Family!

The Woman’s Conference was so good! It was all about families not really applicable to me yet hahah, but it was good to take notes and start preparing and thinking how I want my future family to be!  It was also a blessing because this week we found some great potential families to teach and so I am excited to share what I learned with them! My favorite part about that meeting was the video they showed. It was the first one and it had a bunch of families singing a primary song about families. It really touched me and me think how lucky I am to have such a wonderful amazing supportive family!!

1     What has been your biggest challenge this week?
So this week the biggest challenge has been finding people. This area is tough because a lot of it is rich gated areas and the humble areas are all Latin people, so we tract for hours but we have been blessed with some really cool families! We were tracting last night and before we started we prayed and were really specific in what we wanted to find. We were able to find awesome families who accepted return appointments and baptism! We are going to see them this week! We are super excited!! I love teaching families!!  

2     What has been your biggest concern? 

My biggest concern this week would be just continuing strengthening the ward members. It has gotten a lot better this week. They are starting to want to feed us and come out with us. We are feeling a lot more love from them which is a blessing. A cool thing that happened yesterday was during sacrament on Fast Sunday. The Spirit prompted that I needed to bare my testimony and so  got the butterflies and was kind of squirmish. I could see Sister King was the same way so I asked her, “do you feel like you need to bare your testimony too?” She said yeah. So right when we stood up so did the other 2 sets of elders. We all went up there at the same time and bore our testimonies. The ward members said it was super good and powerful

3     What has been your biggest success? 

An idea me and Sister King came up with to let the ward members know much we care is we made cookies and put them in bags and attached a message to it. We went and saw members and gave it to them. Some we just left on their door step. They loved it!! We got calls saying how grateful they were for that act of kindness. We were so happy!! We love serving! :)

4     Who has been your favorite person this week?  Why?

My favorite person this week is the Beasley family. Last Monday they invited us over to a family home evening and it was so amazing. They have 4 boys and they are so cute! haha The family home evening was on prayer and the Spirit was so strong as they each bore their testimonies on prayer and then we got to share ours. Those little boys are going to be apostles someday. After we sang A Child's Prayer, me and Sister King were in tears. So powerful. It has been a long time since I had been in a FHE that powerful. Such a great family full of love for the gospel and missionary work. After we played a game and ate frozen fruit. So much fun! :)

5   What has been your most significant tender mercy?

My tender mercy this week would have to be Ozzie and his wife. Every Friday at 4, the whole mission tracts for an hour. During this hour, our focus is to find families. The whole hour no one opened the door. We didn't talk to a single person, so as we were walking back to the car a guy pulls into his driveway and we were like lets go talk to him. We start making our way towards him and he gets out of his truck and makes a bee line for us. We tell him who we are and that we want to share a prayer with him. So we did and he loved it so much after he said he was coming to church with his wife and daughter. We invited him to be baptized and he said yes and that he wanted to learn more. Well we couldn't see him Saturday but that night around 9:30 pm we called him to see if he was still coming to church and he said yes. They even invited us over for dinner but we couldn't because it was past curfew. They are so cool. Lo and behold, Sunday they came to church and loved it!! His wife is obsessed with the temple! She saw pictures of it and wants to go so bad. We are going to teach them this week and we are so excited!! :)) Such a great tender mercy!

6     What are you looking forward to this week?

I am looking forward this week to teach the people we have found! We haven't taught anyone yet like actual lessons so I am so excited to help them progress towards baptism!

7      Do you have a goal set for this coming week?

This week my goals are to keep staying positive. When I am feeling down I am going to remember what Danyon shared with me. “Don’t quit. You’re already in pain. You’re already hurt. Get a reward from it.”  “Don't cry to give up, cry to keep going.” We all have tribulations in life we just need to implement that pain towards our success. So good!

8      Which scripture has had the biggest impact on you this week?

In our house we have a lot of old Ensigns and I was reading a conference one from 1999 and a talk I read from Jeffery R Holland I really loved! It’s called An High Priest of Good Things to Come. You need to read it all! A part that I loved is:

Even if you cannot always see that silver lining on your clouds, God can, for He is the very source of the light you seek. He does love you, and He knows your fears. He hears your prayers. He is your Heavenly Father, and surely He matches with His own the tears His children shed.

In spite of this counsel, I know some of you do truly feel at sea, in the most frightening sense of that term. Out in troubled waters, you may even now be crying with the poet:

It darkens. I have lost the ford.

There is a change on all things made.

The rocks have evil faces, Lord,

And I am [sore] afraid. ⁷

No, it is not without a recognition of life’s tempests but fully and directly because of them that I testify of God’s love and the Savior’s power to calm the storm. Always remember in that biblical story that He was out there on the water also, that He faced the worst of it right along with the newest and youngest and most fearful. Only one who has fought against those ominous waves is justified in telling us—as well as the sea—to “be still.” ⁸ Only one who has taken the full brunt of such adversity could ever be justified in telling us in such times to “be of good cheer.” ⁹ Such counsel is not a jaunty pep talk about the power of positive thinking, though positive thinking is much needed in the world. No, Christ knows better than all others that the trials of life can be very deep and we are not shallow people if we struggle with them. But even as the Lord avoids sugary rhetoric, He rebukes faithlessness and He deplores pessimism. He expects us to believe!

No one’s eyes were more penetrating than His, and much of what He saw pierced His heart. Surely His ears heard every cry of distress, every sound of want and despair. To a degree far more than we will ever understand, He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” ¹⁰ Indeed, to the layman in the streets of Judea, Christ’s career must have seemed a failure, a tragedy, a good man totally overwhelmed by the evils surrounding Him and the misdeeds of others. He was misunderstood or misrepresented, even hated from the beginning. No matter what He said or did, His statements were twisted, His actions suspected, His motives impugned. In the entire history of the world no one has ever loved so purely or served so selflessly—and been treated so diabolically for His effort. Yet nothing could break His faith in His Father’s plan or His Father’s promises. Even in those darkest hours at Gethsemane and Calvary, He pressed on, continuing to trust in the very God whom He momentarily feared had forsaken Him.

Because Christ’s eyes were unfailingly fixed on the future, He could endure all that was required of Him, suffer as no man can suffer except it be “unto death,” ¹¹ as King Benjamin said, look upon the wreckage of individual lives and the promises of ancient Israel lying in ruins around Him and still say then and now, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” ¹² How could He do this? How could He believe it? Because He knows that for the faithful, things will be made right soon enough. He is a King; He speaks for the crown; He knows what can be promised.

   Super comforting and encouraging. It brought me a lot of peace and helped me remember that Christ knows exactly how we feel and that good things do come! :) We just need to replace fear with faith!

So excited for conference this week! I hope you have a great Easter weekend!! Love you all so much!!!! Miss you!!!! :)

Love Hermana Heacock