11/18/13

Dear Family,

This week has been fun and uplifting. We have 3 new investigators this week, Vic, Alicia, and Emily. Vic is a guy we found as we were walking on Tuesday. We went back and taught him the Restoration on Friday, He read and seems interested in learning more. Alicia is a referral we got from a lady in our ward, well she told us about Alicias husband and so we went to find their house, we had a general idea. We talked to Alicia and she was sick but told us to come back on Sunday. So yesterday we met with her. She is from the Philipines and knows the two sisters in our ward who are Fillipino, and knew they were Mormon, she didn't know we were Mormon at first. We talk about how God is our loving Heavenly Father and that he wants us to live with Him forever and then we taught the Plan of Salvation. We pull out our pamphlet, and she was like "I have one of those somewhere!" so She has been introduced to the church, but we didn't even know it. She loved what we taught her. It was cool to think that we went over to meet them, and they had already been introduced to the Gospel. I don't know the whole background but I think that she is ready now to hear more. Emily is 17 and her sister just joined the Church in March. Right now she just wants to learn more, but has seemed to really like it. We had a potential investigator named Meto, we set up an appointment and went over there on Sat, her mom said that "she's 15 and doesn't study with Mormons". That was so sad for us. When we asked Meto if we could teach her, she said yes right away.. One day she will be able to learn. On Thursday we were in Joshua Tree and we got to our appointment early so we decided to walk around the area for a few minutes. We saw an old man walking his dog and so we talked to him. anyways he was like I'm not really a religeous person... I asked him if he knew anyone who would benift from the message of Jesus Christ. He started telling us about how his neighbor could then goes on about how he's thought about learning and going to a Mormon Church.A lot of people think we are Jehovah's Witness out here, which is probably what he thought.. We were like "We're Mormnon!" Long story short haha he said he would be at church on Sunday. He didn't end up coming, but it was still a cool experience.

Saturday was the best day ever, besides not being able to meet with Meto. We had our mission conference at the mission office. It was so cool to have all of us there. It was good to see all of the missionaries I knew from the MTC, but the best part was the things that we learned. There were a lot of rumors about some big announcement, but there wasn't one. The purpose was to unite us as a mission. We talked a lot about our goals and what we can accomplish as a mission. Another thing that I loved was just keeping it simple. We have been challenged to teach 5 minute lessons and to keep it simple. The Spirit will be there as we teach simply, when we get complicated, the spirit leaves. It was a great reminder that we are teaching people not lessons. President Madsen, talked to us about how we are God's warriors and how he will fill our mouths Jer. 1:5-8. We may be young but we are powerful.  President Miskin,(cool story, some of the boys in my EFY group like 5 years ago are from Redlands and Yucipa and President Miskin is one of their dads.) talked about being obedient. There were so many cool stories shared. I learned a lot about what I can do better in this area right now. I am really excited for what is happening. There was so much more, but my notes are at home.. :(

I love you all and hope all is going well!

Love,

Sister Kellee Gardner

11/11/13

Dear Family,

So this week has been pretty good. I think last week I talked about Melinda coming to church. On monday we met with her and also on Friday. She is a lot more open than she was a month ago, which is good. I am excited for that. We also had the best Empinadas ever! Sister Hobbs is kinda famous for them, and I wish you could all have some!

Friday was really good too. We met with the Tomeks and Shaunte, she is moving to DHS which is sad but we let the Zone leaders know about that so they can hopefully teach her. Our lesson with Melinda went really well. It was the Plan of Salvation, and she really liked it. When we taught the Restoration, it didn't seem to make a lot of sense to her, but she said that this made sense. We went out walking in Joshua Tree, hoping to stop by and see Gina, who is interested, but her family is not so its hard to meet with her. She wasnt home when we got there, so we walked down the street to her neighbors who were outside, they weren't interested, so we walked around the block and knocked on a door up the street from her, no answer but then she called out to us, they were outside. Cree, who recently moved there but has been investigating for a while, just not ready to quit smoking. Hopefully we can keep teaching her and her family. After we saw her, we walked back to our car, and Gina came home, so we were able to talk to her! Her family wasnt there so we were able to talk for a bit, we would have probably taught a lesson, but we had an appointment to get to:( so that was awesome and perfect timing! We went to our apointment with a less active family. We had dinner with the Trammells and Betty and then we watched the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with them. Such a good movie. 

Saturday was Betty's Baptism. It was beautiful. She asked me to play the piano, we had asked someone to do that already so I just played the closing song, but I made the mistake of telling her I could play :D Anyways she invited a bunch of her friends and had 6 non members there. They all really enjoyed it, and one of them wants to come to one of our teaching appointments with Betty, so theres potential there.  On Saturday after the baptism we met with Lisa, who is a referral we got from someone my 2nd week here. We have set several appointments with her, but things have come up each time and we were wondering if she was even still interested. We almost dropped her, but we decided to drop by and see if we could set up an appointment or something. She's rarely there when we stop by, but she happened to be there and available so we talked to her for a while and she is interested. We set up an appointment for wednesday.

A lot of our appointments fell out this week,but we were able to find quite a few people. One of our less actives that we invited to come back to church last week was at church this week and has committed to be there each week. His son has been going to both family wards each week and is a great kid, and is doing some great missionary work, he had a friend at our appointment last night.

Things are going well here, we have a Mission Conference on Saturday, which should be really exciting. President Van Cott seems really excited for that.  Running out of time, but I might be coming back later today..

I love ya all

Sister Kellee Gardner

Spanish, A lizard and a good week 11-4-13

Dios es nuestro Padre Celestial. Nostros somos Sus hijos. Sister Davis and I decided to learn a couple of spanish phrases this week because we have a potential investigator, I don't know if I mentioned Mateo before, but he speaks very little english, probably as much Spanish as I know. So we go over to his house and our WML talks to him, which is awesome, but I understand about 2 words of 100. We have a Spanish PMG and we have found short little sentences that we can learn and say. It's been kind of fun. This past week went well.On Tuesday we met with a girl named Shauntae, who is friends with a less active family in our ward and they set up the appointment. It sounds like they want to get coming back to church and she is really interested, we met with her again on Friday. Betty is doing Amazing. She told us that some of her "friends" have been trying to discourage her from being baptized and she got up and walked away from them. She also invites a ton of people to come with her to church. They don't come, but she invites them. She ran into one of the ladies we taught awhile back, Melinda, at C&S and invited her to come to church, Melinda told her she had been and wasn't sure if she really wanted to learn more and make all those changes. She has heard a lot of negative things. Anyways Betty told her to decide for herself if it was something she wanted. Melinda came to church this week.. that was cool to hear how that all happened. So Thursday:Halloween, we went to the Trunk or Treat and passed out pass along cards, that was fun. Hopefully something will come of it one day. Quite a few non members came so who knows. Saturday we helped clean a members home. Funny story. We were cleaning out the fridge, Sis. Davis had been washing the drawers and I was drying. I saw this brown dry thing and I thought it was a grape vine or something. it was stuck in the front of the drawer so I start pulling it out and once it was out look up close and saw something that looked like a head. I drop it and look closer, it was a shriveled up dead lizard. Yeah, I touched that and pulled on it. I was only slightly disturbed:D I should have taken a picture, oh well.On Sunday we had a few less actives come, one potential investigator, Jay and our investigators. It was a really good day. Our Heavenly Father is truly mindful of us. I am constantly reminded of that, mostly because I constantly forget, but I know He loves each one of us.

I love all of you and I love getting letters and emails from you all, it strengthens me to hear from you! 

Mucho Love,

Sister Gardner

10-29-13

Transfers calls were today, both Sis. Davis and I are staying. Sis Davidson is going to Palm Desert, but Sis. Gonzalez is staying. I'm glad I get to stay for at least 6 more weeks. So this week has been pretty good. We met with Betty a couple of times at different members homes, she makes friends really easily so that is great. She is still on track for baptism on the 9th! On Tuesday we had a Mission conference. Elder Walker from the 70 came so we went down to Banning and met with about half of the Mission. It was SO GOOD. He talked about how we have all been called already-foreordained, but the goal is to be worthy of the call when it comes. He also talked to us about Alma 8 and how we can apply what Alma and Amulek did to our areas, that was pretty cool. He is an awesome man and I learned a lot. On Wednesday we had dinner  with Sister Hobbs, she invited some non members, we invited Betty and Sister Pace and Sister Cooper who also had a non member friend Jackie. That was interesting, the conversation kind of reminded me of home. On Thursday dinner was at C&S which is the best place to eat pretty much. Its a cute little coffee shop with the best Biscuits and Gravy and Chicken Fried Steak. We basically ate with the same people on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. These are some amazing ladies, their testimonies are so strong, I love them all. On Friday we met with the Somers. Bro. Constantino refered them to us and we were finally able to meet with them. She had ankle surgery and so its been hard to schedule an appointment. We taught them the Restoration and we invited them to be baptized on Nov. 30th, they both accepted. I'm excited for them Sis. Somers is so ready for it. Bro. Somers drinks, so we have a concern there. Our Baptisms though have both come through Members, which is the coolest thing.

On Sunday we had the Primary Program. I don't think I ever realized how powerful that is. The kids in the ward are so stinkin' cute. Also, I don't know if any of you have ever seen the Mormon Message "Daytons Legs" but KSL did a behind the scenes kind of a thing for that one and the missionary opportunities that came from just that one video are amazing. So I reccomend that you look up the behind the scenes thing. I almost cried, which doesn't really happen very often. 

It's starting to get cold here, it is super windy today, and was pretty windy yesterday too.  Anyways, I love you all and hope all is going well.

Love,

Sister Gardner

Betty took us to C&S for breakfast, she made me get the Chicken Fried Steak along with my french toast and eggs... Its some really good food, I'm telling ya. So this was at Sis. Coopers on Friday. L to R: Jackie, Sis. Hobbs, Sis. Davis, Sis. Cooper, Sis. Pace, Me, and Sis. Finster. So Jackie was visiting and her son is a member (since he was 15). Sis. Hobbs told her to call her when she is getting baptized:D. She is an awesome lady and I hope she does decide to be baptized.This cake is actually what we had last week when we met with Betty for the first time, it was heavenly, Dad you would love it.. actually I'm pretty sure everyone would like it. Chocolate cake with Raspberries and whipped cream in between the layers.