Springville 7th Ward Relief Society

  Heat Waves of Miracles ¡Mba'éichapa a todos! This week thankfully went by fast. After my long week last week I got worried but don't worry this week zoomed by. Lots of things happened so many miracles and so much sweat. Tuesday was a super good day. We got to have our first district as our new district. Some Elders were about thirty minutes late so that was fun. It was pouring rain this day. After district council we went and ate lunch with a member. There is a new thing here that I've eaten and it's so good. It's called (don't judge me it's in Portuguese) Fasção. Literally no idea how to spell that, but it is so good. It's beans and rice. Tastes way better than it sounds. The beans here in Paraguay don't really taste like the beans from the States but Fasção tastes super good. Wednesday my comp decided to have a huge allergy attack. We ended up going to lunch in the afternoon. Literally every ten seconds my comp sneezed during lunch. It was fairly...

  The work of the Lord marches on!!! The greatest joy of serving as missionaries is to get to see the change in a person’s countenance as they open their hearts to the gospel and gain a desire to live on the covenant path. We have had several wonderful experiences, but yesterday’s experience with the Coley family was the Lord’s masterpiece. As previously mentioned, Sister Coley has been inactive in the church for several decades. Her older children were baptized, but her younger children, ages 18 and 20, were not. When we first began trying to visit them, they were not interested in inviting us in to their home. One day while driving in their area, we decided to go and knock on the door. Sister Coley stepped outside and during a 45-minute visit on her front yard she tearfully shared her testimony of the gospel with us. With such a deep testimony, we asked her why she had been away from the church for so long. She said she had no excuse. We invited her to return and a few days later...

  Bautismos del Este ¡Hoooooooola a toooooooodos! This week was super long. Probably one of the longest weeks of my mission but it was still super good. To start off on Tuesday when I was still in Posta Leiva I got a message from one of our members that they wanted to have their sons baptims on Wednesday. So Tuesday night and Wednesday I was going pretty crazy trying to plan everything and fill up the font and by refreshments. Plan people to talk at the baptism. It was so crazy. We had the baptism of Nico and it was super awesome. They lost his membership records so it was a rebaptism but it was still a very nice and we had such a spiritual experience. Thursday morning we got transfer calls and I got news that I would be leaving Elder Villarreal and Posta Leiva and that I would be going to Ciudad Del Este! I really loved my time in Posta Leiva and I am sad to leave it so soon but I am happy for this new opportunity. Also I won't be sharing an area with Hermana Berg or Hermana Robin...

  HE'LL BE THERE FOR YOU   Helo helo it was a longggggh week but today I got a pumpkin frosty so all is well Last week was me and sister horsleys first full week of Proselyting since she got here and it was pretty exhausting. I bit the bullet with bikes and we made our way allllll the way from our house to our area 2.4 miles which doesnt seem bad but we were dogging light poles and cars and chickens and homeless people so it was a little rough and super sweaty. Nevertheless the Lord provides and we met Diane a very sweet lady who talked our ear off about every single religious things that has ever entered her brain. We had zero chance to tell her what we actually believe but she said we could come back after her 8 day work trip up in the mountains so woot. She was also one of the construction workers on the temple and had a couple questions about it.  Because we are on bikes it's kind of hard to navigate with Google maps so I was trying really hard to memorize the street ...

  Again, not a whole lot of time, but I learned this week to love first, then go teach and serve.  - Hermana Gardner 

  Black Bottom cupcakes exist in CA! YOU GUYS HAVE PERSONALITIES??   Hey howdy heh Familia! This was a blast of a week.  We had two Proselytizing days and we were able to get around somewhat well in our area between bikes and sharing cars. The people here in yuba city are amazing and it has been incredible to interact with lots of them. Even the ones that don't really like us are mostly nice.  One of the friends we are teaching told us that she would probably like to go back to the catholic church which was really hard to hear. We bore solid testimony of praying to learn the truth for yourself and she agreed and said she would try to come to church with us but instead made time to go to another church. We know she's in a good spot but needs some more time to learn.  We also have had some crazy referrals come our way and we have the huge blessing of working with numerous members that have decided to return back into the fold. Their stories are incredible and help...

  Entrevistas and Helado This week was great! We had interviews with President Botchway and he made us Ghanian food! Then some members brought ice cream for all of us, it was fire🔥  We had a training on finding using Facebook and since, Sister Acabal and I have been on the grind and have seen so many miracles! One cool moment was Manuel! So it all started when I posted an ad on a local group about free bibles. This one lady liked it and so I started a conversation with her. It turns out she lives in Cuba 🫣 but as we kept talking she told me about her son who lives in Portland! She asked if I could help him get to a church and I got his info. It turns out he lives in our area!! We called him and are going to meet up this week.  This week we met a super cool family! They have been prepared by the Lord! My spiritual thought and invite this week is to listen to one of the "Hear Him" videos from the apostles, you will gain greater insights! Love you all!

  Typhoon and Powerful Lessons ¡Holaaaaaaa a todos! ¡Ojalá ustedes están super bien! This week was another solid week here in Paraguay working in the Lord's vineyard. I am writing this quick so hopefully I can get all my thoughts in this email. This week was fairly slow just lots of finding and teaching some very solid lessons. On Thursday we had such a crazy storm that hit us and it was just pouring rain and there was so much rain and lighting honestly such a cool experience. That same day we had a very good lesson with Mateo and Celsa like always. Just little by little and a lot of patience. Then we had another lesson with a Mom and her twin daughters. We have been teaching them for a little bit. We have pretty much told them everything. I decided to be pretty clear in our lesson and explain authority and why the church was true. The spirit was so strong with me and I could just feel that what I was saying was true. Then they told us that they just aren't ready to be baptized...

  TEMPLO   Heloooooo friendooos and familioiooos  This week was filled with many sweet and tender moments that just made my heart so full and I have a greater testimony of the mission the Lord has called me to serve. I am so grateful for HIs timing and for the wonderful blessings that patience grants.  I was able to see SO MANY amazing people from my past three areas and it really has been so tender to see them and remember all the memories of my mission. Many of my reunions have been by chance of being in the right place at the right time and I am so grateful for the Lord's hand in my life.  Other than those sweet experiences serving in the temple has been a refining time for me to step back and truly see these people as children of God and fully welcome each and every one of them to the House of the Lord. In missionary work it is extremely easy to fall into the trap of numbers and immediate results when in reality those kind of successes are few and far betwee...

  I don't have a lot of time this week but here are some things I learned: ☆ Always choose faith over fear.  ☆ Love first, then go teach and serve.  ☆ The spirit will teach you all truth.  ☆ God loves his children. ☆ Juan gets super cold at church. ☆ God doesn't work in darkness.  I saw some huge miracles and tender mercies this week. My spiritual thought is an invitation for everyone to listen to the President Nelson talk "Revelation for the Church, Revelation for our Lives". I promise that the windows of heaven will be open as you read with real intent! Les quiero  🩷 hermana Gardner

  Body Pain and Knowledge Gained ¡Hola y Haupei a todos! I hope that you all have had an amazing week! I have had a pretty interesting one so let's get right into it! On Tuesday I was able to do exchanges with another Elder in my district who's name is Elder Décima and he's from Argentina. I've done exchanges with him before so it wasn't anything too crazy. It was fun though because he is still fairly new in the mission and it was nice to see his growth from last transfer to now. I went to Elder Décima's area and I got to get to know a ton of their recent converts. They are all super awesome and we were able to talk about preparing for the temple with so many of them so that's exciting. The next day I woke up in the apartment of Posta Ybycua (yeah that's the name of the area good luck pronouncing it) and I had a sore throat. It wasn't awful but still not fun. We went and worked and I was fine just with a little cough. The thing is though is the apart...

  Hello everyone, It’s good to be back. I apologize that you did not receive an email last week. We had a very busy few days and I simply did not have the time. So, I will catch you up with two weeks' worth of our wonderful experiences. One of the things we’re focusing on is trying to keep up physical strength and wellness. We joined the wellness center that is connected to the local hospital and we’ve become more diligent about exercising. It’s really a great gym that is pretty much designed for seniors. It’s about a three-minute drive and is so convenient. They have a wonderful lap pool that is entirely shallow. I’ve been swimming laps while Elder Hintze lifts weights. I was so proud of swimming 60 laps, thinking I had made a mile, only to find out that it was 70 laps in this pool! Oh well, I’ll keep working on it. I never really liked gyms before, but this one is filled with old people like us, so it’s not so intimidating! Our weekly Zoom mission devotional with all of the missi...

   FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD   HEloooo this week was long and crazy but I genuinely felt Heavenly Father's hand helping me up every day.  We have a super awesome ward and they go above and beyond to feed us every single night. I have never eaten so much food so consistently in my whole life. It also doesn't help that I got some sort of dizziness gross sickness that makes me nauseaus (or however you spell that). For some reason people think we are desperately starving and they make every effort to make sure we have more than enough food for dinner which is so awesome and generous just please can I have a baggie for the leftovers on my plate 😭😭😭 Mission life is exhausting yet fulfilling and all the weird aspects including comprimising between ward leadership about the way we do meetings are things I wouldn't give up for the world, especially because sooner or later I will have to leave it behind.  I can't honestly say that I have loved every moment of my mission but I...