Hey everyone!

First of all Happy holidays!

It blows my mind that its already that time of year. 

It might just be that missions make the time go faster, but i really feel like it sneeked up on me this year. 

But this week was awesome!

First off my new companion is Sister Nancy Huntington. She's from Provo Utah and she crazy, but SUPER FUN! i love her already!

We have just hit the ground running this week, she's got all this energy of a new missionary and i love it! 

Anyways! a few of the exciting things this week...

On Monday we were able to meet a really cool girl at the library named Mandy. She told us that she had just moved her from Glendora and that she had a friend that was LDS. she told us that she LOVED the church and actually almost got baptized, but decided to be a teenager instead. She was super nice and we told her to flag us down and say hi if she ever saw us around and that we would love to talk to her sometime. THEN on Tuesday a less active family in our ward gave us a referral. They weren't sure of the address so they gave us some crazy directions...that lead us to the wrong house. We weren't sure what to do and it was freezing outside. So we were about to just leave when we decided to try on street over. We went and it was Mandy's house! We were about to talk to her and she is now considering coming to church :) It was super cool!

Also Cheryl our other investigator this week reset her baptismal date!

And she seems pretty committed to it this time. She called and told us we needed to see her everyday and that she already told her family about her baptism date. SO things are looking good for her!

Umm the only other things i can think of was that i BIFFED it HARD while i was running the other morning. I wasn't quite awake and tripped over a rock and just slide like 3ish feet on the dirt road...it was a little funny but now my hands and knees are a little torn up.

Also we went to go visit another referral we had (a little 80ish year old lady) and she started showing us how she makes home made teddy bears. She gave us each one and they are super cool. A little creepy, but mostly cool.

Anyways i will try and send some pictures next week.

BUT i  love and miss you all :)

I hope you all have a great week.

Love, Sister Becca Redd

Alright everyone...

Were getting down to the last little bit of my mission.

Sister Havens (current companion) Sister Cook and Sister Price (past comps.) all went home today. I also saw sister Cobabe (past comp) who goes home in 6 weeks and it was crazy to realize 1) that all my friends are ending their missions and 2) that I'm not far behind them!

Its crazy to think about...so i kind of avoid it haha, but its been so awesome to see the miracles that God is sending us :)

Oh also for the record. I will be staying in Phelan for the next transfer and training a new missionary :) Im nervous, but excited!

So the week started a little rough.. Sister Havens thought i'd be a good idea to promise God that she would stay focused her last week no matter what happened...So naturally all of our appointments fell though haha. But by Wednesday we were up and going again.

Friday was the BEST though. We had the opportunity to have a Zone Conference with Elder Golden who is a member of the 1st Quorum of the 70. I am slowly realizing that some of the people getting these don't know what that is (sorry it took me 15 months...) but basically he is someone who works directly under the Apostles.....and since being on my mission I've realize that i don't know what words are common vocabulary anymore....so Apostles are like Peter, James, and John from the bible. (also sometimes called Disciples) If that didn't clear it up i strongly recommend looking at LDS.ORG for a better definition.

ANYWAYS...He had like a 6 hour meeting where he just taught us and we were able to ask questions...and let me tell you...he was awesome!

I'll share a few thoughts that really stood out to me.

1) he is particularly fond of a phase Dad used to like when we were growing up...

 "you know what you do when you assume....you make and ass out of u and me" I thought this was pretty funny coming from a servant of the Lord, but he then talked about how we can never assume who will except the gospel or how people will react, if we do, not only do we hinder their progression, but we hinder our own.

2) When you are being obedient to the Lord, you can always trust the first impression you receive, the first one will be from the lord, and the second one will be from the adversary. I was able to really ponder this the following days, and realize how often i doubt myself, and the promptings i receive. So I've been working on my obedience and my trust in the spirit. And in the few times i have done this so far, amazing things have happened. We were able to have a great lesson about the importance of church attendance because i trusted in my first prompting to go see an investigator who had told us not to visit her for a while.

3) When we truly work our hardest, we will not need to say that we tried our best, because we will see success. This is God's work and it will succeed as long as will do what he has asked. I thought that was a super cool thought. and just made me want to work even harder then i am.

Basically it was just amazing to see how down to earth he is and see him talk about the gospel. the spirit was really strong.

Pretty much that was the highlights of the week.

I love hearing from you all!

i hope you all have a good week :)

thanks for always telling me the miracles you guys see in your days. I think its awesome to hear.

I love you,

Sister Becca Redd

Another week in Phelan :) 

Monday after we emailed sister Havens and i drove up into wrightwood (the neighboring town that's way up in the mountains) to go look at the snow. It was really fun. We drove up there and then just sat of the side of this SUPER steep part of the mountain and looked at everything. Its so beautiful up there :) Then we rushed home and had some hot chocolate (its was like 30 degrees up there) and soup while watching a church movie. Classic missionary day :)

As for the rest of the week we had some cool experiences with teaching. It has been awesome serving in this area because i feel like the people are so ready for the gospel here. I love it!

We had the chance to go back to a LA house this week. We had met his mother in law who is not a member a week or 2 ago, and had a really cool experience with her and being able to tell her that God loves her. This time though we were able to go and meet his wife. We sat down and talked to her about God's love and direction and just testify that God has given us the path back to him by giving us his Church on the Earth today. It was awesome and we're going to start teaching her :)

We had a some awesome lessons in addition to that this week. We had a lot of times were we were really unsure of what to teach people and when we started talking we were able to see that God had prompted us with exactly what those people needed at this time. 

I had a few awesome experience this week of just little miracles too, things like our keys were stuck in a door and we were trying to get them out for 30 minutes and then we prayed and they came right out :) just little tender mercies from God. And Thanks dad for your thoughts on prayers! i love that God and put us all on the same page and have you thinking about the importance of prayers at the same time i am.

Anyways that was this week. It's been a little hectic with getting sister Havens ready to go home but it has been good :)

I love you all SOOOO much!!

Sister Becca Redd

100 Day Countdown Begins!

So This week was great :)

Its been kind of crazy.. Sister Havens goes home in 2 weeks and so that has put a sense of urgency into everything we do. She is excited but nervous to go home, and just hearing her talk about it is making me realize how fast my time her is going by...

But it was a GREAT week, kind of a roller coaster with some pf the people we are teaching but its been good, even with all of that :)

Okay im going to start from the beginning of the week because monday was sooo Awesome! We had a lesson with a less active set up and when we got to his house the family that he is living with uscame out and were talking with us. We have been teaching the Grandma of the Family about the Family Search website and she came out to show us some of the work that she had done so far. She was so excited to show us and gave us the PERFECT opportunity to testify of the blessing we enjoy of having eternal families. The spirit was so strong and they had a lot of questions. We answered them and sister Havens invited them to sit in for our lesson. He had a powerful lesson about the Restoration of the Gospel, and they are both excited to learn more. It was GREAT!

I also wanted to update you all on the lady that almost kicked us out of her house the other day. We went back to see her this week, and let me tell you, God still performs miracles today. We went back and just talked to her for a while and she told us that she had decided to come back to church! She completely did a 180 and is all excited about coming and being an example to her family. It was a HUGE testimony to me that God can soften people's hearts as we sincerely pray for them and follow His direction :)

We had a lot of other miracles with the people we are teaching, and a couple sad moments where a few people decided they didnt want to learn anymore...But God always makes up for the disappointments so I know good things are coming our way :)

We also had the Chance to have President Interviews where is got to sit down one on one with my mission president, and he is an awesome man. The spirit is so strong when he speaks...plus he's pretty funny, so i always enjoy our interviews. 

Umm our ward also had a super fun Halloween party, sister Havens and I got to help set up for it. They had us stuff balloons with candy..and its a LOT harder then it sounds, our fingers were so sore after 2 hours of it.

BUT the best part of this week.....

1) Evan our investigator was baptized this week

and 2) one of my investigators from Mesa Linda, Sean, was baptized.

It is always great to see people make those promises with the Lord, but is was especially exciting to go back and see sean be baptized. He is from a part member family, and it was so cool to see how happy is family was. They thanked me for being able to plant the seed in his heart to accept the gospel, and it was just soo exciting to see how much happier the gospel has made him in the last year alone.

Anyways it was a great week. 

I love hearing from you all :)

Thank you for the emails and sending the pictures :)

Love,

Sister Becca Redd

p.s. happy Birthday Lance!