Week 63!

This past week was jam packed of things to do! And I loved it! Missionary work is always the best when you're busy! For the first time in a while we literally had to run to get from appointment to appointment.

We had interviews with President Eaton and I always enjoy those so much! I always come out of them with more spiritual strength to keep pressing forward! 

After our interviews President Eaton had a referral for us and she just so happened to live down the street so he walked over to her apartment with us to talk to her. On the way President Eaton started talking to this 15 year-old boy that looked way older about families and the gospel. The whole time I was thinking, "I'm contacting with President Eaton! The pressure is on!" Haha! That doesn't happen every day! 

We also had Elder Lawrence and his wife visit our mission and we were able to receive some amazing counsel from them! But before I get into that I'll answer some questions my mom sent me. 

So my biggest challenge this week was probably...eating two dinners in the same day. Haha! Yeah we'll communicate better next time to make sure that doesn't happen. 

My biggest success was probably having more members present at lessons with us! We had more this past week than we've had in a while and we plan to keep working on it! 

My favorite person this past week has been our investigator Lodes and her husband Rojelio. They are Catholic and they are just now learning about the gospel. They are not committed to being baptized but they are so open to learn and they both understand that baptism is a promise  and commitment with God so they want to take it seriously! 

My favorite tender mercy this week was when Sister Eaton sent us all the talk entitled, Becoming Perfect in Christ by Elder Gerrit W. Gong. It is such a great talk and I really needed to read it! She also sent a document about perfectionism and the healthy and unhealthy stages of being a perfectionist. It was super great of her to do! 

My goal for this week is to have a bigger focus on baptism in every lesson.

This coming week I am excited about finding people that will accept the invitation to prepare and be baptized! 

The scripture that has the biggest impact on me this past week is Alma 57:25 when it talks about how all of the stripling warriors survived the battle,  however still received many wounds. This reminded me that as long as we are on God's side we will find success and we will be saved. It also reminded me that we will all receive wounds in this lifetime. I'm talking more so about spiritual wounds rather than physical wounds. But I know that through Jesus Christ we can all be healed! 

Now, on to the most amazing part of this week! Training with Elder Lawrence! We started off the meeting by listening to Sister Lawrence talk about the House of Israel. She talked about why one of the names for Jesus Christ is the Holy One of Israel and how he preached the gospel first to the Israelites. She explained what it meant to be an Israelite and a Gentile which led her to talking about "believing blood." I had never heard of that before but it was all so interesting to me! She explained the lineage from Abraham on down, so it was a lot of history information. It totally fascinated me! I learned so many new things and was reminded of other things that I have learned but forgotten. She talked about the different tribes and how the lost tribes are scattered but predominately in the area of Russia and those countries. She also explained that before this life many of us promised to serve missions and to help gather scattered Israel. I literally have pages of notes from her talk! I loved it so much! I can't even begin to describe it all to you in detail. Because of the meeting,  I now have the goal to study more about the gathering of Israel and to learn all of the names for the twelve tribes.  I also learned that the symbol of the tribe of Ephraim is an ox! Haha! Oxen are hard working and stubborn so maybe that's why I can be so set in my ways sometimes! 

When Elder Lawrence spoke to us he mentioned how he was really impressed with how all the missionaries handled themselves, so that was a nice compliment! :) He also taught about the importance of finding Israel. He said that we have been preparing for this from before this lifetime so we have no time to waste. The time we have to be full-time missionaries is so precious! He talked about having a

better focus on baptizing! We shouldn't just expect miracles, we should expect baptisms! He and the leadership of our mission met and they made the goal to have 40 baptisms in the month of November! How cool is that! The whole mission is focusing on this right now! We have all committed to pray for 40 baptisms in every prayer we say, to think about a verse of scripture about either baptism or the doctrine of Christ each week, and to prayerfully sacrifice something so that we can more fully focus on bringing others into the waters of baptism! I'm so excited about this goal because the whole mission is going to be more unified and working hard to achieve it! Elder Lawrence gave us excellent advice on having faith and being fully believing instead of doubting. If it is a righteous desire it can happen! 

There are a lot of things we need to do in order to reach our goal but I know that as we all pull together and try our best, that God can provide the rest, and we can help 40 people on their way to receive salvation! 

There was also a lot of talk about being born in the covenant at our meeting. Before, I thought being born in the covenant meant you were born in the church, but I learned, or was reminded, that it actually means that you are born to parents who are sealed in the temple. I have always wanted to get married and sealed in the temple to a righteous man for eternity and Elder Lawrence talked about how we all need to have that be our goal. Talking about marrying outside of the temple he said, "You were not prepared for that." He said that the saddest thing would be that we return home and marry outside of the temple and that is so true! We are eternal beings and we need to be sealed to our spouses for the eternity! We are the kind of people who strive our best to become like God and we do that by making promises with  Him in the temple! 

I love this church because I know that it's God's church and it provides us with the way back to Him! 

And on a completely unrelated note here are some funny pictures of us! I love the different colors of the trees! 

Love, 

Hermana Soliz :) 

 

Me and Hna Lewis

Happy Fall Everyone!

 

I am so lucky!

Just so you all know I am so extremely lucky! Life is good and I am so happy to be a missionary! :)

I love being able to serve God and serve the people here in my area! 

This past week I had my 22nd birthday and the members here made sure it was a special day for me! 

On my birthday a few of the members, the elders, and my companion and I got together for dinner at the church. We had enchiladas and rice and then cake and ice cream for dessert. Hermana Valle even bought me some socks and perfume as a gift! It was so sweet of the members to do! :) I love them! 

After I blew our my candles for "mi deseo" they all wanted me to take a bite out of the cake. Apparently it is a tradition of theirs to do that and then usually someone will push your face into the cake. 

I was so hesitant to actually do it but I finally took a very small bite of the cake. It's a cool tradition but I didn't exactly want cake all over me. Haha! 

Needless to say I had a very great day on my birthday thanks to my family and the members! 

So finding new people to teach here in Auburn has been a bit if a struggle for the past few weeks or so but we have been trying so hard to find prepared people! We have also been knocking more doors than before! And well finding is still difficult. 

We receive a lot of blessings from God each day but we just weren't finding anyone new to teach. It seemed like more so than before that every set lesson we had was cancelled. 

During this tough time of not having very many investigators Alma 26:27 came to mind and it says, 

"Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success."

This scripture brought me great comfort when I was having a hard time and I really know that God is in control of spreading the gospel to all the world! 

My spirit was lifted when we went to check on a referral we received named Esteban! He is amazing! He actually thought he knew me from before. He saw me on his door step and was like, "Whoa! What are you doing here?!" 

And well, I was so confused! But it was kind of nice because even though I didn't know him from before it was almost like we had this relationship you have with the people you teach right from the start! He already knows so much about the church and has been to Salt Lake. He still wants to learn more but in our lesson he said that he wants the spirit that he sees that the missionaries have and he has a strong desire to be baptized!!! I am so excited to teach him and I will definitely be telling you all more about how things go with him! 

I love you all and have a great week! Also thanks so much for the gifts mom!

Hermana Soliz

My tiara mom sent and cake from my companion!

 

My new companion is so great!

HOLA!!!

So I'll start by telling you all a little bit about my companion, Hermana Lewis! She is So great! She finished three years at Weber State studying accounting. She also had a scholarship to play the drums there. She plays a lot of different instruments and is super talented! She didn't want to take a picture today so sorry but I don't have a picture for this email. Haha, I tried! 

She likes to speak Spanish ALL the time! Even when we are inside the house so that has been cool! She has really good Spanish for someone who is just now learning. 

Training her has been a lot of fun! This past week was really slow so we haven't had the chance to really teach anyone yet. Training is definitely helping me to be a better leader! I'm excited to help get her involved in the work as much as possible so we can be 50/50! :) 

It is already getting darker earlier here and it is just going to keep getting worse so we hope we can set lessons for the evenings so we are not walking around in the dark. 

Let me tell you about a miracle we had the other day! 

So we chose to spend our finding hour in a neighborhood close to where we live. There aren't a lot of Hispanics in that area as far as we know but it's where we thought we should go. 

There was actually one house where I knew some Hispanics lived so we started with that house. In the past they had never answered the door so we were hoping that we'd be able to talk to somebody this time. 

A boy in a high school answered the door and told us that his parents weren't home and the he didn't know when a good time would be for us to try again. He did not seem interested at all but we left him our information and then asked if he knew of any other Hispanics in the area. He told us of one house where there might be Hispanics so we went and tried it. 

And we had a miracle! A man named Kelvin from Peru answered the door and he was super nice! We had a really good conversation with him! 

The only thing is that I was kicking myself in the butt because before when we were getting supplies out of the car I had a feeling to get a family proclamation but I just brushed it off for some reason.

Then as we were talking to Kelvin he started talking about how the importance of families is getting lost in the world we live in today...Ugh! I was so mad at myself! It was the perfect opportunity to give him a copy of the family proclamation and I didn't have one because I was in a hurry and brushed off the prompting the Spirit had given me!  

If only I would stop and listen...I'm working on it though! :) 

We didn't teach Kelvin that day because his wife was a the park with their two kids but we set an appointment to come back and teach the whole family!!! :) I am so excited!!! I have high hopes for this family! :) 

Also I just loved General Conference! Every second of it! All of the talks were so inspired and I learned so much! I really like Elder Lawrence's talk and he is the general authority that will be visiting our mission this month! I'm super excited for that! :) 

I am also accepting the challenge to "ponderize" a scripture each week! I'm starting this week with Doctrine and Covenants section 50:40-42. It reads, 

 "Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth.

 Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me;

 And none of them that my Father hath given me shall be lost."

Isn't that beautiful! :) 

Well I love you all and thanks for the Birthday wishes! 

Hermana Soliz

Change is Good!

Hey everyone!

So today is transfer day so we will all be dealing with lots of changes. Hermana Edmonds is getting transferred to Kent with Hermana Palmer and I am staying in Auburn and will be training a brand new missionary. There was some miss-communication with our Zone leaders so we thought that we were both staying here but Sister Eaton called us yesterday to let us know that I would be training and that Hermana Edmonds would be leaving. 

I am so excited to train but at the same time a little nervous! This time last year I was being trained! I feel like I'm getting a little taste of what it feels like when parents have their first child. I just want my new companion to have the best experience ever and I want to help her start her mission off right like my trainer did for me! :) 

I want to be a good example to her and help her in any way that I can! It's a change but it's okay because changes are good and they help us grow! Hopefully, I don't stress myself out! 

Apparently the new missionaries will be getting here later than usual so I will be at transfers at 2:00 and Sister Eaton said hopefully we'll be home by 7:00. It's going to be a long day! 

Also we are getting Spanish Elders back in the area but the catch is that they will be on bike. In the past the Elders were able to cover the whole Auburn Stake which really helped since we cover Auburn and Puyallup. But now that they'll just have bikes there geographical area is going to be smaller. Hopefully they can share a car with another companionship on certain days or something.

I'm still really grateful we're getting Elders back in the area though! They'll be a big help!  The members are going to be so excited about that! 

Another change was that I had to say goodbye to Sister Walker on Sunday. :( It was so sad! I love her so much and am going to miss her! It'll definitely be harder to get to the gym in the morning knowing that she won't be there to talk to. She is like a sister to me and I am so grateful that God gave me the opportunity to be companions with her!

By the way! Didn't you just love the General Women's broadcast! It was so good! I loved all of the talks and I learned something from each one! I really liked when one of the Sisters was talking about after this life and we'll think, "Was that it? That was all I had to do?" It will be a very humbling and sweet experience.  

I know this life has difficulties and that life is hard sometimes. But just like President Hinckley said, "Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured." Too often we think that God asks too much of us when in reality He is giving us every opportunity He can to have us decide to come unto Him. He does not ask very much of us. We just need to be obedient to His commandments and accept His will. His commandments aren't like a fence to keep us gated in. Instead they are like guardrails to protect us from danger. I know that as we keep His commandments and repent each day we will grow to have a more Christ-like character!

I love you all! Here's a picture of our last district meeting this transfer and one of all of us sister missionaries here in Auburn! 

Hermana Soliz

The last week of the transfer!

Transfers will be happening again in a week and I can't believe it! I am so scared that I am going to get transferred. I don't want to leave! But it's okay because everything always works out! A few other missionaries think that I'll be training but no one ever really knows what's happening until transfers.

Hermana Edmunds is so funny and she also struggles with keys like I do. It always takes her a while to get the key out of the door after unlocking it.

The missionary work here is going great as usual! I love the people here and I stress sometimes because I want to do everything perfectly to help these people progress but well, no one is perfect. But everything always works out as we really try our best! 

Sometimes Satan will try to make you feel like you are inadequate and that you have no idea what you are doing. But it's not true. It's a lie. It's that simple. So don't you give up! You keep your head high and you keep trying! I promise that this isn't just a pep talk for me, LOL! You all need it too! 

Just put your trust in God and follow His inspiration! You can never go wrong when you are striving to get closer to God. Keep doing the little things to build your faith like reading the Book of Mormon every day. I love reading from the Book of Mormon every day and it has brought blessings into my life by giving me a stronger testimony of my Savior, Jesus Christ. 

I'v been reading about Alma and Amulek and Ammon and I just love their examples of faith! They are so bold and full of love for God! Even in their afflictions they are so patient and love God! 

It reminds me that this life is not always going to be a cake walk but that I need to stay strong and humbly put my faith in God. 

I love you all and hope you are doing great! 

Just so you know rana means frog in Spanish. Also look at the minion! People are already getting ready for Halloween! 

Hermana Soliz

 

Ready for Halloween!

 

I love Auburn!

I just absolutely love serving my mission here in Auburn! I love the members and I love our investigators! We have amazing leaders and everyone is so excited about missionary work! There are also a lot of Hispanics in this area so we get to talk to them a lot! I just love them all so much! They're like family! :)

Hermana Baird, Hermana Edmunds, and I are all getting along great! Hermana Edmunds has a talent for cracking jokes! She is always cracking us up! She also can quote movies really well and every classic episode of Spongebob. 

One day Hermana Edmunds was looking at my charm bracelet and she said, "Why does this say velo?" & then Hermana Baird told her that it said love. You had to be there but it was so funny! So things are great with them and I love them both! We all have different strengths so we work well together! 

I have no idea what will happen with transfers in two weeks. I really hope that I get to stay here in Auburn! I wouldn't mind just finishing my mission here! 

We had Zone Training this past week and I really liked being able to review the Doctrine of Christ and what we need to do to keep the faith and endure to the end. 

One of the questions the zone leaders asked us was about how we could apply everything that we are learning here to situations we will have at home. I answered the question by saying that we should continue to have faith in and trust God and involve Him in everything. We should pray about all of our decisions. For example, where to go to school, what to study, who to marry. etc. 

And well, when I mentioned the example of who to marry it got a little quiet in the room...I was like okay everyone calm down. It's not like you all weren't thinking it! Haha! And besides it's true, you should pray for guidance in all things.

This past week we overbooked appointments so we went on our first split as a trio. Herman Baird and Hermana Edmunds went together to do visits and then I went with Hermana Zepeda and Hermano Moreno to teach people.

 Sadly, our appointments fell through but I was still able to teach a former investigator with Hermana Zepeda and Hermano Moreno. Everything always goes so much better when we have members with us! I'm so grateful for their willingness to help us! 

Saturday there was a big Stake service project but we were separated into our wards and branches. The Spanish Branch was in charge of cleaning up trash along a trail by the railroad tracks. It was a lot of fun to work together with the branch! Then that same night we had a fiesta!

It was a lot of fun! It was a cultural party so there was food from several different countries and it was all good! We had ten people who aren't members of the church at the party so that was good! We were hoping for more but ten is better than none. Everyone had a really good time! It was a success!

Also the biggest news is that Daniela is reading the Book of Mormon and she has lots of questions for us! :) At the fiesta she asked me how long I had left on my mission and after I answered her she made a comment about hoping that I would be here for her baptism! :) I love Daniela so much! She is basically already a member. She just needs a little more time to grow and she will be ready to get baptized! :) 

Love you all! Keep praying for help to overcome your shortcomings and I know you'll see the hand of God in your life! 

Hermana Soliz

A random statue of the Pope we saw...I don't know why it's there of all places.

Flowers for us from Hermano Simon

Zone Conference-Hnas Baird, Soliz, and Edmunds on the left

Service Project with the Branch, worked hard and had fun!

TRIO!

Hey big news!

We are now in a trio! Unfortunately one of the sister missionaries had to go home for health reasons so now Hermana Edmunds is here with us in Auburn! Hermana Edmunds is from West Virginia and she came into the field at the same time as Hermana Baird. They've been out for about 5 months.

It's so nice and convenient to be in a trio because we can teach singles too, without having to have another sister with us .

This week went by so fast! The days just all blur together sometimes! I had a dream that we had 8 lessons with members with us and I was soooo HAPPY....and then I realized that I was just dreaming. But it will happen!

Something funny that happened this past week was when we went to go visit a potential investigator named Juan. We knocked on the door and for some reason instead of opening the door he opened the window and talked to us through there. He was saying that the magnet necklace he was wearing helped his heart work. Then he started talking about how his wife didn't like the magnets but that he needed them to live. He also asked us if magnets were against our religion. There were also some cables that were attached to the ground and he explained to us that he needed to be attached to them to keep his mortal body alive. Yeah...It was interesting to say the least.

The best things of this week were of course the spiritual ones!

This past Sunday Jaime received the gift of the Holy Ghost and became an official member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! He was so happy and had a huge grin on his face! He is now preparing to receive the priesthood! He also says one day he is going to be a bishop! How cool is that?! :)

Another miracle was that we found someone new to teach! :) His name is Jose and we found him in Pacific! We don't really go there too often because there aren't a whole lot of Hispanics there but we felt like we should go on that specific day and we found Juan! He was outside working and he let us right into his home to teach him the restoration! We are so excited to go back and teach the whole family!

This experience helped build my testimony that our Heavenly Father is the one moving the work forward. We just need to keep ourselves worthy of receiving the guidance of the spirit to help us make decisions. Sometimes the decision can be very simple like this one and sometimes they are much bigger decisions. Either way it is important to have the guidance of the spirit and then to act on the promptings we get.

I love being able to be a part of these people's lives!! God is truly blessing me and blessing them every day! :)

A lot of the members are so excited about missionary work right now! A few of them have volunteered to come out with us to either teach or knock some doors. We are planning a big cultural fiesta for this Saturday so hopefully we can get a lot of people there and teach them about the gospel!

I want to take advantage of every moment I have to be a good missionary and to help as many people as I can come unto Christ and be baptized in the Lord's way!

You are all in my prayers and I hope you have a wonderful week!

Hermana Soliz

We are a trio! Hnas Soliz, Edmunds, and Baird

Hnas Killingsworth and Soliz