The More Faith, The More Miracles

Dear family,

I have a very sacred and special experience to share with you this week.  We had interviews with President Maluenda this past Wednesday.  They were great. He is very inspired and loving and I feel like I get to have a personal interview with the Lord. On Tuesday night I started sneezing a lot, then Wednesday morning I felt a good old sore throat.  I knew I was sick and I proceeded to get worse throughout the day.  It was a blessing we had interviews and stayed at the church almost all day.  It got to the point of fever and chills and by 6:00came around I wasn't sure I could go out and work for the rest of the night.  Our district leader, Elder Brooksby had asked if I wanted a blessing. When the interviews for the zone were over I left to a separate room with Sister Judd and released my anguish and pleaded for the faith to be healed. Elder Brooksby and the assistants came in and gave me a blessing.  In the blessing I was blessed with the strength for work for the rest of the night. As he said these words I poured my heart to God in thanks and continued to plead for faith to be healed, and as I did so I felt the weight of my headache lift and the pain of my throat leave.  Under the power of the priesthood and according to my faith, I was healed.  After the blessing I felt as though my body was being carried by the spirit, and as long as I had faith, I could remain healed.  We went and did visits with the Relief Society.  By the end of the night a felt like small degree of my chills/fever had returned, but I never again felt any pain from my head or throat.  The Lord is taking care of me. 

     I told president that I have never felt like I've ever had so much faith in my life and as well I've never seen so many miracles.  The Lord truly is willing to bless us according to our faith.  We went to the Plumas to teach piano, and sister Pluma asked if her friend's daughter from school could come and recieve a lesson too.  We gladly accepted.  Lucy is the mom and Daniela the girl we taught.  After the lesson, we invited them to the family spiritual message and we shared why it is important to be baptized and invited them to be baptized.  Lucy, so sincerely happily and humbly said she'd been baptized last year in the Baptist church.  We are so looking forward to teaching them this week at the Pluma's home. Member miracle!  They wanted to come to church, but Daniela got sick. 

     One of the other missionaries in our district are teaching a young man named Michael, who moved into our area this week.  We had a lesson with those elders, 2 members, and us, and he accepted to be baptized Feb. 9th! He came to church this Sunday too, so he is on track and is excited to quit partying and change his life for the better. 

    Aida is the most amazing person I've ever met. We went to her house prepared to help her conquer doubts for quiting coffee and we didn't even ask her anything and she began to explain to us how coffee is bad and she isn't going to drink it anymore.  She explained that everyone thinks they need the energy and happiness from drinking coffee, but in reality you have more energy and are happier when you don't and that it is your faith that gives you that energy and happiness.  Despite her 3 year old being sick under grandparents care in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, she came to church and stayed for sacrament meeting with us anyways.  She is so sincere and thanks us all the time for the light that we have shared with her.  The gospel is changing her life and her home is more filled with peace. 

   The non member mother of an active family came this week to church, and we will try to help her overcome her doubts and get baptized this week! 

    We visit 3 less active families this week and 6 came to church!

Love,

Sister Campbell

1/21/2014

Hey family,

Hopefully this letter doesn't randomly erase on me like it did last week!

What a wonderful week!  Aida is doing great!  She is incredible!  She is so full of faith.  Last week we got to teach her about the gospel of Christ, Sabbath day, and the law of Chastity.  So we get there last wednesday, and I ask her if she read the pamphet of the Gospel of Christ and she said, "Yes! It talks about the steps we have to take in order to have eternal life." Then she proceeded to explain faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, and enduring to the end to us.  We were stunned with wonder.  Wow!  The very next sentence I said in the lesson was, "We'll be having a baptismal service on February 9th. Will you prepare to be baptized on this day?"  "Bueno! Voy a prepararme!" was her response. That's like how all of our lessons are with her.  It was difficult to teach her the law of Chastity not because she doesn't want to follow it, but because she didn't grow up with the background of why it is important to get married before you have sexual realtionships.  She's been living with her boyfriend for 2 years and so she is excited to talk to him about getting married.  In her prayer she asked God if he would help them get married very very soon!  Leti has been in Monterrey, so we haven't seen her since, but we will soon!  Pray for Aida! 

We've been working so much with our less active members and part member families.  there is One particular less active family we have become super close friends with, but they have been stubborn about not coming to church.  I promised God that before leaving their house I would testify that they need to worry about what God thinks more than man.  It is incredibly hard to be bold like this, but I knew that that is what God expected of me, so I did.  While I spoke I felt nothing, I didn't feel the spirit back up my words.  This was very confusing to me.  I had done what I knew Heavenly Father was prompting me to do, but I hadn't felt the spirit as I did it. I think it was because I was fearful, that I didn't want to offend them.  But this sunday my jaw dropped and my eyes just about popped out of my sockets as I saw their whole family walk into the sacrament meeting.  I started to cry.  I felt so happy, and relieved.  They happily shook my hand and gave me a hug after the meeting.  That was a huge miracle for me this week.  Another miracle was feeling prompted to visit a family whose records randomly appeared in our area recently.  We'd just met them, and wanted to be careful with this relationship seeing as how they are a part-member/less active family.  My companion didn't feel the same prompting I did.  This was hard for me, because I tend to trust in her more than myself, but I tried my best to follow the spirit and persist that we needed to see them.  They ended up letting us in and we got to know and become friends with them.  It helped me to trust in my own guidance from the spirit. 

Love,

Hermana Campbell

1/13/2014 Inspired to Knock!

Dear Family
     This is the letter that got erased when I was emailing.  I’m grateful for email, it goes quite a bit faster, ha.
     Well this week was incredible and we experienced one of the greatest miracles we’ve seen this transfer.
     One afternoon we felt inspired to knock specific apartments.  We only had about 15 minutes, so we knocked on a specific random door and the 1st one we didn’t say a word and a woman inside said, “Pasante! Hace Frio!” which means “come in, it’s cold outside!”  She (Aida immediately offered us dinner and wanted to hear our message.  We taught Alma the Younger and D&C 27:20, baptism.  She invited us back.  The 2nd time we came she invited her friend, Leti, who’d had some signs & dreams.  Turns out Aida had wanted to read the Bible, but didn’t know how, then we immediately knocked on her door.  Leti had had a dream that someone was going to give her a book, but she didn’t really want to read it because it was big but they told her to read it anyways.  Sister Judd and I smiled at each other.  They were completely into the lesson asking questions, taking notes, they couldn’t wait to read the Book of Mormon!  And they accepted to be baptized!
     Another miracle in disguise:  we brought 2 members with us to a super important lesson with a less active family, but they weren’t there.  But it was the lord’s hand because one member needed a blessing, so the other gave her one.
     Sister Judd and I are working very well with the ward.  We listen closely to the spirit and by doing so save a lot of time.
     We also made a transfer paper chain and wrote something for a random thing to do for each day.  So far we have:  competed taking pics of each other without our companion knowing; screamed, “AHH, there’s a spider!” when the house was quiet- super hilarious!; ordered Quiznos subs for each other without knowing what the other person likes; decorated pens for each other; had a camel-bak chugging contest; and wore shoes on the wrong feet until someone noticed- and no one ever noticed!  I’m loving my mission!
Love Mariah

“The Conch”  We play for 2 hours every P-day

Our Christmas Tree

Christmas Morning breakfast

The Wagner family Christmas Eve dinner

Sister Maluenda- President’s wife

Our mailbox. We love getting mail

1/6/2013 A week of listening to the Spirit

Happy late birthday Dad! Did anything cool happen? sister Beckstrand is training a new greenie! sister Cumberland.  She's having a tough time adjusting so keep her in your prayers, but we are working hard on getting to know her so she can disfruten la mision! We also got a new district leader, Elder Brooksby, who is a super good district leader, he's a huge football player and tries to be intimidating, but he's helping us out a lot, and gives great encouragement, we've already seen a ton of miracles. 

Holy Cow! The Lord is teaching me how to do missionary work his way, and I'm trying to learn it, but sometimes it is hard to do what He wants you to do when the norm is different.  Sister Judd and I felt the Lord telling us to work with our members like never before.  We are supposed to have a "rounded effort" which I thought meant spending a good amount of time finding new investigators through the area book or knocking as well as visiting less actives and active members.  But we felt like we needed to just visit members.  I tested the Lord this  week and asked him to show me that straight up member work was really what he wanted us to do.  This was a difficult concept for me to grasp, how do we find new investigators if we don't contact new people by spening time out knocking/contacting potential investigators from the area book.  Well, sure enough I asked and the Lord showed me, and very powerfully.  Every single member we visited that day produced a miracle.  We strengthened a less active, we taught a non-member friend who the Lord had placed in the house of a member at the time we decided to visit, we got to meet a super-less active daughter and give strength to ther mom, our investigator decided to drop off food and rekindle our relationship, we got to visit a another investigator at less active family's home, and we found another new investigator at the home of a less active that we've never got to visit with before.  All in one day, and we received 4 meals from them and visited them at the perfect times.  The last one I told you about, was an incredible experience.  We found out that our new investigator has been taught by the missionaries and has been to church before.  He needs a lot of help with the chastity and word of wisdom.  I can't wait to update you and tell you what other miracles the Lord decides to bless us with.  I've really learned better how to recognize the spirit this week. Got to go!

Love,

Hermana Campbell