6/30/2014 I love missionary work!

 I don't know what to say, I just feel like I've learned so much this week.

   We went on exchanges this week an it was so fun!  I got to be companions with Sister Petramalo, who I lived with in the MTC and we just had a blast together.  We saw so many miracles.  We were just standing there and someone would walk out the door or walk by and that person was someone who was ready to hear the gospel.  It was like every moment was just packed.  My legs were so dead after riding our bikes all day from 12-9.  We got lost a lot too. Since I didn't have Sister Stradling there to help me find my way in this new area.  My favorite moment was when we stopped to talk to a man on our bikes and he said we could share a message with him if it was 5 min instead of "Just 15" like we had asked for.  Not your best first impression.  But we quickly and powerfully taught the restoration and before we could ask him if he wanted to be baptized, he said, "Can you wait for just a moment, I need you to teach my sister in law."  He ran and got his 15 year old sister in law and we taught her. The spirit was so strong, as was our love for her.  You could just tell she was going through a lot and needed the gospel, even though she never said anything about what she was going through.  As we were leaving we ran into her mom coming home and told her that we had just taught her daughter. The mom asked, and what did Arelene (daughter) say?  "She wants to come to church tomorrow!" We said. "Really? That's great.  She has been looking for a church to go to. " And we made plans for them to come to church.  It was so awesome!  Unfortunately, she got sick on Sunday and is leaving for a month with her dad on Wed. but she excited for Tuesday when we will get to give her a Book of Mormon. On the exchange we focused a lot on testifying with boldness.  That is the next attribute I am going to strive for.  It was incredible to testify that way and it felt so wonderful and I feel like the spirit was with us even more.

    I am so grateful for the opportunity I have here to be a missionary!

I feel like I learned something so important this week about the Atonement.  The Atonement doesn't just help us overcome our sins or give us comfort in tough times, it CHANGES OUR VERY NATURE.  I know little by little I have been using the Atonement to change my nature, and I know that we can overcome ANYTHING with the help of Christ.  I hope you will learn all you can about Him and keep sharing the gospel with others!

Love,

Hermana Campbell

6/23/2014 Brother Salmond just moved into my area!

What on earth?! I'm sitting in Relief Society then at the end I hear, Sister Campbell?! (He almost called me by my first name.) This is the most shocked I think I have ever been in my whole life. I've never felt my face turn so red.  I just couldn't believe it to see my favorite seminary/institude/friend teacher who's family almost took swimming lessons, who gave me mission advice that I will never forget, shaking my hand in my ward on my mission at church! Then to find out that he had just moved into MY NEW AREA?! Yup, pretty boss. We're visiting him on Friday. :) He is here to train all of the seminary teachers in my mission. 

    So my new area is "Mission East", but it is located in McAllen.  I serve in 2 wards-English and Spanish.  The English ward is the most incredible, missionary-minded ward I've ever seen.  The APs also serve in our ward. My area is the most centrally located in the whole mission, so for any mission-wide conferences, we go to the chapel in our area.  This week was spent with a lot of getting to know all of the super awesome members in our area, and they feed us a lot. :) And my companion is so wonderful!  She is so compassionate.  She isn't a robot missionary who teaches the same lesson over and over, she teaches and connects to people.  She is super smart and funny.  Her name is Sister Stradling and she is from Snowflake, Arizona.

    The Lord is blessing us so much.  I know that God puts prepared people in our path.  We walk to our first backup and find someone walking down the stairs just as though coming out for our lesson, and somewhere in the middle of the lesson he mentions baptism and when he could get baptized, and Sister Stradling offers tonight or tomorrow, (half-jokingly) and he accepts for tomorrow morning, then we think and say, well, maybe you should come to church first! :) Then we randomly go to the church to go to the bathroom and one of our investigators pulls up right after we do to tell us that he just got off work and wanted to come and apologize that he couldn't come to church.  We ask him, how did you know we would be here? and he shrugs his shoulders. God is great!  I'm so excited to be here! 

Love,

Sister Campbell

6/16/2014 Father's Day

Ha! no worries mom!  It's pretty hard to distract me. ;) We are SO BUSY here.  Way to work it out! I think I know how you feel.  It is so frustrating when we set up key members to come to lessons or to give rides or to do anything, and they cancel 5 minutes before or don't show up.  Same with key investigators I've learned so much patience and how to deal with stress here!  I will admit, I was missing swimming lessons a little. For Saturday morning exercises I had to teach and demonstrate to Sister Tippetts how to swim all of the strokes as we were on our morning walk around the apartments.  :D Yeah, I'm going to miss teaching swimming this summer.  You have to write me funny swimming stories okay? :)  

I just wrote Josh a letter, but I think you should have this part of it: "I felt a little bit of the appreciation that the Lord has for his servants Sunday at church.  I was saying good-bye to members because I'm getting transferred tomorrow, and a few of them very sincerely thanked me for the service that I had given in the ward.  It would be the most painful thing to have not been able to help in any way.  But through their kind words I felt like Heavenly Father was telling me that He was grateful for the small sacrifice I have given here for the past 3 transfers."  Thanks for your sacrifice of letting me serve a mission so I can try to help the people here! I love you!

Dear Dad,
  I love you so much!  thanks for all of the support that you have given me while on my mission.  I was teaching one of our investigators and told him a little bit about myself and about how my greatest desire in life is to get married in the temple.  He suddenly said, "Oh no! Don't do that!" Like I needed to enjoy peace and life before settling down.  And I realized he felt that way because of his past.  He has lived through a very unhappy marriage because he chose not to follow the commandments or really love his wife.  I wish that he could have understood what I feel like I understand a little.  I have been infinitely blessed to see that a happy and glorious marriage is possible, and even sure to happen if both partners are based upon Jesus Christ. I wished i could help him understand that more joy that comprehended, the real meaning of life can be achieved if we follow the commandments and get married in the temple.  I'm so grateful that I have that understanding and hope, and that because I have the background I do, I can help others see the vision that Heavenly Father has for them.  Because I my parents have shown me what it is like to have a celestial home, or a home that is like heaven on earth. Thank you for giving me that freely.  I love you Dad!

Love,

Mo

6/9/2014 what an incredible week!

So much happened this week!  Angel Maldonado got baptized! Wohoo!  He is the youngest son of a less active family that came back to church last week.  Found out he wasn't baptized last Monday, met him Tuesday, taught him everything on Friday, interview Saturday, and baptism Sunday.  Crazy! What a miracle!  The feeling at baptisms is just the best!  He is a super funny kid. We played jeopardy at the end of the lesson on Friday and that was a blast.  It really made it real when his family came for his baptism after church.  They are so great and it really opened up the door for their whole family to get reactivated. :) 

    Edith, little Edith, and April came to church!  It feels like they are already members even though it was their first time attending.  I learned so much about the Priesthood in gospel principles in Spanish, wow, you really never stop learning do you.. . even about the basics.  It was funny because Edith was in there with me learning about this stuff for the first time two, so we joked about that like she was going to have to teach me instead of the other way around.  Like I didn't know that each of the following fall under the Melquezidek priesthood: Elder, High Priest, Patriarch, Seventy, Apostle, and I didn't know that a Bishop is under the Aaronic priesthood, but is normally ordained a High Priest to manage all ward members.  Cool!  When we got home after church Sister Tippetts and I got so excited about our new knowledge that we ran and grabbed our gospel principles book and started intensely reading it while making and eating dinner. 

  Also, Thomas came to church! He is making so much progress and really enjoyed the peace he felt there.  Hopefully he will be getting baptized in 2 weeks and Edith and her family in 3 weeks.  Rogoberto isn't doing very well. :( 

   We had a great family home evening with Edith's family and the Naredo's.  We played headbandz where you put a card with an object on your head and you have to ask questions to figure out what it is in a certain amount of time.  April, Edith's youngest daughter who is 8 was giggling so hard!  That is the most I've heard her make noise.  :) 

    We also did a mini-missionary split this Saturday which was a blast!  I was companions with Ruby, who is preparing to serve a mission, and Sister Tippetts went with Isamara.  We did double duty planning and met up at 5:00 for a dinner celebration for Father's Day to share all of the miracles we'd seen so far.  The time flew faster than ever because we both wanted so bad to find new investigators so that our member companions would love it.  We did! And this is actually the first week in my mission that we made every single one of our key indicators, or goals, and it was the same week we made our monthly baptism goal.  Wow! 

     We are trying so hard to get Tiffany to girls camp this week.  Hopefully it works! 

Bishop Mendez baptized Angel

At Angel’s baptism

6/2/2014 Halfway, best, and worst

Dear Beloved family,

    I really do love you all so much and pray for you every night.  I still wake up with a great big smile and throw the covers off, not being able to wait any longer to start the day. 

     I think I had my best day and worst day of my mission this week.  I think I will start and end with good and slip bad somewhere in the middle because that is how the week went. 

    Rogoberto: we did get ahold of him and he is going through some REALLY tough stuff right now with his family.  He feels really stuck and isn't very happy where he is at.  He feels like the harder he tried to do good, the harder the devil beats against him.  Please keep praying for him.  He is still progressing and working hard to come closer to Jesus Christ. 

    I don't remember if I've told you about Thomas yet.  We found him when we were out riding our bikes and it was a great example of blessings from being obedient to riding your bikes and the miracle of the Lord's timing.  He was sitting outside taking a break because of all the pressures hanging on him when we came up, and he knows that he needs Christ right now.  He felt the spirit and very humble because of what he is going through.  It has been such a blessing teaching him.  On the worst day we had tried calling the entire ward to help us with a church tour, and nobody could, then Thomas cancelled and we found out later that a member had shown up.  I felt so bad!  Later on in the week, a wonderful miracle happened and a member called us wanting to come work with us at the time of his rescheduled church tour.  She picked us up, made sure the church was open for us, and taught the lesson with us.  We told her what a miracle she had been in helping everything happen, and it really touched her.  Blessings in disguise for not having the church tour earlier huh? 

    I told you last week that another member had called wanting us to teach her friend and come to dinner.  That actually hasn't happened to me before, and everything went so well!  The friend is super shy and extremely nervous that we are going to force her to be baptized, but she is also very interested and it is so great teaching her! 

   So my funny horrible story of the week:  We were talking to people outside and ended up having a lesson with a Spanish-speaking mother who has 5 sons who are around 16-24. Only one of them is married. So the lesson was long, and not super clear, but it was okay . . .then she invited us to eat dinner.  So we go inside and her son had made mole.  Every single time we thanked them for the food and mentioned how good it was, she said, "Puede casarse con mi hijo!" or something to the effect of how great it would be if we married her son, who was sitting next to us eating too.  I didn't know what to say! It was so horribly awkward and I don't think he knew what to say either!  Sister Tippetts was just smiling and nodding her head because she didn't know exactly what was going on. . .oh man, I was so thankful to get out of there! 

     Now for my favorite miracle of the week! Guadalupe is progressing so well!  We went to her homeon Wednesday to teach her and her mom a little bit.  She has been to church 4 times now.  We felt like she was ready to be baptized earlier, so we taught her the gospel of Christ and the commandments, which normally takes like 4 lessons to teach, but the spirit was there and she accepted to be baptized earlier!  It was a really important lesson and God helped us out a lot with it.  When the spirit isn't there, I think she got nervous and asked if we could change it back to the original date.  Which is fine too.  We are becoming good friends. :)

     Also on Wednesday we had a huge rainstorm.  It was so powerful that I couldn't drive because of lack of vision and the rivery roads.  We are not allowed to drive through standing water so we just had to park for an hour or so.  It was so cool! 

   I think that my ear is naturally preparing for the swim season because I woke up this morning with it full of wax and an inability to hear, so we will see how that goes today.  It will probably go away soon. 

I love each of you!  Please keep me updated on how you all are. 

Love,

Hermana Campbell

6/2/2014 Letter

 I feel so great out here in Texas.  I have finally learned to drink about 10-14 cups a day of water because I sweat a ton!  It’s not even July or August yet- Oh Boy!
This week has been the week of long lessons which is not good, but we are still very blessed to find people to teach.  This has been one of the funnest months of my mission.  I’ve never had so much faith, success, stress, and yes there are so many disappointments too, but you just have to give all of your pains to Christ and trust that he will take care of them.  I want so badly for our Casa Linda Branch to grow!  We are working hard.  I look back to see if I have made a difference and it is hard to see which is sad.  But I’ve been thinking about it this week and my success is not defined by external fruits I produce.  I cannot say, “I got 4 baptisms this moth.”  It is simply not true and not my purpose.  The only baptism I will ever get is my own and those other people who got baptized had to work hard for their own.  Success is defined by internal fruits.  What did I learn?  How did I change”  How did I work?  How dedicated was I”  Then those external fruits are a natural result of internal success and those miracles that you get to see in other people’s lives are tender mercies from the Lord and his blessing you with a little of the joy that He experiences.
     I sure do love grandma.  Through all of the trails and disappointments we have, I know that gratitude will help us to remember how merciful the Lord has been.  Gratitude will lift up our hearts and help us rejoice.  I’m sending a photo of sister Leichthammer.  She’s like our grandma.  She feeds us good and we always sit by her during sacrament meeting.

The Lopez family - my favorite family in Laredo

 The Lule family- another one of my favorites in Laredo

 Sister Tippetts with Holy Water and me with my Rosary - we made empanadas

Mother’s Day dinner at the Casa Linda Branch. Sister Leichthammer is the best! She only speaks Spanish & understands a little of Bro. Leichthammer’s English but they are very cute together. She has the funniest laugh. I love it. Whenever we compliment her food she always gives us a special look and a short chuckle as though she were saying, “Oh…don’t stop- give me more compliments!”

5/27/2014

We have coordination with the Spanish branch every Thursday night.  And it is usually me, Sister Tippetts, Elder Robinson and Clark, and Brother Salazar who get things started with a song.  None of us are very confident carrying a tune by ourselves and so we all just sing off pitch and it is so difficult to hold in the laughter. It sounds terrible!  Every single week.  I've started to try to pick shorter songs, but I have to close my eye closest to Hermana Tippetts so I won't see her laughing and start to laugh myself. :)

  This week at the Leichthammer's home we had tacos and beans, and sister Tippetts doesn't like black beans by themselves so she begged me to scoop them onto her plate.  It was so scary sneaking them!  How horrible that would be to get caught!  But I managed to do so and then I discovered a white ant an inch away from my beans trying to get them first.  Casually I squished it with my finger, but it wouldn't die, so I had to use the other end of my fork. All while trying to pretend like nothing is happening and smiling. :) 

    I realized something this week.  Every time we pray and ask God where to go, a miracle happens and we find a new investigator.   It is how we found Tiffany. She is planning on going to Girls camp in a week or two and maybe her friend too. :)  It is how we found Jerry's family.  And more recently it is how we found Carol and Elijah.  We pray to ask where to go, a name comes to mind, we go there and find.  It is crazy the timing the Lord has, everything works out.  We arrived on Saturday late, but it had been 5 minutes after they got home and they are so wonderful! 

  Rogoberto is doing great!  We always ask him how reading the Book of Mormon is going and he says, "I'm not going to lie . . ." like he hasn't read very much, but we finally found out where he is and he is on Mosiah 18!  Whohoo!  I hope he is doing okay . . we haven't heard from him in 3 days which is really weird. 

   Guadalupe, a member's girlfriend came to church and another member called us with someone to teach. I love it when that happens! 

   I hope that all is going well with my wonderful family!

 I love you all so much and pray for you. 

Love,

Hermana Campbell