2/24/2014 2nd week in Brownsville

There are few things sweeter in this world than sharing hope with a child who wants to be happy and loved by telling them that God loves them and knows them by name.  I don't want to ever forget the wonder and hope in her voice when she asked, "He does?" And how I hope her parents will accept the gospel!  

1. Helote man

    There are dark blue raspy vans that drive through the neighborhoods here like ice cream trucks, but instead of selling ice cream, they sell helotes, "Helotes! Helotes! RRRRrrrrrrrica! con mayonesa, chile, queso!"  An helote is corn cob on a stick that is covered in mayonaise, chile, and cheese.  I tried one for my first time this week, and we got a picture with Havier, the helote truck driver.  But after we gave him a card and invited him to church I realized I had forgotten to pay him for the 2nd helote! I realized this just as he rounded the corner and started running after him but it was no use.  I just have to pray that I find Havier the helote man again. I felt super bad! I don't think helotes taste very good though.

2. We met Edgar and Edel who have come to church for the past three weeks with their step-sister, which means they can get baptized this Friday with parent permission, and assuming we can teach them everything in that many days!  I wish I could describe things better.  Missionary work is such a rollercoaster.  We met them, but then we couldn't have a lesson with them, and we didn't think they could come to church, and then they came.  They are best friends with 3 neighbors, Rachel, Amanda, and Michelle, who are prepared to hear the gospel as well.  We stopped by with a member and when Rachel opened the door the member we brought and Rachel already knew each other and talked like old friends.  That member played a huge part in the lesson, and now they want to get baptized on March 23rd.  They are our most solid investigators right now.  We will probably get to see them every night this week because we will be teaching Edgar and Edel and they pretty much live at their house.  They honestly feel like family, it is hard to believe it was only this week we met them. The little girl I first talked about is related to this family.  It was hard when they didn't come to church because less than 24 hours later we had taught them the importance and they were so excited.  I'm pretty sure this is like the only mission where people just up and decide they want to go to another country that's 5 minutes away instead of come to church.  

3.  Last Friday there were a bunch of kids playing in kickball in the street, and you know me, I DESPERATELY wanted to play too.  So I asked them if I could and we all became instant friends.  Then when we tried to leave and give them a card, they all wanted to all the different cards so they could each have a book of mormon, a Christ video, and visit mormon.org, and they all took us to their houses to meet their parents.  I LOVE CHILDREN!  Then they begged and begged that we would play another round of kickball with them, so we did just for a short time before heading off.  

I love this area, and I love life, and I love the gospel!  

Love,

Hermana Campbell

p.s. we deep cleaned behind the refrigerator and stove today where all the cockroaches hide and it was sooo scary!  but we got them all with Permytherine.  

2/18/2014 Riverbend, Brownsville

Dear Family,

My apartment is infested with Cockroaches!!!!! Ahhhhh!  my new favorite tool to kill cockroaches is the millions of grapefruit that the Leighthammers give us every week. The grapefruit are a little sweeter here, but not enough for me to love.  It is incredibly beautiful here, there are rasacas everywhere, which are like large ponds, just on the side of roads, everywhere, and palm trees, and it is a lot greener.  My new companion is Sister Andersen, she's from Smithfield, Utah, went to Sky View, graduated the year before me.  Her dad is the Sky View basketball teams coach.  She is wonderful!  She is obedient, happy, talkative, and hardworking.  She played high school volleyball, (starting sophomore year, so I didn't play against her) so for morning exercise we invested in a volleyball and we pepper in the parkinglot.  It is a blast!  I have so many miracles to share with you this week! 

Tuesday: the transfer went fine, I thought a lot about the kind of missionary I wanted to be when I got there.  I knew right off the bat I wanted to be exactly obedient, humble, and full of faith, meet all of the members as soon as possible.  That first night, we only had 3 hours to work, but the Lord just put us in all the right places.  We visited a less active father who wants his kids to have the gospel.  We taught his son and his son's friend, and they both accepted to be baptized.  We prayed to know which less actives to visit after that and both of them that Sister Andersen hasn't seen in a while were available for a visit, and there was a friend at one of their homes who more or less accepted to be baptized. 

Wednesday: I have to tell you about the Leighthammer family!  They are an older couple, Brother Leighthammer only speaks English and is from Germany so he has an accent and can't understand spanish, and Sister Leighthammer only speaks Spanish, and can't understand English.  So it is interesting teaching a lesson with them.  We just speak the whole lesson in Engish and Spanish.  We asked them how they communicate, and apparently Sister Leighthammer can't understand our English, but she can understand her husband's accented english.  he is a great cook and loves to talk.

Thursday: There are 4 recent converts in our area, so we get to meet with them weekly.  They're great, and we are helping them prepare names for the temple and get really solid in their ward/branches.  Last week Sister Andersen and Sister Nail (who was in my mtc district and came out with me, so I replaced her here) offered some service to a stranger.  We stopped by this week, and Betty let us in and accepted to be baptized.  She is going through a lot of pressure with religion from her family because she wants to get married to a man who belongs to a different religion, so pray for her.  Her prayer after our first lesson was very sincere, and she told us that she felt like she had been missing something and this was it. 

Friday, we oym (open your mouth) to everyone we see, and found Sandra who wants to come to church, and so we're teaching her too.  So for valentines day we took each other out to eat at Taco Palanque, the tacos here are incredibly delicious.  Also, for Valentine's day, I was grabbing something out of my bathroom bag and my RETAINER fell in the TOILET!  Gaaa!  So I washed it with dish soap, scrubbed it with toothpaste, then soaked it in listerine, and have yet to boil it and use it again. 

Saturday: Was a weird day, but good nonetheless.  We were starving so we prayed whether to go home to eat or go to our next appointment, and right after the prayer the phone rang inviting us to a birthday party with food at the recent convert's house right then.  Quite the tender mercy.  

Sunday: There is one English ward and 6 or 7 spanish branches, so the english ward gets 22 missionaries. It is a little overwhelming for them, and it makes it a little harder to work.  The branch we mostly work with is called Casa Linda, and it is wonderful.  There is a set of elders and us, and we feel very welcomed.  The branch mission leader is awesome.  His friend got confirmed a member of the church this week.  He just takes care of everything for us.  A pretty cool miracle at in the English ward happened.  We work with this black family named the Crocketts, who are like music super stars and are less active.  We stopped by their house and found the dad and son leaving to go meet up and do a music video with two white rappers.  Well the Crocketts decided to come to church this week and they brought the two white rappers with them.  Gospel Principles was incredible, we talked about the Holy Ghost and after the meeting one of them described his experience, "I've been to a bunch of different churches and I've felt good, but nothing like what I felt today.  I felt (the spirit) so strong I couldn't breathe for like 5 minutes."  We're not sure who will be teaching them because they live in the Elders area, but are at the Crocketts in our area a lot, but that was pretty awesome.  Then that night we got a referral from the English branch that two -step brothers of a member have been to church three times and want to be baptized.  We get to meet with them today, I'm super excited!  You need to understand that sad things happen in the mission too though.  We had to drop a family that we had been teaching who had a baptismal date because they weren't willing to act and come to church.  That was very hard.  So every prayer is so important! 

Monday: I am so grateful for laundry machines in the home and a mom who did my laundry!  We have to pay and go to the laudromat here, and it takes a lot of time because you have to wait there and it's a little hard to focus and do studies.  Funny story: I threw our shower curtain in the dryer, and it melted!  So I had to buy a new shower curtain. 

Love,

Hermana Campbell

2/10/2014 Transfers

Hey family!

I'm getting transferred to Riverbend in Brownsville! 6 hour road trip tomorrow.  Ahhhhh! I have to leave Laredo? ;(  This week was weird.  I think we felt transferrs coming and you can sense when there is going to be change.  I don't remember a lot from this week.  It is crazy how the Lord answers our prayers and fasts.  Mircles are so proportional to faith.  The fact that the Lord sent cache vally a bunch of snow after your fast is a clear manifestation that God listens to your prayers.  That was an incredible miracle.  I also know that the Lord is bound when we do what he says, but when we don't do what he says, we have no promise.  There are so many small and simple things that our leaders tell us to do that somehow slip through the cracks because we have busy lives.  Living the gospel is as easy as looking up at Moses' staff to be healed.  You must have the faith and choose to look.  We must have the faith and choose to obey. You have the opportunity to live up to your potential, just choose to be obedient to ALL of God's commandments.  I love my Savior Jesus Christ, and will do everything He asks. 

Love,

Sister Campbell

2/3/2014 Lopez Family

Dear Family,

    Sometimes I feel like I part of members' families.  We had a miraculous lesson with the Lopez family.  We had to come across the situation when Sister Lopez (non-member mom) would be willing to participate and even be the focus of the lesson.  God gave it to us.  We talked about the temple, and baptism. She wants very badly to participate in the temple experience, but there are some tough things we have to help her overcome, but she is being prepared.  Like last week she randomly decided to stop drinking coffee.  The spirit was incredibly strong in the lesson and the rest of the family there was such a great support.  She accepted to say the closing prayer and asked God to give her strength to be baptized.  Oh how I hope and pray we can help her overcome her fears! 

   We had exchanges with the Sister training leaders from Corpus, one of them was "born" in my area, so naturally she was super excited. She bears her testimony so much and they talk to EVERYONE even if it is just handing out a card.  We had some miracles on exchanges.  The first place we went we talked to man who has lost his faith and is struggling with his marriage, and we taught and bore testimony to him, we will see if he chooses to act on the hope we have shared with him.  Then Sister Judd and Sanders found Wile, who is in his 50s but has had a lot of strokes. He wants to know his purpose in life. He accepted to be baptized on March 2nd and came to church this week! 

  I have good news for Aida!  She was very worried about getting married to Stephen because she feels like it is out of her control, like her decision to follow God suddenly became dependent on someone else's decisions, but the spirit worked his magic, and she decided Wednesday night to make the house really nice and ask him to marry her.  And she did!  And he said yes!  He still wants to ask her in a special way, the only problem is that he doesn't feel the urgency.  We will keep working with them, and have plans to teach Stephen the gospel too.  

    One more thing: Sister Judd and I camped out in the living room this week and invented s'mores with wheat flour and fried reeces.  It was a blast!  

Love,

hermana Campbell