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.

Trial of your faith 10/21/13

So this week was kinda rough, we had appointments fall out everyday, about 15 total this week, and we had 3 people drop us. Saturday we were both kinda frustrated that especially that day had been bad. 

So Monday we had an appointment with a lady named Susanah, she ended up dropping us on Saturday. 

Tuesday was really pretty good. We went walking around on what we call "the Mesa" that is where a lot of the members live and the population is a little more condensed. We met a family who we are going to start teaching this week, they are pretty cool. 

Wednesday all of our appointments but dinner fell through. We decided to go by on Martin, the one who has lung cancer. They put him on hospice and we weren't able to see him, it makes me sad that we couldn't do more for him. We had another referral who we stopped by on, she was out of town but her husband sat there and talked to us about how white people are rude to Indians and lots of other things. 

Thursday was good, we went to this dome house across the street from us and they let us take a tour, its pretty cool. He built it himself. He isn't religious at all but he drives her to church every week and reads while she is in there. She was willing to listen to our message until she found out we do the same thing as the Elders.. then we left, but we had to go to dinner anyways. Super nice people though. 

On Friday we went to the Bishops house and did some service we made some cute ghosts. That night we taught Bruce the Plan of Salvation, that went pretty well. We also met with a less active and taught her the Restoration.

 Saturday, like I said was kind of rough, we had several appointments fall out and after all of the fallen out appointments we still had a couple in place. We had dinner with the Trammells and they had invited over their Realtor and we taught her. The Trammels are awesome and the cutest old couple I have ever seen. We were teaching Betty, their friend and the spirit was amazing. Sister Davis and I made it a goal this week to really invite the spirit as we teach, so we were really excited. 

So this is where the real blessings came this week. When Susanah called and dropped us, I was devastated and done. As we taught Betty though I just fell in love with her, she is the coolest lady and so ready. She accepted the invitation for Baptism and is on date for Nov. 9th. The Lord really has been preparing her. She is really excited about this and the Trammels are excellent examples for her. That made this week worth it. We had a rough lesson after that with Nel, she asks a lot of questions that go into deep doctrine. It is hard to know how we can teach her when she really just wants her questions answered. Anyways, I don't have a lot of time left but I love you all. I hope all is well.

Love,

Sister Kellee Gardner

A good week 10/14/13

So this week went pretty well. Last p-day we flew kites with the district, that was pretty fun, also Sister Gonzales has inherited a flute and so I decided to see if I could still play. I played an F scale and she helped me remember some of the notes and then I was sight reading hymns and my fingers just moved.. That was cool! 
On Tuesday we had Interviews with President Van Cott, and those went well. We met a new potential named Mario, his mom is less active and dad is atheist  which we didn't know and so we went to visit them and he answered the door. We talked to him and invited him to the YSA, he was taught by the elders as a teenager and thought that was cool, but we hope we can teach him. We taught Jose again and we have a hard time knowing what to teach. He doesn't like to read, and he doesn't talk much either.. He says he did all his talking briefing Marines for years so now he listens. 
Wednesday was Zone meeting. We met with Shon, she wasn't doing to well so we didn't teach her..There was a cool miracle with that because the member we took was an EMT and was able to help us out, and we almost didn't have her come with us. Also it rained Wednesday, that was cool, my first rain in the desert :D 
Thursday was pretty good, kind of a long day, but nothing too exciting except maybe a package :D Friday we had exchanges. I was with Sis Davidson and we were in the YSA area, which technically is the whole stake, but we just stayed in our area for the most part. We went to invite Mario to church again and got out of the car and the lady across the street started talking to us. She investigated the church about 3 years ago and was excited to see sisters serving. We get that a lot actually, I don't know if I mentioned it but they haven't had sisters here in ages. We talked to her about why she stopped and she said she had some questions and people didn't respond well to the questions she asked, but she was willing to look into the church again, so we are teaching her on Thursday. We met with Alexis who is a Less active and she said before she came back to church she wanted to take the lessons and kind of see where she stood. I love when people are honest with you about their doubts, it makes it so much easier!
Saturday, the other sisters had a Baptism so that was cool, She is a really cool lady. later that night we had no appointments- they all fell through. and so we were driving around and both of us were ready to be done, but we decided to pray and see who it was we should visit, I just felt like there was someone else, but I had no idea who. So we start driving and I thought we were going home, then I thought we were stopping by a members house( I could have asked where it was we were going, but honestly I was way too tired by that point) and then I realized where we were.. It was a lady who we have been trying to contact forever, the elders taught her then she got busy with work and stopped, so sis. Davis hadn't met her but I guess they had stopped by like 7 times before, we went by last week and no one was there. It didn't look much better this time, but it ended up that she was there! so we set up an appointment with her! Miracle!

So the YSA doesn't currently have anyone who plays piano, except me..So I volunteered to play yesterday. I ended up just playing top hand, but i guess compared to A Capella or the CD's it was better.. I guess in 2 weeks there's a boy who is turning 18 who can play so when he moves in they will have him play. Also we had dinner with the Constantino family. It was delicious :D Allen, who is our ward mission leader in the ysa went to Utah for conference and was able to meet Mom and Dad. so I guess he asked what kind of food we would eat. Mom gave him the recipe for crock-pot Italian chicken over rice. It was a nice surprise to have something from home. they also had some cool Filipino stew. Brother Constantino also gave us some fans that they got from San Fran, they are the coolest family ever!

Anyways I hope all is well with you. Thank you for your love and support! I love you all!

Mucho Love,

Sister Kellee Gardner

P.S random facts

we have a Recent convert in the ysa who is from Africa, his name is Shadrack, and he has 2 brothers named Meshack and Abed-nego. 

Sister Davis calls doTerra oils Hippie Medicine, there are a couple of people in the wards out here that use doTerra, so that's cool. If I happen to mention Hippie medicine, know that's what I'm talking about:

10/7/13

So this week we met with quite a few less- actives, invited several to come to conference, most said they would just watch at home. We have so many less-actives right now, and the main reason they don't come any more is they don't feel loved by the ward. It is hard to understand that because we as missionaries feel the love and support of the ward, but they aren't necessarily supporting the people who aren't coming. I liked Arnulfo Vanezuelas talk from sat afternoon. It is the small and simple things that help others to come unto Christ. It really is as simple as just loving them. This area hasn't really ever had Sisters before, so we have a great opportunity to go into the single sisters homes where Elders couldn't. There's a lot of work for us to do, and a lot of that just means loving the people who haven't felt that in a while. 

If I had to pick a top favorite talk from Conference, it would probably be President Uchtdorfs talk. I think mostly because it addressed so many concerns that we have come across with our less actives and people in general. I Loved Elder Ballards talk as well. Member missionary work is the best thing ever. I definitely didn't realize how effective and how important it really is. There is a cool fireside thing that is called "The Missionary Next Door" it talks about member missionary work and I love it. 

Conference had something for everyone and I loved the focus on covenants and being converted. I really don't even know what to say about conference besides it was amazing. There's this cool thing that happens when I have good experiences like conference, that no matter what has happened earlier in the week, It automatically becomes a good week and I don't care about what happened except for that good thing. I invite you all to find an opportunity to invite someone to church or an activity. I would love to hear your experiences of missionary work.

I know this is short and scatterbrained, but I love you all. 

I know that God lives and that He loves us. I know he wants us to follow Him. I know that the work is His and he leads it and we can all share the gospel. The Church is true and it has the Priesthood authority of God. It was restored through Joseph Smith with that power.

I love and miss you all!

Sister Gardner