haven's and i made a wrong turn. We thought we were on a road.....But it wsn't untill about 15 minutes of driving down this path that we realized that it was NOT a road but actually a four wheeling path... And that we were stuck in the desert. After some unintentional off roading we were able to get the car out...but one of our tires was hissing. So we rushed home and looked at the tire. Turns out a stick pierced the side of the tire, right where the tread and the wall meet. SO we got to change a tire this week.

I think that is about it for this week.

It was crazy, but it was really great.

Thank you for all of your prayers and support :) i love and miss you guys!

Sister Becca Redd

Fwd: picture from Sister Haskins

This is what happens when you eat a 4 year olds birthday cake...followed by hysterical laughter and your ward members thinking you're crazy :)

im Phelan good ;)

So this week was great!

So last week i didn't really have time to tell you about my companion. Plus i didn't really know her yet. so I thought i'd let you know now. Her name is sister Havens, and guess what? she is from Woodbridge Virginia! what are the odds of 2 companions being from Virginia? But she is super crazy and has a HUGE love for the gospel and so we have had a great week so far :)

I would go through my whole week... but i dont have all the time i usually do since yesterday was a holiday. So i wil just tell you a little about the town here and the people here.

So Phelan is AWESOME! i think the most similar town i have been to is Kamas Utah..Expect that it's in the desert so its a little hotter in the summer. All but i think 2 roads are dirt and SUPER bumpy, so we get a jeep :) It feels good to be driving one again and make me feel a little bit more like myself. It also makes for some interesting times, especially since half of the roads aren't labeled and there isn't a map of them haha. Thankfully s. Havens usually knows where we are going. One day this week we accidentally drove down a wash for about 10 minutes thinking it was a road. It was pretty funny. 

Anyways its a super small town and EVERY one knows about the church here. Which is either really great or really bad. The people either love the missionaries or strongly dislike us, but the the people that do like us are great and have really been prepared by the lord to except the gospel.

We have 3 amazing investigators! One of which after the first lesson read all the way to Jacob in the Book of Mormon and committed  herself to stop smoking! it was great :)

As for other fun things this week...

I held an 8 foot snake (about 4 inches in diameter)

gave a sweet training on being consecrated to the lord.

Went to a 4 year old's birthday and taught his nonmember great-grandmother,

drove up a mountain....

i cant think of anything else... but it was a great week!

sadly....i have either misplaced or had my camera stolen...so i don't have pictures for this week.

anyways thank you sooo much for the emails this week!

you all are great!

i love and miss you :)

Sister Becca Redd

P.s. we don't have a mail box here in Phelan. Or a P.o. box. but our mission office didn't know that until yesterday. sorry!

Okay everyone, I only have about 20 minutes. But this last week was so fun!

And today was transfers so its been nuts. 

I'll start with the fact that i got transferred! and Released from leadership!

haha finally in my 3rd area! but...only still only my 2nd zone. haha I am back in the desert in a city called Phelan. It is even more in the middle of no where then Victorville. Its right on the mountains though so its kinda nice to be somewhere sort of colder, i was getting a little tired of 100 degree weather in October haha.

Anyways! 

Tuesday was great We had our district meeting, but our district leader left this transfer, so for his final district meeting he brought a ton of tacos, we watched a movie about Joseph smith and then had a testimony meeting, it was awesome! Then we had the most amazing lesson EVER! this girl Dulce is so cool, we were able to teach her the plan of salvation this week and as we were teaching her she would ask questions and they were the best questions ever! she would ask about things and we would just have to tell her to flip the page of the pamphlet because the answers were right there! it was awesome and it was the strongest i had felt the spirit in a long time. It so amazing!

On Wednesday all the missionaries in the Valley got together at our mission office and watched "Meet the Mormons" and it was so good! I dont know if you all were playing on seeing it, but you should! It is soo funny. We were all laughing so hard. And it in part was probably because none of us have watched a real movie in a long time, but mostly its just a great movie. Plus the people that the movie follows are really incredible, so you should all go see it. And if you can take friends :)

Thursday was kinda crazy we set up our booth at the local college, and it was good, a crazy man talked to us for like 30 minutes and it was super hot, but it was fun still. I like being able to be somewhere were we can talk to a ton of people all at once :) Oh and after the elders we serve with stole our keys and went into a lesson at the institute building! so we were freaking out for like 15 minutes before we realized it was probably them. Then we sent the Institute director into their lesson to get them from them, it was pretty funny.

Friday we did an AWESOME chalk drawing of the plan of salvation in a park with some of the other missionaries in our zone. It was so cool, it had the temple included and scripture references. Also it had a man sitting on the terrestrial kingdom (the moon) with a little fishing pole and everything. SO sick! and then it turning into a little chalk fight haha we all thought for some reason it would be a good idea to wear black and we all ended up throwing chalk at each other. It was really fun!

Saturday and Sunday were conference!!!! man i LOVE conference :) it was so nice to be able to sit down and listen to it all. I loved all the talks, but especially loved Jorg Klebinglat's talk. I just loved the question he asked. If you had an interview with Christ in 1 minute, would you feel prepared for it? or something like that. I thought it was really interesting to think about. And i realized that there are always things i could be improving on! haha but that's what all the other talks were for :) to show us where we can improve and show us how. That's why conference is the BEST!

Also on Sunday me and my companion and our roommates went to lunch at this Tongan family's house. I don't think I've ever eaten more in my live! haha it was sooo good. But i was stuffed and it made it particularly hard to watch the next session of conference with out falling asleep :)

Anyway i love and miss you all!

sorry i don't have pictures with week :( they're all on sister Price's camera, so i will get them to you next week.

Love and miss you all!

Sister Rebecca Redd