Family!

Thanks so much first off for all the help and support from you guys!! Especially with all my back pain and my diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis. Same condition as Dad. I am now on meds and Physical Therapy, so it should improve.

General Conference was amazing!! Seriously!! Being on a mission during conference is like Christmas!! My spirit has never hungered so much to be spiritually fed until on my mission!! Loved every second of it and can’t wait till the October session! :)

Sister King's mom made us matching skirts for Easter!

So this week, the biggest challenge was getting our investigators that we are teaching to progress. We have been finding amazing people but then they just drop off the face of the earth. Our plans are just to keep being bold and helping them feel the love Heavenly Father has for them. These are just speed bumps in the road. It all can’t be easy. Heavenly Father has really blessed us though and we have seen so many miracles! Just even within the last couple of days! :)

Opening my Easter Package from family!

To start off this week, the elders in the Spanish ward were having a baptism. So we went to support them. At the same time they were having the ward Easter egg hunt. While we were waiting for the baptism to start, we were talking with some of the members and we met Lisa. Lisa is from Jamaica and while driving home from work saw the Easter egg hunt and decided to bring her kids to it. She has a son who is 4 and a daughter who is 14. They are super cool!! They loved the atmosphere of the church and the people. They said they felt right at home and wanted to learn more about our religion. They said they could feel the Spirit even during the Easter egg hunt. Super amazing miracle because we have been praying to find families! We are currently teaching her and her daughter. She couldn't come to conference but is excited for this coming Sunday! :)

​It was a really hard day of knocking.........

Later this week we were knocking in a trailer park, we had been knocking for hours and it was almost time to go home. We thought we would pray for a miracle. Sister King and I both felt prompted to knock on this one house. It looked promising so we went and knocked the on the door. Marilyn opened the door and invited us right in. She is a mother of a little girl who is four and accepted a prayer right away. During the prayer there was so much noise but after we asked her how she felt and she said she felt the Spirit so strongly and knew it was from Heavenly Father and that it wasn't a coincidence that we knocked on her door when she needed us. She is amazing and has such a humble spirit ready to learn about the gospel. God is so good! She and her daughter came to the Easter egg hunt on Saturday and loved it!  She couldn't stay for General Conference but super excited to come this Sunday.

......that ended great!

The next miracle happened on Saturday after conference and its super funny. So we went out to knock doors and we felt like we needed to knock in this apartment complex. So we park and I offered a prayer before we started knocking. I had gotten half way through the prayer when we heard a "BANG BANG BANG" on our car. We opened our eyes and there are these two little girls around 3 years old just banging on the hood of our car. Me and Sister King were laughing so hard because it was so random! We got out of the car and the little girls started running away and we thought hmmm, lets follow them. We followed them to their family. We introduce ourselves and they knew who we were right away because some members from the Spanish ward lived next door.  They accepted a prayer and afterwards were in tears. They loved it and said they felt the Spirit so strong. They accepted baptism but expressed the concern that Oswald, the dad, works on Sundays. We promised him that if he prayed and asked Heavenly Father that he will be able to get Sundays off so he can go to church with his family. He believed what we said and they are planning to come to church this Sunday! This family is super amazing and humble. They want to get baptized and go to the temple so bad! Excited to teach them!

The last miracle of the week and probably the biggest happened on Sunday. After conference, we went and knocked doors in this apartment complex next to our house and that’s were we found Angela! Angela is from Ecuador and is staying with a friend. She doesn’t have anything except a suitcase and her daughter who is in her 20s. When we knocked on Angela’s door, she let us in to the house right away. Her friend wasn’t there so it was just her. She said she was so grateful we came and said it was like having two angles in her home. She said that she was supposed to go to a party with her friend but felt like she needed to stay home and now she knows why. She said she needed us. We said a really powerful prayer with her and she was so happy and the Spirit was so strong. We invited her to be baptized and she said yes right way. She said that all she wants to do is serve people and feel peace and comfort. She said she knew she could find it in our church! She is amazing!! We showed her the Because He Lives video and she loved it. She says she believes in miracles and knows that she is a daughter of God! Afterwards, we shouted for joy. She is the golden gator we have been praying for!!

This week I studied a lot about Christ’s life leading up to his sacrifice and the resurrection. Thanks to Dad for sending me those stories! It was so interesting to get more into detail about what happened leading up to his death. I felt as I learned more about his life I got closer to him and my love and testimony grew so much for his sacrifice and atonement. He truly came to earth to pay a debt he did not owe because we owned a debt we could not pay. I know that Jesus Christ lives and that he truly is our Savior. I have never felt closer to him this week. I know he is my brother and I am forever grateful for the sacrifice he made and all he went through for me because he thought I was worth it. He thought we were all worth it. He loves us so much! I know that each of our names were engraved upon his palms as they put those nails into his hands. He died for us so he could, as Jeffery R Holland said, like lightning in a summer storm reach out grasp us and pull us up. He will never let us go. That talk was one of my favorites! I am so grateful and humbled to represent such a perfect and loving Savior. 

Want to give a shout out to my comp. She is the best and I love her soo much!! It’s so funny. Everyone thinks we are twins. We get asked that like 10 times a day aha love her to death!! 

Love Sister King!

Anyways love you all sooo much!!! Hope you have a great week!!! Hugs and kisses!!

Hermana Heacock

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

Family!! :)

  Soooooo, I am back in Hialeah!! Not technically the same place where I started but I am in the same zone which is cool and my area covers some of Hialeah. I feel like I am home. :)) I am in Palm Springs North, outside of Miami. I had been praying for forever to come back to this zone :) I am in an English ward. First area for me that is English but there is lots and lots of Latin’s everywhere!! It’s so hard to find people to teach. Sister King is my new companion and I love her sooo much!!!!!!! She reminds me so much of Lauryn! She has been out for 5 months. She is seriously amazing and we became best friends right away. She is an English missionary so it’s so weird being the only one who can speak Spanish because i have had a lot of comps who were fluent and I would just rely on them and now I have to rely on the Spirit! The gift of tongues is so real! I can testify to that! It’s been fun though. I have been teaching her Spanish so she can be included and know what’s sort of going on. She is just the best.  This transfer is going to be the best one yet!!

Thanks so much Dad for the snippets from the talk about prophets! Super good! Its crazy how much more sustaining is, than just lifting a hand, it means we obey Him, we talk good about Him, and we support Him, all this stuff!! Thank you so much for sharing that. It will help me in my preparation for conference, which i am so excited for!! Cannot wait to receive revelation and hear all the messages. It’s like Christmas here.

I have been putting off telling you guys this for a while, but it’s getting pretty bad. I have been having super bad lower back pain. At first i thought it just needed to be cracked or rolled out but that didn't help. It hurts every day. When I am moving its okay but it’s the worst when I am not moving, like when I sit for a long period of time or at night when I sleep, I can’t sleep on my back and I am super stiff when I wake up. I can’t bend down to put my shoes on or to dry my hair, and when I have to bend down it takes me forever to get back up and I have random muscle spasms. I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to the doctor. I haven't told the nurse because she is crazy and I don't want to go home early because someone just got sent home early for back pain so I am scared. Help!!

 We have seen so many miracles this week!! On transfer day we went to go see these families that Sister King and her last comp had found. The first one was Emma and her son hector and Genoese. They are amazing! We sat down and taught them the plan of salvation and they loved it! They said it was the cherry on top! It was such a great spiritual lesson with the whole family and are expected to be baptized on the 12 of April. They didn't come to church but we will be seeing them this week. We were so happy because Sister King said they hadn't had new investigators in a long time. The other family we taught that night was Ethel and Hailey. A mother and daughter. We also taught them the plan of salvation and they want to go to the temple super bad!! They want to be sealed as a family. They are so excited for baptism on the 12 as well!! Super big transfer miracles!! The rest of this week has just been knocking and knocking like crazy!!! And making sure we are including the Lord in everything! A goal I have this week is to help Sister King achieve her goals of being bold! That’s something I worked on last transfer so I am excited to help her with it!!

 So this week in my personal study I was reading in Alma in chapters 50-53 where it talks all about wars and it gets kind of annoying after a while because you just want something good to happen. haha But while reading it this time I asked myself what can I get out of this, and its chapter 51. Where its talks about how Moroni was stationing people all around In different cities to hold off the Laminates and how each city and each person had a special spot and job to do. While reading this it made me think of a quote from Jeffery R Holland that says "This is an invitation to each of us to take our place on the wall and to call out encouragement to one another. I have my station and you have yours. Each of us has our own. None of us will stand in the place of any other, but like Gideon’s valiant band we can each stand in our own place. We can stand together in a fight against the prince of darkness and the dangers of spiritual decay." 

We each have our own spot in this battle against Satan. We each have our own job and no one else can do that job better than we can. We need to encourage others around us to uplift them and help them. Just like Moroni was doing with his soldiers.

I have been reading the talk The Enabling Power of the Atonement. It is a super good talk. Before my mission I just thought the atonement was there to cleanse me of my sins but here on my mission I have learned that it’s so much more than that. There are two parts. The redeeming power which will cleanse us of our sins and the enabling power which helps make our weaknesses our strengths. The enabling power doesn't make up what we can’t do, it gives us the strength to keep going to keep trying to endure to the end, to make us stronger. With the enabling power there is grace. Grace doesn't kick in at a certain, time it’s always with us. We just have to do all we can do. I have learned that grace is an action word. Like the scripture, faith without works is dead, grace without works is dead. Once we have done all we can possibly do that's when grace is applied and the atonement carries us. Elder Holland said "This may be the one of the Savior’s commandments that is even in the hearts of otherwise faithful latter day saints almost universally disobeyed and yet I wonder whether our resistance to this invitation could be any more grievous to the Lord’s merciful heart. I am convinced that none of us can appreciate how deeply it wounds the loving heart of the Savior of the world when he finds his people do not feel confident in his care or secure in his hand."

It’s okay to use the atonement because it means we are becoming more like God. I know I cannot change my situation sometimes but I can change how I respond. We just have to humble ourselves. When we understand the enabling power of the atonement we will be changed. We will have that strength beyond our own natural abilities. In the strength of the Lord we can do all things.

This week has been amazing and I am excited to find more people to teach. Emma and her family and Ethel are just the best and I know that we will continue to find more elect people as well. Our ward is good as well. I guess the missionaries right before Sister King where bad and scared the ward so they don't trust us and don't like us but it’s getting better slowly. We have a lot of work to do with the ward as well with our bishop. He is all about numbers and doesn't show us much love but he has good intentions. He is a great guy just needs to be softened. hahah So excited to help this ward!! :)

   I love you all soo much!! I hope you have a great week!!! Thanks for all you do!! :))) miss you all!! :) xoxoxoxoxo

Briaunna

We received an email from a Brother and Sister Brown from Briaunna's new area. They had her and Sister King over for dinner and took their pictures and sent them to us! What a great place to have dinner, on the water! Thank you so much Brown family!

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