August 22, 2016 God's timing is better than Perfect timing!

Cool scenery. Love how green it is here 

Hello everyone!!

    This week was just another awesome week here in the land of Many Might Miracles. The weather is starting to get a little colder here, which is starting to make me a little scared. Yeah, I know I am from California and it is going to be a huge shock for me. I know. But, it is going to be something that I have never experienced before.. an adventure?? So, that is what makes it exciting!!!

   We taught the Sunday school lesson with one of our members in our branch, Alma, yesterday! She was really nervous to teach, but she ended up doing so well! And I participated a little more than I did the first time haha. But overall the lesson was awesome! We taught about the importance of having two witnesses, the stories of Alma and Amulek (in Alma 8-12). I don't have time to really expand on it, but they are awesome examples of missionary work and what it really means to truly be converted to the Lord. So, I suggest you all to go read about it because it's awesome!

    Update on Andy: We were not able to see him at all this last week! He is working SO much and he we don't have any way of contacting him, except through his Aunt who is never home. We stopped by on Saturday because we were supposed to have a lesson with him, but he was still working. So we bought him a Coke and left him a note (side story: he always tries to buy us a soda every time we meet with him, so we bought him one as a joke haha) And he was supposed to come with us to a Fireside yesterday, but long story short it didn't end up working out! Hopefully we will be able to see him this next week!!

    We finally had a lesson with Karen!! She is the mom of the Alegria family who just happened to show up at church a couple of weeks ago. She wanted to know what the differences is between our church and other churches. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and about Priesthood Authority! We were able to answer all of her questions, and the lesson just went so well with her! She was super excited to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, to know for herself that it is true. She said that she needed to talk to her husband about getting baptized, but she didn't say now! We are so excited for her, and we hope that we will be able to teach her and her family together this next week. Families are so important, and I cannot wait to see how the knowledge of this restored gospel will be able to strengthen their family!!

ANOTHER CRAZY RAINSTORM!

   The rest of the week was just a lot of finding and teaching first lessons! We taught 5 first lessons with new people this week! Which is so much more than we normally are able to! It was super rainy this whole week, so we taught a lot of lessons in the Rain! And talking about timing… we were trying to contact some previous investigators but they didn't answer the door (and we knew they were home because we could literally see them through the window haha) But as we started walking away, their niece, Brenda got home. So God's timing is great, because if we hadn't seen her family inside, we wouldn't have waited so long until we left. We ended up teaching her about the Restoration in POURING rain. And we gave her our big umbrella, so Hermana Brittner and I shared a small umbrella and we got soaked. But it was worth it.  We had so many experiences like this one this week, where we would arrive to someone's house and they would just be pulling in their driveway.  I know that sometimes we say perfect timing, but isn't it more like God's timing!! God is in charge of everything, and it is so fun serving him and being able to see His hand every single day!!!

   One thing that I have learned this last week is the importance of having Faith. What is faith? Faith is when you do something or believe in something or continue forward, even when you don't have an exact answer as to why. Faith is when you hope for things which are not seen. Sometimes, in our lives, there are so many different things that happened and we have no idea why.  In Alma 32:21, "And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true."  I testity that this is true. We don't need to have a perfect knowledge to just believe. Just believe that Heavenly Father really knows what's best for us. Believe that things are going to get better. Believe that we can be redeemed and saved through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Just Believe and have faith. God's timing is perfect. He loves all of us, and I promise that as we continually look for his hand in our lives, that we will be so much happier and have so much more joy!!

I hope that everyone has the best week ever and remember to look for God's hand in your lives! He is amazing. I love all of you, but more importantly Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ loves you so much more!!!

Love,
Hermana Duvall

August 16, 2016  Last zone lunch together before transfers!! I am staying here for another 6 weeks!!