Week 61 - With a crunch

I'M GETTING TRANSFERRED AGAIN!!!! :)  Which means I have no time.  Here this goes.

This week we went to the temple!  It was very edifying and beautiful experience.  I love the temple!  Families are FOREVER!  

Christian decided on his baptismal date.  We are so excited and he is too!

We had 26 people at English class, which now makes our English Class the biggest in the whole mission!  We are friends with all of them and they love coming.  I am going to miss them too.  Quiero a mis estudiantes :(

We played the hunger games during language study, when we all practice Spanish as a district.  When we wanted to try and attack someone we had to practice the future tense, "I will lunge," "I will run," "I will hit" etc "I will block".  The weapons were frying pan, a cat paw, a broom, a chair, Taylor Swift perfume, and water bottles.  Elder Pigott won after a crazy battle with Elder Blackford, and it was hilarious.

I went to Conroe again on exchanges.  This also was very fun.  I went up there with Hna Wallace, a brand new missionary who you think would have been our for a very long time because she is actually AMAZING!  She has so much faith and she puts it into every little thing that she does.  I think that It was I learned the most, how much we can really involve our faith in the work.

Hna Jorgensen came to visit and took us out to dinner with her family.  They were so nice and awesome.  I have wanted to meet them for a LONG time!

Yesterday we had more people at church than we have had since March!  It was amazing and made us super happy!  Also we got to play the piano and have lots of meetings, and this ward is surely growing.  Slightly triste that I won't be here to keep it happening, but I am so excited for my next area too. :)

Reasons I will miss Hermana Homer:
1.  She thinks up excellent reasons to get frozen yogurt. #woodlands
2.  She loves family history so much that this week when our teacher canceled on us last minute, she did the only 'rational' thing, which is to say that she called President Mortnensen.
3.  She is not afraid to run after people as they are walking away from us to invite them to church.
4.  She smiles when she teaches.  Always smiling.
5.  She loves cats.  And dogs.  And birds.  I never need to be afraid of animals when she is there because I know she's got it.
6.  Her random yelling of random things.  For example, "Where's my tennis ball?" or "I'm running away from my feelings!" :)
7.  When she laughs, she laughs well.

This week, I heard a story from one of our members about his cousins, a less active man who is really hard to work with.  He told me the story about how when this less active man was nine years old, President Monson went to his stake in Mexico.  When he was shaking all of their hands, he looked down at this little boy and said, "Hola Obispo," or "Hello Bishop."  This brother was very confused and said, "no soy obispo, " "I am not a bishop" and President Monson said, "No, but one day you will be."  As I heard this story, I was obviously more inspired to work with this man and help him come back to church.  Why hadn't we before considering all the greatness and the potential in this man?  Why had we never before considered how special and important he was going to be one day?

And then I realized, why don't I have this opinion about every single less active man, woman, youth, or child?  Each of them will one day be bishop, and Relief Society President, and a missionary.  Why do I not have the desires to go save them as much as I have for the man?

I think sometimes we lack a little bit of vision when we work with our Less Active members.  It doesn't matter how well we know them, what their excuses are, or whether or not we know why they are not coming to church.  Their personal hurdles in life, our attitudes, and their challenges are not important.  What IS important, is that they are not partaking of the sacrament each week, that they are not doing the ONLY thing that they can do to one day be saved.  They are not enjoying the peace that comes when you know that you can truly be clean.

Don't do it because that less active is going to be a bishop one day.  Do it because you love him.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you and I will let you now what happens next week. :)
Always,
Hermana McCurdy

I saw Hermana Gutierrez at Stake Conference. :)

Coaklands Looking at the Temple.  Notice we all wore red.  Coincidence? I think not.

(Coaklands= Conroe, Oakcrest, and Woodlands)

Coaklands looking at the temple.

The Hunger Games

The Hermanas of the Coaklands District at the Hunger Games.

A creepy foto Hna Homer took of Hna Chavez, Rosie and I doing family history. 

(We found 17 names!)

Us with Hna Jorgensen, now McKenna

Us with a picture of a graph of our ward attendance for the last 7 or so months.  That part when it starts getting higher is when we got here and we were SUPER excited.

Week 60 - "Tu eres tu propia tostada!" or "You are your own tostada!"

This week…. was something else.  In the best way of course.

Last monday we played basketball in our district, and not only was it oddly fun, but I still have my lack of talent, and unconscious yelling when I get into it, so that was nice.  Also Hna Homer clawed me by accident and I'm hoping that it scars.  I will add it to all the other scars that I have from my basketball days. ;)

We had a flat tire!  Right in the middle of a flood!  It was really exciting.  Everything worked out fine :)  It was oddly exciting actually and a little bit of a miracle because we had to go get it fixed and it turns out that the tread was really bad on the tires and we were really lucky.  By giving us a flat tire God prevented us from hydroplaning in the flood.  God sure is good :)

We did a TON of finding this week!  Up and down and left and right talking with everyone that we saw.  This week will be really blessed I think by all the effort that we put in.  We met some very interesting (people?).  If y'all could please pray that we will find people to teach that would be fantastic.  

CHRISTIAN SAID HE WANTS TO BE BAPTIZED IN SEPTEMBER!!  We were so happy to hear it, and I think we're still dancing as we walk a little bit if you know what I mean.  He went to the temple with us this week and that was where he decided.  How special, right?  Speaking of the temple we are going there on Wednesday and I am super excited.

We went on a lot of exchanges this week.  At the first one, we went to Spanish Leadership Council with our guest of honor, Hna VanDyke.  She was talking about the success that she has found in ward building, and she rocket it.  Our zone had some great participation, and we also brought some decorations, so that was really funny.  Well, everyone knew who we were. ;)  While there at the council we also talked about the issues in missionary work that we experience as Spanish missionaries.  It was very nice to talk about successes and also the things that we can improve.  Then the next day, we went on exchanges again.

I got to be with Hna Twitchell in Louetta for a night, and it was lovely.  She is such a special woman and I am so privileged to work with her and learn from her.  She has some really great ideas and I am really lucky to have her as a friend.  Everything was good except for when we went to a  baptism and it turns out I had to play the piano…. :] But I think it went super well.  I was thinking about how glad I was for all of those years of me plinking out the same songs on the piano over and over again and for the opportunity I have been given to bless other people's lives, and especially for the patience of my brothers, sister, and parents. :)

Then, yesterday we had stake conference!  It was awesome!!  Everywhere I looked I saw someone that I knew!  What made me even happier was the fact that I remembered all of their names.  I hugged so many people and there were so many others that I didn't get the opportunity to say hi to.  One of my favorite things about the mission I think, is that I have found that my heart can hold so much more love than I thought it could before.  I feel much fuller and much more complete to have these people in my life.  They are my family and part of my heart will always be here.  Also in Stake Conference we learned about the things that we can do to be more resilient to challenges and to protect our families.  I know that our families are the unit that God created to help us grow.  They are not perfect, some times they are messy, but they are there to help us grow.  I know that our families are important and hope that we can strive to give a little more every day we will find more joy there too.

Love you all and hope you have a beautiful week.  Please let me know if there is anything that I can do for you.

Always,

Hermana McCurdy

This one courtesy of the Barrera family.  I love these people!! 

(Stake Conference)

And last but not least… from the Lovely and expressive Hna Homer:

The weeks go by so fast. It's hard to remember what I already told you!

Biggest highlights of the week:

Christian, our investigator since Last December said he wants to be

baptized in September! Hurrah! We are pretty excited. We took him down

to the Houston Temple and the spirit was so strong. We set a goal with

him for when he can go inside.

For language study this week I had our district make up skits to

practice the Imperfect tense. There's one that's especially good.

Video to come.

We were eating Tostadas with this family this week and their little

girl Izzy was screaming her head off the entire night because she

wanted her blanket but she didn't want to walk the six feet to go pick

it up. During dinner we were making analogies with the teenagers about

the Tostada being the foundation of our lives and we can't do anything

without the Tostada. In this moment Izzy grew a new lung and screamed

really loudly. Her mom turned to her and said "NO IZZY! NO! TU ERES TU

PROPIA TOSTADA!" (No Izzy! No! You are your own tostada!). It was SO

funny!

I went on exchanges with Hna Vandyke. I love her so much! We've been

waiting three transfers to go on exchanges.

One of our members has a pet pig!

Stake Conference was yesterday and it was the best! Last stake

conference I didn't know anyone and I couldn't understand Spanish.

This time I got to see all the people from Canyon Lakes, including my

recent convert:), people from Oakcrest, Missionaries! It was the

best!!

So that was my week in a nutshell!

Houston is flooding right now....again.

Denise, who was in the hospital, is doing a lot better! She went home

yesterday! We are excited to keep meeting with her!

Love you!

La hermana Homer

Week 59 - "Michael Phelps is STILL kicking?" -Hna Homer

The other Monday Hermana Homer and I were walking through Walmart and reading the back of the cereal boxes about the Olympics (because we do not watch TV and know nothing of what is happening in the Olympics) and we were reading about this gymnast named Simone something and it turns out that she is from Spring, Texas.  Spring Texas is part of our area! Go Simone!  Then Hna Homer made the comment that the specific Walmart where we were standing is in Spring, TX and that Simone had probably picked up a box of cereal from that very same isle and used this very same Walmart.  Isn't that cool.

Yes, it is flooding again.  This time is not as bad.  I think I like it actually, it's kind of exciting.  We saw some high water this morning but nothing too bad.

There is a family in our ward called the Gascas, who are famous for their Herbalife net here in Texas.   (Herbalife is a fitness club thing that hispanics really like.)  There is the mom and the dad, an older son named Beto, a daughter named Dina who has two adorable children, and then Cindy who comes out with us a lot and is pretty much our best friend.  They also make super good Mexican food.  This week we got to help them do their family history.  Hna Homer helped them find names of their relatives to take to the temple and they cried when they found them.  How precious it was to watch as they found the family that they have been trying to find for a long time.  I love family history.

Here in the Woodlands we have the privilege of teaching an English Class to a bunch of people who want to learn.  Our English class is on the bigger side and has 18 people!  The majority come from Colombia, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Mexico, although this week we were contacted by an Armenian who wants to come.  That will sure be an adventure!  In our English Class we have a variety of different characters.  There are Francia and Harold, who always want to try and say the prayers in English.  They have an adorable granddaughter.  Francia always writes every little thing that we say down has these beautiful red glasses, and Harold always repeats every little thing that we says.  They are both really hard workers and really cute.  There is also Martha, who confuses me a little bit as to why she actually comes because she speaks English very well.  She is here on an extended vacation, and her husband, Pablo works for CokaCola, so they are actually quite wealthy.  She has name brand clothes and shoes, and always comes into English class looking like she could care less and drinks a thin little diet coke can.  Somehow we get each other's sense of humor perfectly.  This week she started bring us diet coke and a green apple every class and I hope that she will never go back to Mexico.

We had "Preterit Idol" aka a Spanish game that we had to come up with songs using a specific spanish technique and it was hilarious.  Shout out to Hna Wallace who remade a Christmas song and used spoons as jingle bells.

I also got to go to Conroe on exchanges.  It was super fun and Esmeralda who had been in the Sprinkler gave me this big hug even though she was soaking wet and it was arguably the best hug I ever got in my whole life.

There is a less active woman in our ward named Denise Aguilar, who we have been trying to reach since we came here to the Woodlands about a month ago.  Finally, Hna Homer called her on Tuesday and she finally picked up and told us that she was in the hospital!  Even though Denise is only 32 she had a stroke this week and we managed to call her just at the right time.  Denise's family lives in South Carolina so we spent a lot of time helping her this week and we went to the hospital a lot.  We held her hands, sang to her, and kept her company.  This week I thought a lot about people who have to be in hospitals a lot because of health problems and had a new appreciation about how that must be.  I was very impressed by the level of kindness and reverence that I felt there.  Hospitals are a trying place, and I was glad to know that no matter the story, there is always a bright ending because the Son of God descended below all things and felt all of our sorrows and pains.  He felt it all so that He can know exactly how to heal us.

I know that Jesus Christ lives!  I know that He died and that He lives for us.  I know that the Book of Mormon is true! :)

Let me know if there is anything I can do for you :)
Always,
Hermana Madison McCurdy

Hna Nelson, me, Hna Homer, and Hna Wallace after exchanges

Hospital Elevator Selfies

Zone Conference with the English Sisters

Us with Harold and Francia after English Class

And these fine words and pictures from Hermana Homer…

Milagros de la Semana:

-We had over 100 people at church!!!!! We've been down in the 80's for the last little while.

-Our only Recent Convert came to church with his Girlfriend this week!!!

-We had this feeling earlier this week that we needed to call one of our very inactive members. When we called she answered and said she was in the hospital. She had had a stroke the day before. The crazy thing is she is in her early 30's. We called the relief society and there have been many people who have been visiting her. She is all alone in Texas so it is a huge blessing to have someone visit. She's received Priesthood blessings and is doing a lot better. She is truly feeling the love that the ward has for her.

I went on exchanges this week with one of the new trainees. I am amazed by her. She has been out 8 weeks and her spanish is so good. I have never seen the gift of tongues work as amazing as it has with her. We had an awesome day and had a couple really great lessons.

So. I know you are all wondering. Yes, i did know that the Olympic Gold Gymnastics Medalist is from Spring. What you don't know is that I have served in parts of Spring for 9 months of my mission. Chances are we have shopped at the same walmart as this girl! 

Hermana McCurdy, My current companion is a Family History enthusiast. It is incredible. We have helped MANY members with their Family History this week. A couple of them even started to cry because of the spirit they felt as we found the names of their great great grandparents. Its really touching. I did not understand the great importance of Family History before this transfer. Hermana McCurdy has really opened my eyes to it. I LOVE HER SO MUCH!

I am still the Language Study lead for my District. Hermana McCurdy came up with an amazing idea this week: Preterite Idol. It's like American Idol but all the contestants had to sing songs that used the Preterite tense 5 times. It was pretty amazing. Videos and Pictures to come…

Hermana McCurdy teaching the youth about the importance of family history! I love her!!!

Preterite Idol

Did I already send this one?

Week 58 - "It's not a good murder without hot sauce"

Salutations! :)

How are you everyone?  I hope that you are doing SO GOOD!  Thank you to everyone who emailed me this week!  I was really blessed and I sure could feel your prayers too.  This week we saw so many unnecessary little miracles, and a really big one, and I knew it was because of y'all.  I hope you know how much it means to me and that I really do love everyone of you.

So…this week.  Back at the beginning of my mission they have this thing where they do an evaluation of your skills as a missionary for you and your trainer and it is called "8-week" *cue the horror music.* I always had this inner fear that one day the would send me back to 8-week because I had failed or something, and this week that actually came true.  Haha.  President Mortensen called Hna Homer and I on Thursday morning and asked if we would come and help.  There was only one spanish missionary who was going to be evaluated and they needed someone else to do it.  It was super awkward because everyone else who was there was either a trainer, or someone being trained, and the us two, but we enjoyed it.  They fed us, even gave us extra food to take home, and then we got to learn a lot and do service.  We are super lucky that Hna Homer and I.

We also had another large meeting this week where we got to learn from President Mortensen and to make some plans for the coming month.  It was super exciting and we learned so much.  We learned a lot, which we shared in another big meeting we had in the Houston West North Zone on friday.  We took the best pictures, which are included here.  We decided to take pictures in the room where all the toddlers go during church.  Hence all the toys.

I was also very privileged to meet our new investigators, whose name is Christian.  He is a very deep thinker and enjoys history and stories and talking, and as you can probably tell so far we get a long great.  Mostly though, he wants to learn about God's plan.  He has so many deep questions sometimes we really have a hard time answering them, but I really do enjoy it.  He is a good seed.

In our meeting on Friday, I really liked two different things.  The first: "All men are created equal, but some men work harder in the preseason." (That quote apparently comes from a  commercial, though I can't tell you which one.)  I liked it because it really shows how much we absolutely have to prepare if we want to reach our goals.  You can't just decide one day to give everything and achieve greatness.  You have to give everything every day and never stop.  Second.  We were sharing a story about this track star who talked about how he ran some races and he walked away.  but some races, he could see his coach cheering him on that he ran so hard and when he reached the finish line he no longer could walk and he fell down.  We adopted the saying, "Don't walk away," which I really love because it exemplifies the attitude that we need to have in our lives.  We should never sit on the sidelines and be content to only run a race.  We need to give it absolutely everything that we have so that one day we will fall down and look back with absolutely no regrets.  I don't think you can have regrets when you have done absolutely everything that you can do.

Enjoy these pictures!  Give everything you have got one hundred percent of the time.  Love you all and please let me know if there is anything that I can do for you.
Always,
Hermana McCurdy

ps.  Incase you are wondering, there was just a lot of talk of murder going on this wee, and then we ate a lot of hot sauce.  I like hot sauce a lot now.  I don't know if I am ever going back.

Another installment from the lovely Hna Homer (I really enjoy reading her take on the week, it really rounds out the picture)  Enjoy!!

Miracles this week!!

We ran into a former investigator a couple weeks ago in a parking lot
and he said he had lost our number but wanted to start coming to
church again. He called us a couple days later and told us that he had
prayed that he would be able to run into me because I was the only tie
he had to the church. That's the same week we happened to see him. So
we've started teaching him and he says he's been thinking about
getting baptized. Yay!
We also finally were able to track down the only investigators we had
when we entered the area. They had ran away from home because there
boyfriend was trying to kill them...ugh. But we found them and we are
going to see them tonight.
We randomly found this inactive woman who had recently told her
daughter she wanted to come back to church, but she knew there weren't
sisters in the area. When we knocked on her door she said "who told
you to come visit me?" She was in awe that we had come. That was cool!
We are working with her to get her to come back.
She also told us one of our recent converts who lives down the street
from her may have murdered her own daughter...ugh!
Last night we were in an apartment complex contacting some people. As
we were walking to our car a giant truck sped out and almost hit us!
The best part. He's our other recent convert. He almost hit us then
drove away really quick. I recognized him and his truck and so we ran
to our car and tried to follow him. Didn't work. Ugh. But now we know
the general area where he lives and we can try and track him down.

We had Zone Meeting this week and because my companion is the only
Sister Training leader in the zone they "invited" me to do the role
play with her. Every zone meeting president gives out a new role play
for us to practice. So we planned for her to teach it to me and
practice, but it just never happened. So the morning of Zone meeting
we ran through it once and then presented the whole thing to the Zone
and I didn't even go that bad. My Spanish sounded reasonably fluent
and everything.

BEST THING EVER. Do you remember Mitxy Perez? She's the oldest of the
Perez girls from the Oakcrest ward. I love her. I ran into her at the
church where we were having zone meeting and she told me she had just
gotten back from girls camp and she LOVED IT. She even told me she
shared her testimony. This is a BIG DEAL. She's not baptized yet and
she's a little rebel. So the fact that she loved girls camp is the
best! We get to go visit them this week because the Oakcrest ward
doesn't have Hermanas and that family really needs them!

Our church attendance also went up by 10 this week. Yes!

Love y'all!!

Week 57 - There is a new Harry Potter Book?

This week while we were driving in Houston I saw a Billboard about the new Harry Potter Book and started yelling.  You might have thought it was the end of the world.  My companion was yelling too.  We are still very confused about what it is and yet oddly pleased that we don't have to suffer anxiety over these things.

This thursday was Hna Homer's birthday.  Lots of the members were super kind.  They made her cake and bought her presents and it was super cute.  Our English Class sang her happy birthday three times and then they invited us over for food.  What did I do?  I made her food and she liked it I think.  And then I helper eat her birthday candy because she told me she would feel bad if she ate the whole thing by herself.  (Thanks Jessa!)  I was very privileged to spend her special day with her. :)

We also contacted into this man who hangs signs of targets that he has shot at the gun range so that people will not rob his house.  I included a picture of the one hanging up next to his door.  He was really proud when we asked him if we could take a picture and send it home.  He also told us that we should move out west where there are no people and become self sufficient because the world is going to change and that we don't have much time left.  He was a very interesting man.

We also got to go visit Paty and Alfredo, two of my recent converts who I have not seen in a long time.  What a miracle it was to able to talk with and understand them now.  :)  They are doing good and their kids have gotten so big. :')

We got lost in one of the areas that have the BIG mansions while looking for a referral and it was very different in there.  I love this place!  I think Hna Homer and I enjoyed getting lost maybe a little bit too much because we got to look at all the houses.

We also ate dinner with the Santiago family.  Their daughter, Jocelyn Escobar, just got home from her mission in San Fernando, California.  She knows my best college friend, Lu Hopkin, and Chad Madore, and Brandon Gamble-Thompson.  We spent a fun time talking about our missions and some of my weird memories of the three of them.  It was really funny.

We went on exchanges for a day with the Louetta Hermanas.  It was really fun but I almost got know sleep because the Hna I was with has a really hard time sleeping so I sang her to sleep.  It was worth it. I love Hna Twitchell and Hna VanDyke a lot.  Here is a picture of us after exchanges this week.

This week I think I learned the most that God always wants to answer our prayers, but that we only need to have the faith to follow through with whatever answer that he gives us.  I also learned that even in hard things, if we will only try to see the baby miracles, we will always have reasons to be happy.  It's kind of like, instead of singing about "Somewhere over the rainbow," wistfully off into the distance, just be happy that there is a rainbow and then dance in the rain a little bit and take a picture.  Except in life.

I love you all and I hope that you have a FANTASTIC DAY!  Let me know if there is anything that I can do for any of you. :)
Always,
Hna Madison McCurdy

ps.  This week I was thinking about how magical it would be if God would have given us a giant string of Christmas lights that we could hang around the world and then I remembered that he gave us stars. :) God is good.

I had to include part of the letter Hna Homer sent to me:

This week was my 20th Birthday. I know. I know. I'm old. I'm not even a teenager anymore. I had a great day. Our Relief Society president had us over for dinner and she made Tres Leches. Which is the most amazing cake most americans have never tried. It's amazing. One of the ladies that comes to our english class bought me an outfit for my birthday. I was so touched. I almost started to cry. It was an awesome day! Thank you for all the Birthday wishes!!

We went on exchanges this week with the Louetta Hermanas. I was with Hermana Twitchell here in the Woodlands. We were trying to contact a couple referrals we had gotten and we ended up running into this lady. We asked if we could share a card with her....bad choice. This lady happens to be street minister (like every other person on the streets of Houston) and she was not very fond of Mormons. She started talking about Revelations 22 and about how we are going against the word of God. She kept us there for about 30 minutes just yelling to us about how we are deceived. It was actually more entertaining than anything else. Walking away from that experience i felt a lot of peace because I know that this is the true church. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and is a powerful testament of Jesus Christ. I know that it is through it's teachings that we can become closer to God and so much happier than we could ever have been before. I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon and the impact it has had on my life.

(study note; "My Words...Never Cease" by Jeffery R Holland. I love this talk!)

Hermana McCurdy and I are having a great time together. We get along really well. She's super bubbly and cute! I have a video i'll send you. It explains everything. 

I saw Mili at church this week! Mili is my recent convert in Woodlands who switched to an English ward after her baptism. I was so happy to see her!! She is so happy and doing so well! I'm so excited to be able to see her more often now that i'm back:)

Our area is doing well, we are white washing so we are off to a slow start, but things are getting busier and busier everyday.