# 12 New area Kingman Arizona April 20th, 2015

TRANSFER WEEK!!!

   I am here in good 'ol Kingman Arizona, the heart of Rout 66! Like from the movie cars!!! It is the cutest old town! There is nothing around except for dirt & tumble weeds! ya gotta go look up this place on google, it is so fun! (I'll send pictures next week, I forgot my camera.) I needed a change of pace and i sure found it!

MY Companion is Sister Onorato! She is the sweetest person in the whole world! She has an ability to love people that amazes me! I am so blessed to be serving with her! We have had a crazy week trying to get to know the area and each other. The people here are amazing!! We live in an area that if you drive 15 min up the hill you are surrounded my mansion size homes, and then if you drive 15 min the other direction, you are in an area where people are living in little man made tin huts, because that’s all they could find. I have never seen this kind of poverty before! It is so humbling to think about everything we take for granted...for example a roof over our head, heat, water, a toilet, a bed, a room to put your bed! It just amazes me! They are some of the kindest people I have ever met, maybe, because they have no reason to be selfish or judgmental. But there are also some pretty scary “ghetto” areas that we tend to avoid in the evening times. Places like "slaughter canyon"....yea let’s just say we don’t go down that road! hahaha I love it here :) this is my kind of town!

   We had two baptisms this week!!! Kate is 20, she has an amazing testimony!! When she told her family she wanted to join the church they formally disowned her with legal papers in an Easter card! So she sent them an invitation to her Baptism and told us "Sisters I just know it’s true, I have to be baptized, I have never wanted something so much in my entire life!" She was baptized on Friday night!! It was an amazing experience to be there for that. Although I didn’t get to teach her, I am learning from her testimony! The other baptism was a little girl, she waited to be baptized until she knew the church was true, so we get to teach her!

   There are a lot of recent converts here that we have been teaching! Carlos, Della and Andy! They are AMAZING! They all have a fire within them, they love the gospel more than life!! Della is a sweet older Lady who we go over and have bible study with every week! And she invites everyone she sees to come and join us! Her Husband is atheist, and he is so nice. He sat in on our lesson this week, and Sister Onorato told me that he has never done that before! 

   Andy, oh I love that guy! He reminds me so much of my brothers! He got baptized recently and we are teaching his wife Anna, and son Braden. They soak it up!  Braden knows it's true and he wants to get baptized once his dad gets the priesthood so that he can baptize him! Anna has a little harder time, she loves the lessons, but we need something that will really help her feel the spirit! They have another Son, Thomas. The missionaries have never met him, he doesn't come out of his room, and he has serious social anxiety. They whole family has struggled with it. Andy hadn’t come out of his apartment for months, and then the day he did was the day the Sister missionaries met him outside and he took it as a sign. So it’s amazing to see how far they have come! I have started leaving notes for Thomas and hopefully one day something will change! 

   

We also had the blessing of being able to go to the Temple this week! Sister Onorato had a doctor appt. in the valley so we drove back to Las Vegas and got permission to go the temple while we were there! And then I had an appt. this morning so we got to make the 4 hour drive again! We have had some fun mini road trips! It’s been fun! also.....we live in the desert...so there are lots of bugs. We find roaches in our apartment all the time! It was super bad for a while so we would sleep with the light on ‘cuz they don’t like light. But we have been getting tips and tricks from people, on how to get rid of them that have been working so there are a lot less now!! But hey I have a toilet and runny water so I am not complaining one bit! 

We have another crazy week coming up. I’m excited to see what it brings!

A mission is the best and hardest thing I have ever done, and I am so thankful for the blessing of being able to struggle my way through it! The atonement is real, and that is the way I get through the hard things! I love this gospel with all my heart! 

I’m praying for you all!

Love,

Sister Loveless

# 11 Transfer Time! April 13, 2015

Well it's that time. Transfer time! Today I just finished my second transfer in the mission, I finished my 12 week training and I am no longer a "greeny" or new missionary! 

We found out about transfers on Saturday morning, we get a piece of paper that us missionaries like to call "Transfer Doctrine" because it tell you, your fate!

My District

Sister Harrison and I had a feeling we would be getting transferred. And low and behold we are BOTH leaving and Elders will be coming into replace us. It’s crazy!! We had just replaced Elders, and we are the only Sister Missionaries both of our wards have had in over 10 years! And now they are back to Elders! 

The Duanes

Sister Harrison will be a Sister Training Leader for her last transfer. And I will be going........OUT OF VALLEY! I'm headed to the very tip of the mission. I’m going to Kingman Arizona! We joke and like to say that they didn't like our companionship so they split us up by states!

The Truman Family

But everyone I have talked to says they LOVE serving out of valley! It's more of a country feel and everything is a little slower pace. And I am excited! I am sure that I am going to LOVE it! It will be a nice change. And it will be so different to not see the strip right across the freeway. I will be out in the middle of nowhere! 

This week has been great! We got to visit a lot of Less Active members in the wards. Most of our investigators canceled on us, but I think it worked out for the best, the Elders coming in will be able to start fresh with lots of appointments this coming week. We have spent the past 2 days preparing the area for the Elders to come in and make a smooth transition. 

Wendi

Wendi & Robert

Wendi found out we were leaving and couldn’t stop crying! We had the blessing of being able to go over to their house for dinner on Sunday and talk with her and Robert about the importance of the gospel, and how going back to church will truly bless their lives!! I love being able to invite people to come to Christ. It is the most rewarding thing I have ever done. 

I feel so blessed to be here, I have learned so much in such a short amount of time. My life has truly been changed! I have formed relationships with people that I will never forget! I will treasure these past 3 months the rest of my life, I have learned so much about myself, and the gospel! I have seen the Lord's hand work in people’s lives in ways that I could have never imagined! I am so blessed! I am so happy!! 

Bishop Whipple & Famly

I am excited to start the next chapter of my mission! 

Sorry it's short, I have to go pack and get ready to catch the Van out to Arizona Tomorrow morning, and meet my new companion!

Love,

Us with  Antionet

Sister Loveless

# 10 Thanks for the Love and support!

Just a quick note today                   3-30-2015

I am so thankful for everyone and everything you have been doing to support me.

I am SO EXCITED FOR CONFERENCE!!! It’s going to be amazing!! These past two weeks have been so crazy and so spiritually uplifting. I have been working more on recognizing the spirit and listening to promptings. Dad we are trying out your method of tracting, we call inspired biking :) We have been focusing on finding a lot, in both our wards. We have started getting referrals and we found people on the street. We ended up getting two new investigators, they are a young family with one kid and another one on the way this week! AND Jen went to her friend's niece’s baptism on Saturday and called us up right after and said we needed to come over. We stopped by and she said "I WANT TO GET BAPTIZED!"  I AM SO EXCITED! She is amazing! She came to church yesterday with her two kids, and even though it was so hard and stressful for her to be there with them, she decided she wants to come every week!!

As I have been studying these past few weeks I have been thinking about one thing a whole lot! And I just can’t shake it.

I want you to go and read "Are we prepared" it was the 1st presidency message last September, I believe. Read it as a family. I really feel that now it the time to get ready for the future, and put some more effort into emergency preparedness, and food storage. I know I can’t do much from here. But i want to make sure that I share that thought with my family and friends. Because you mean the world to me! We don’t know what’s ahead, but the Lord has sent us prophets and apostles to lead and guide us, and that is one of the directions he has given us!! So don’t take it lightly! Read it for family night tonight! Maybe make a plan or something to work toward. I just feel like i should share that with you!!

I love you sooooo much!!!! I hope you are all doing great!! 

I send all my love!! 

ENJOY CONFERENCE!!

# 9 It’s a great day to be alive!

                                                                   

 

3-23-2015

What a great week!!! I feel like I’m running a race with no finish line! And I love it! I have learned and grown so much in the short time I have been a missionary. I can’t even believe it! This week has been one of growth and learning, the Lord stretches us to make us more flexible during hard times :) 

It's funny to me how much the world has changed from when I was a child to right now, this is a time and age of change, if you think about it, no other generation has gone through so much change in such a short amount of time. I mean look at my parent’s generation (I love you mom and dad) when they were growing up they didn’t even have a TV, or cell phones, or any of this crazy stuff, everything was simple. And now in this era, in the space of just 20-30 years we have totally changed our way of life, and with that we have lost some of the most important things. Like the importance of family, and God, trust, independence. The world is a crazy place. And that’s why I am so thankful that my parents taught me to live in the world but not of the world. And to give of all we had to those who are less fortunate, do secret acts of kindness and love one another. I am so eternally grateful for all the amazing lessons I was taught to help me become who I am today and to be able to live in this world but not be effected by all of the horrible things going on. The world is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. So strengthen your faith, learn of the eternal things. Because we will only be able to take our experiences, our knowledge and our relationships with us after this life. The adversary has done an amazing job trying to convince that what "really matters" in life is; our job, our car, our money, our clothes. What's going to happen if someone takes all of that away? What will we have to show for ourselves? Those are material things. We need to focus on the eternal things in life! That is what is “Most Important”. 

Okay I will get off my soap box now. But I have such a testimony that there is so much more to life, if we are willing to put in the work to find it!

This week I had the "blessing" of speaking in church. (I’m kidding, yes it really was a blessing, and I learned so much) I spoke on Christ and His suffering. It was amazing to study that more. 

We helped 3 of our investigators move out this week! Talk about sad! Antionette moved to Texas, we helped her pack everything up and get it all moved out! Then we helped Kathy and her family move out of their house (they were new investigators that were friends of the Downer's in our ward). WE did tons of service this week, it was really fun. We met a guy on the street named Joe who was pulling weeds and we stopped and helped him for an hour, and he said he would love to come to church with us. He was so nice. That same day we went and helped Wendi clean, because of all her health she can’t really do much on her own. So we were able to make a good dent with that! 

We had a really cool experience on Tuesday night while we were headed to go visit a less active in our ward. We were walking down the sidewalk at about 8pm, so it was dark, and we saw this guy working on his can in his driveway. So we went up to him and introduced ourselves. His name is Joe (not to be confused with the other Joe we met pulling weeds) To be completely honest, I’m not sure what happened next, but the next thing I knew we were talking about trails and all the hard things he went through in life, and then we found out he had a friend and her daughter living in his house who are inactive members of the church. He took them in because they had nowhere else to go. The daughter has struggled with drugs, and he paid for her to go through rehab. He said he wants us to come by and visit lots, it would be really good for everyone, he's not a member of the church, but he really wants us to come and help the girls. And he said that he would love to listen and learn too. We talked with him and the daughter Brittaney, for a good hour or so. 

I got to go to the Temple on Saturday!!!! One of the cute old couples in our ward got sealed in the temple this weekend, and we got special permission to go! It was such a blessing! I love the temple to much!

Our ward put on a really cool even for Easter. It was called "the Last Supper Fireside" It was so cool!!!! It was all about the Jewish beliefs, and the symbolism of the last supper in the bible. They made the food and everything, it was a really amazing experience. And then they took it one step further, and explained how the book of Mormon fills in all the rest of what the Jewish faith didn’t have the answers to. It was a really spiritual experience! 

I love the gospel! I don’t know where I would be without it! Strengthen your faith, and trust in God! He knows what you need, let him be your strength and your guide! Remember...do you want to choose that path that is best for you, or the path that you think is best? 

I love you all! And I testify that the fullness of the gospel has been restored on earth once more, it is the same church that Christ established during his ministry!

I love you!

Love,    Sister Loveless

These pics are from our District Meeting last month.  "GOT LIGHT"

# 8

Hello all,

Another week in the warm Las Vegas!! In the Warm Springs stake.....and boy is it starting to get warm!

This week was full of firsts for me. I gave my first "training" in our stake missionary meeting. Sister Harrison and I led a discussion of how we can help our members see their role in missionary work. We had the coolest object lesson! Our amazing relief society president went out and bought flashlights for all of the missionaries in the stake for this lesson. We turned of all the lights and handed everyone a flashlight and then told them they could only turn it on if someone shared their light with them. So I started by reading a scripture about light, and that made my testimony "shine" so I turned on my light, then I shared it with my companion who then shared it with one of the missionaries sitting down, and then they shared their light with everyone else. So by the time we were done everyone's light was shining and the whole room was light! It was really cool! The spirit was very strong! 

We had a ton of amazing lessons with week!! We met with the Tenny's a family just coming back to activity, and we were planning on having a lesson about the plan of salvation....but her son in law was in town, he is a strong catholic...and very closed minded. So as we tried to give them a lesson he came in the room and started telling us all why we are wrong and what the "true" meaning of the scriptures are and how we have a fake bible and all this stuff. So after a while of that we decided it was time to excuse ourselves because nothing will be accomplished with the spirit of contention! He later told sister Tenny that he had "schooled us" we knew he thought he had "won" but it doesn't really matter, because I know the truth and I know what I believe and I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet. 

But then right after we had a lesson with my favorite investigator, EDVIN! His lesson was amazing!!! It was the most spiritual lesson I have ever been a part of! Edvin and Lucy are amazing!!! Their faith is so strong because of the things that they have been through! I can’t wait to see his be baptized, and their goal is to go to the temple a year from now, so hopefully I will be able to be there for that too!

The other first's that happened this week were dropping......We had to "drop" one of our golden investigators, David. We had another lesson with him with a young couple from our ward and it was a good lesson, but the whole time the spirit was whispering to me that he was not ready. He loves the spirit and the gospel but he doesn't accept the church as a whole, he isn’t changing at all. We all came out of the lesson feeling that way. I think one day he will be ready and he will remember everything we taught him and it will finally click, it’s just not the time now. So we will continue to invite him to things, but unless he asks to have us come over we won’t be meeting with him anymore :( because we are on the Lord's time and I know that there will be someone else who we need to focus our time on. We also go dropped by an investigator that same day....Bob told us he is happy for us but he doesn't want to take the lessons, he is fine where he is at. ( it feels like I dumped someone and got dumped all in the same day...ahahah)

Antoinette is moving!! Her husband needs surgery, so she is moving out to Texas to be with him. We are happy for her though, she still want to meet with the missionaries, so we will send the missionaries there her info, and hopefully she will keep taking lessons!

But Wendi!! She is doing amazing!! She told us her full story, the day before we came over she was getting ready to kill herself. She had given up, and she was tired of being in so much pain all the time! But she decided before she did that that she would try one last, thing. She went onto Lds.org to the chat section, and said "I need strong LDS friends" so a girl responded, they started talking, and then she sent in Wendi's information to have the missionaries come. And we showed up the next day. She has changed so much from that first day, she has a light about her and she is happy again! She started reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning 3 days ago, and she is already in Jacob!! That’s almost half way through! AND she told us that on Saturday when we met with her he husband (Robert, who fell away from the church right after getting baptized years ago) was listening in on our lesson and he asked if we could come over for dinner on night and stay after so he could talk with us!! I can’t help but smile! Wendi was about ready to cry! We are so excited!! 

And now it’s time for another week! I pray we will be able to find more people to teach to make up for all the people we lost this week!

With Love,

Sister Loveless

(I’ll send pictures next week....I left my camera at home..)

#7 The Lord knows what we need!

Well, this week has been one of the hardest so far! But it’s also been one of the most rewarding! This was our First week serving in both the Warm Springs (WS) and Las Palmas ward! The Elders left us a pretty great area, we love our new ward! 

On Tuesday we went and met all of our investigators in Las Palmas (LP), and they are amazing! 

Edvin has a baptism date. He is going to be baptized on May 19th, because He is getting marries on May 12th to his Fiancé Lucy who is a member. Edvin told us his conversion story, He used to hate the church, he would make fun of the missionaries, he had anger issues and he said that he would "never join the Mormons" and this was all why he was dating Lucy, He had been going through the refiners fire, and after a while he humbled himself enough so that one day when Lucy decided to go to church on mother’s day he said he would go with her, and then he said it was okay if the missionaries came for dinner, and eventually he agreed to take the missionary discussions. And now he is preparing to get baptized and their goal is to get sealed in the temple a year from his baptism. Edvin is the sweetest man in the world, we love going over and teaching them, the person he has become is amazing, and he is almost done reading The Book of Mormon! 

We also went over to meet a less active family in the Las Palmas ward, they have a son on a mission who is coming home in July and he told his mom that he wouldn't come home until she had read the Book of Mormon. The Elders told us we needed to go over and meet with her and help her keep reading. She loved the Elders and she had told them that she was afraid to get new girl missionaries. So we went over and started visiting with her and her young daughter and by the time we left she was so excited to have us in the ward, and we set up a time every week to go over and help her study and read! 

Now here is an amazing story! Are you ready?! We got a referral from Salt Lake for a woman names Wendi. We had no information of her other than her address. So we went over on Wednesday with one of the Ladies in our ward, Sister West, and knocked on her door. After standing there for a while she finally opened the door, she stood there with a walker, looked at us and then said "well I thought you would have at least called first. Come in, Come in!" As we sat and talked with her we found out that she was born into the church, her mom was a convert but her dad wasn’t. Her mom was her best friend and she had died a little while ago. Wendi has had a hard life, she suffers from fibromyalgia, depression, PTSD, abuse, and is bipolar. But she is the sweetest lady in the world. She fell away from the church when she was young and then about 14 years ago she went back to church and her husband got baptized. He had a bad experience and stopped going to church so she stopped also. She hasn’t been to church in 13 years, and now because all of her health problems she can barely leave the house. As we talked with her about the temple, we told her she would see her mother again, she is watching out for her from heaven now. She started sobbing; then as we talked about the power of the atonement and how all the pain that has been inflicted upon us and that we have caused ourselves could be washed away she began crying harder. We met with her every day this week read scriptures with her and slowly helped her to see how the Savior love and the Atonement will be able to help her, no matter what! We found out that it was actually her friend who had requested the missionaries to come visit Wendi because she knew that Wendi had been humbled by her trials and was at a place where she would be willing to listen and ready to change! We invited her to come to church and she said she would think about it, so when we came by on Thursday we told her that we had it all worked out so that we would have a ride and everything would work out so she could come. She said that she didn't think she could do it. So I asked her what was stopping her and after a moment she said..."clothes" with her fibromyalgia she can wear clothes that put pressure on her skin at all because when there is pressure on her skin if feels like she is being stabbed all over her body; the only clothes she can wear are sweatpants and a baggy shirt. So I told her I had a solution. I brought her one of my dresses that was just a loose flowy fabric. And it fit perfectly! I told her that it was hers but she could only wear it if she went to church! And on Sunday she was there! She stayed all 3 hours even! 

Sunday was crazy it was the first week we had both wards so we were running back and forth like crazy between the two! But we are excited about it!! Tons of other stuff happened this week but this is all I had time to share! I love you all!

Love 

Sister Loveless

Letter #6 From Las Vegas

Hello World,

I had my first transfer this week!!!! Exciting stuff!! Sister Harrision and I will both be staying in the Warm Springs Ward (I love this ward so much, the members here all hold a special place in my heart, i really didn’t want to leave)! BUT we will now also be covering another ward, the Las Palmas Ward! We are excited!! WE will be double transferring in AGAIN because we are replacing the Elders who were covering that ward, so we are starting fresh with this ward too! Just like we did when we came into the Warm Springs ward! It will be a fun challenge! It’s really nice though because at least we will be in the same building for church, and only 1 of our 5 hours of church overlap (7 hours if you include the other meetings)!! Sundays are going to be full and amazing!! Funny story though, we saw the Bishop of the Las Palmas ward last week (before we found out that we would be switching out the Elders) and this is how the conversation went..... "Hey Sisters! What ward are you in?"

"We are in the Warm Springs ward!" 

"They have Sister Missionaries too?!? What did we do wrong?! Why don’t we have Sisters?!" 

Little did he know that the very next week his wish would be granted :) He gets us!

This week has been full of all sorts of wonderful things!! For family night we went over to Lanee and Malu's house and we watched the hour long version of the restoration DVD, It was amazing!! We got to talk all about the saints and their experiences, and I got to tell them all about Nauvoo! They want to go and visit so bad! So I told them when I get home we will have to make a special trip!!

We were out walking around when we got a Text from our investigator David! Sister Harrison started reading it out loud... He said "I have decided I want to get baptized" We read that and started jumping up and down!!! Then sister Harrision said wait there’s more..."But I don’t want to have to go to any one church. Can I do that in the Mormon church?" So we asked if we could come by and talk with him. We went over the next day with two brothers from the ward that had a chance to explain to him the unbroken line of priesthood authority! And we were able to have a powerful lesson about the purpose of baptism and that gift of the Holy Ghost that comes with it! It was a great lesson, he is progressing!

We had a lesson with a part member family in our ward who's sons had just gotten baptized right before we came into the ward, and they invited one of their friends to come over, His name is Franko! He is 11, and he is amazing! We watched the 20 min, restoration DVD and he loved it, after the movie he said "I want to get baptized today!" We said you have to come to church first! so he said "okay if I come to church on Sunday will you baptize me there?!" He is so fun!! We will hopefully be meeting his parents this week! He came to church on Sunday with the Welch boys (his friends), and Sister Tenny (the mom of the welch boys) got permission from his parents so he and his twin brother who came to church with him could have lessons with us!! We are so excited! They are amazing!!

Well I’m out of time again! But I have to remember to write about our new investigator Moises next time!! He is amazing too!! I love the work, it is sooooo amazing!!!  

And here is a picture of most of my zone from this last transfer!! This was the day we found out about our "Transfer Doctrine" as we call it here, because we get a paper that has our fate on it and we have to come pick it up!  Super fun! 

Love ya!

Sister Loveless!!