July 21, 2014

Hello Family! 

It has been a crazy p-day. We have been trying to email four different times today. There was interviews at the chapel and lots and lots of craziness. 

To get to the good stuff 

Last week I DID full on Karate with a brother in our ward, he's a 7th degree black belt or something crazy like that. We learned how to HI-YA, and HA and kick and some other really cool moves that I cannot even pretend to spell. I have a whole new respect for those karate people out in the world. I could barely walk the next day. 

Went on an exchange to Elizabeth. I LOVED IT. Literally a whole different world, we meet lots of amazing people. One man we contacted even came to our FHE activity and read a specific paragraph in the 'Gospel of Jesus Christ' pamphlet we gave him to the whole ward. Miracles!

Side Note #1- on our morning run we found a box with two holes that said "Dead Cat...Please Take away" I laughed and laughed and laughed. Is that bad of me? You never know what you find in Elizabeth.

Side note #2- I learned how to say a prayer in Spanish. Thank you Hermana Schaefer :) 

Helped run the Stake Primary activity, we did some skits and mostly just fell in love with those little sweet children. It was all about becoming a missionary. We made little name tags for them and they were all so excited to be a missionary. I was too :) 

On Saturday we went to check the baptismal font to make sure it was ready for Diego's BIG day and found 8 BIG NASTY black beetles crawling everywhere, and yes I did not scream :) We got some bleach and attacked. We started the font and worked on other things for the baptism. 3 hours later....we remembered. We sprinted down the hall, the whole time I was thinking how are we going to explain flooding the church to our Mission President. But we had a huge miracle and I had forgotten to turn one of the focsets on, and no water had bubbled over. Huge miracle.  

And for the Good Stuff.....

DIEGO WAS BAPTIZED!!!!!!! Diego's story is one of a kind and just incredible. I wish I could explain all of it, but needless to say it was an exciting day, almost the whole ward stayed after to support. I was able to share my testimony and all the memories from my baptism came flooding back, there is something special about baptisms, one of our brothers and sisters is making a covenant with God. A special promise! to follow him.The spirit is always present testifying of truth and it was strong yesterday. Diego bore his testimony. He talked about his new life, he is redeemed. :) It was a great day. (look up the song "redeemed" I'm not sure who sings it but its one of my favorites...."I am redeemed, he sent me free" it describes what he said completely)

We are searching and praying for guidance here in this beautiful Scotch Plains area. I am grateful to be here. To fight for my Savior, I LOVE this work. We are Redeemed through our Savior, Jesus Christ. He has set us free, from SIN and DEATH. I'm grateful for this knowledge and can't wait to go out and find more people ready to hear this gospel. 

And I can't wait to fight alongside my Brother out here in the Beautiful East Coast! Hurrah for the TRUTH!

I love you all! 

Sending love and hugs from Jersey

Sister Houghton

Can you please voice record Todd"s farewell?? :) I would love that! 

July 14, 2014 Happy Birthday

Dearest Family

I hope everyone got their free Slurpee....we defiantly got ours :) Thank you for all the Birthday Wishes and letters, so wonderful! I can't believe I'm 22....I am old?

This past week has been interesting with our investigators. We went to see Marie, and she is not willing to change some beliefs right now, I bore my testimony to her and told her when she was ready to change to call us, I have learned that dropping Investigators is one of the hardest things I've had to do on my mission. It is a complete act of faith. Trusting that there is someone else we need to meet. Marie had become one of my favorite people, my heart physically broke, I'm grateful that I was able to teach her and I know someday she will be prepared. 

We have been banned from teaching Frankie due to some questionable encounters and phone calls..in the middle of the night. That literally put our number of investigators to...uno. But I have realized that this is a great opportunity for us to completely trust and ecxersize our faith. 

We were praying to know were to contact/knock and both Sister Crow and I felt prompted to knock a certain complex at the very bottom of the area. This little neck/section of our "vineyard" has some unique characteristics about it...

#1 there are over 60 Apartment buildings with close to 20 apartments in each one (missionaries dream :))

#2 99.9% of the people are from India (we call it Little India...Curry anyone?) 

#3 because of #2 most of the people don't have a Christian background (almost all of them) 

This revelation was a little of a shock to both of us, and it has been an act of faith to GO and DO. 

When we got there on Saturday we both felt like which building should we start at? Sort of overwhelming...well God is a God of Order so we headed to #1 and knocked for a couple of hours. That whole time we met 2 people who were not Indian, and had no success. I thought why are we even knocking here?...EVERYONE IS HINDU! Immediately I felt completely guilty for thinking that, Mormon said "we receive no witness until after the trial of our faith" right? so we went back yesterday and the first door we knocked we met Santosh! He opened his door with a BIG smile on his face. He said he wants to learn more and is going to have his son sit with us in our next lesson. We were speechless. It hit me, God knows us. He KNOWS who needs to hear about the gospel. We don't. If we just TRUST him he will guide us. TRUST HIM. HE TRUSTS US. And so we will continue to knock and pray and testify. 

Diego is doing better than AMAZING. He is INCREDIBLE. The Bishop and a family in the ward came with us to teach him some commandments and give Diego a blessing to help overcome some minor addictions. It was such a beautiful blessing and Diego said he felt like he wasn't even in the room. He came to church on Sunday and is just hungry for knowledge. It was a beautiful Sunday. 

Just wanted to say that we had some huge tender mercies on Friday, which happened to be my birthday. and the end of my license. we had appointments in a town a lot farther than we could walk, and thanks to prayer the assistants and you MOM AND AMBER the license arrived just in time. I can still DRIVE! such a tender mercy. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! 

I love you all! Keep sharing the gospel! 

I can't wait till another Elder joins me out here! Just a couple more weeks- Elder Houghton :) 

Sending love from Jersey

Sister Houghton

7-11 Birthday Slurpee:)

Happy Birthday (the one one the right is SISTER SMEDLEY our cousins- cousin :) 

July 7th 2014

Happy Holidays Familia!

Wow. Reading about Prep really  touched me. Wow. For some reason this past week Prep has been on my mind. I couldn't figure out why I was having thoughts about him. now I know why. I'm always learning how the spirit speaks to us. Prep is a special spirit. I am praying and thinking about him. Their whole family has been and will be in my prayers.

He is such a trooper and a fighter. Please give him a big hug from me. Alma 38:5 

 There is something about July...I don't know if its the bbq's....free 7/11 Slurpee's :) fireworks, rodeos... or my birthday that makes the month my favorite. On my mission I've learned July is a celebration month....and my favorite because there are MORE people are on the street to contact, More families are home! (Every missionaries dream) AND people don't want the AC to leave their homes sooo sometimes they will invite us in! Its a month of opportunities! I just LOVE this month.

 We've had a very busy week...dropping people or getting dropped. We are defiantly in the finding mode (pmg says we should always be finding...its just a little bit more now, ok a lot more) I'm grateful to have this opportunity to start over and find and find and find. I know God has prepared people out here. 

 For some good news.....

 Diego!

 Well Diego is simply incredible. I have never NOT IN MY ENTIRE life met someone like Diego. He absolutely loves the gospel. When we go to teach him he wants to jump right into the lesson, he asks us questions about things we haven't talked about yet, when we went over the Plan of Salvation He shared his testimony with us about the truth of the plan, I almost started crying, well he basically taught us the Plan. I wish I could bring all of you into that lesson with me so you could experience the spirit in that room. HE always talks about how happy he is now that he knows about the gospel. Gospel brings Happiness

 Still no updates on Katie yet. We haven't been able to meet with her lately.....we are still praying. 

We will find out on Tuesday what Marie's answer is.....

 Also I just want to say something more about the weather...ITS sticky sticky, sticky hot. I didn't think I could sweat so much. um gross I know. I call it Insta-sweat here. You walk outside and BAMB, kind of like instant moisturizer (sorry TMI I know, I know) so walking Day was HOT, we made it to our appointments soaked in.... well anyways it was a great day, we saw some storm clouds in the distance so the senior couple who came up on a team up with us ran us home to get umbrellas. The umbrellas were NO MATCH for the HUGE typhoon like rain that hit.  My umbrella turned inside out, and the rain pelted us. NO one answered their door. ( I don't blame them, it was crazy outside) The streets turned into moving rivers. The whole time I kept saying this is building character. right? Cars drove by and just like what happens in the movies when a car drives by a huge wall of water hits the people standing off to the side, well I testify that can really happen in real life. We WERE SOAKED. Even through all of the unfortunate events.

 

This is the beginning of the rain

 Sister Crow and I just kept laughing, and laughing and singing church songs at the top of our voice. For numbers it was not a successful night, but I learned something from sloshing around in the 6 inches of water- the trials are going to come, "The winds and the storms shall beat upon you" (and they definitely did and will) "BUT it will have NO POWER OVER YOU, because of the ROCK upon which ye are built" If we center our lives on our savior, we can survive the trials. And we CHOOSE how we are going to handle them. I realized that even though everything was going wrong, we had something to celebrate, something to shout to the world! THE GOSPEL. A RESTORED CHURCH. A SAVIOR. This is all true. I'm so grateful for this knowledge! 

 Hurrah for the TRUTH! 

I love you all! Keep sharing the gospel. CTR. 

Sending love from Jersey,

Sister Houghton

 

June 29, 2014

Hello Beautiful Family,

Congrats to everyone who ran RAGNAR! (or who helped out) I'm so proud :) sign me up!..but really. :) 

We all had to say goodbye to President Jeppson this week. I don't think any one of us here could hold in the tears. He has been our mentor, our guide and a HUGE support. He helped me through some of the toughest times in my mission. Words can't describe how grateful I am for him. 

We had a big transfer conference that the WHOLE mission was invited to :) Sister Crow and I ran in to the chapel (reverently of course...) to get front row seats and record some of the testimonies. It was a meeting I will never forget. 30 missionaries in total went home. We listened to 2 hours of testimonies. Needless to say we were spiritually fed and in the words of one of the leaving missionaries we felt so pumped we were ready to "Hit someone in the face with the Book of Mormon!" Saying Good bye to President and Sister Jeppson was hard, BUT we were ALL given Permission to HUG them, BOTH! so I got to HUG President JEPPSON! It was like hugging my own father. Like being home :) Something I have not experience in 14 months. I will treasure that memory, that meeting, and the spirit in that room, forever.

Good bye President Jeppson

President and Sister Jeppson

 We saw Diego on Walking Day, and we were sweaty. It honestly wasn't that hot, but the humidity does something to our bodies? needless to say we were one sweaty mess getting to all of our appointments. Diego (the one that has read the whole Book of Mormon Already) was our last appointment of the day, and I couldn't stop my Jaw from hitting the ground...over and over again. Seriously he is amazing. Here is just a small example He has read the whole book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price and part of the Doctrine and Covenants. Ordered from Deseretbook.com "Whose on the Other Side" by Brent L. Top (which was sitting on his coffee table when we walked in) and reading the Articles of Faith by James E. Talmadge. He told us about his journey to find the true church. Looking and nothing seemed to fit, and then he remembered the Mormon Church that was by his home in the Dominican Republic and the 3 Mormons at his High School that always seemed so happy. The spirit was palpable and I was blown away by his faith and love for this gospel. He told us he knows the information and now he just wants to learn how to recognize the spirit.  We taught him on Saturday and in the middle of the lesson he asked where the closest temple was. He is know preparing for baptism in the next couple of weeks. 

Update on other Investigators:

Bill- we stopped teaching him,  we each bore our testimony to him, he's simply not reading and praying to know. we told him to call us when he reads 2 Nephi 31.   He ended up coming to church and told us he's going to read? maybe we just needed to step away from him so he would have motivation? 

Katie, Donna and Joey- they've been avoiding us. This one hurts. They won't answer the door or call us back. We are praying really hard for them.

Marie: We went to have a lesson with her and she bore her testimony to us about Joseph Smith. She's passed her baptismal interview but we don't know whats holding her back. We are praying for guidance with this one. 

The last couple of weeks were challenging, and it became apparent to me to TRUST in God's plan. Even when we are rejected, over and over, and simply feel overwhelmed. From one of my favorite songs it says "You will never stand alone You were never called to bear the burdens on your own, where there is fear, love will take control and lead you on" Christ will never leave us. 

I know Diego is not the only one on this journey to find the true church. There are many. Heavenly Father IS preparing people to hear the message. I know as we rely on him, we will be guided to those ready to find the truth. READY to make changes. DON'T GIVE UP. We must never back down, the Standard of Truth has been ERECTED. Let us keep fighting for Him. HE lives! 

I'm excited to go out and "Hit some people with the Book of Mormon" ;)

I love you all! Have a fun 4th! Keep sharing the good news. 

Sending love from Jersey

Sister Houghton

Fun Fact-the 27th was the 170 year anniversary of Joseph Smiths martyrdom...maybe not such a fun fact? 

Beat Joe Cicon in chess.  A huge accomplishment, he's a chess pro and super smart. The family is amazing and feeds us every other week 

Teaching a group of amazing women