Week 17: Cerritos

It was such a good week here in Cerritos! Each week just gets better and better!

Highlights

☆Went to the Aquarium in Long Beach with the zone for P-day!

☆We had follow-up Zone Conference with the WHOLE mission. We sang the EFY medly together and it was so powerful.

☆We went to a tri-stake FSY kickoff event (an activity for a few hundred youth in Cerritos, Brea, Anaheim, and Yorba Linda) and as missionaries we got to teach the youth how to teach lessons/be missionaries! 

☆Brenda came to Church, paid tithing, AND went to the temple with us!

Miracles

☆Members came to THREE of our lessons with friends this week (Brenda, Yarita, y la familia Perez). We definitely saw the blessings of the members sharing their testimonies and creating friendships with our friends :)

☆One day, we had lessons set up all day and they all canceled BUT it was clear that God had something else in store because we were able to find Norma, a young mom who loves God and is excited for us to come back and teach her. We also were able to find Giovanni and Jacqueline, a young couple with 2 cute little kids who were taught a few years ago. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and are so excited to keep teaching them!!

☆This one's a longer story but so cool to see how God works! A month ago, we were coming out of dinner with the Yepez family and their neighbor below them, Rosa, told us without our asking that she was busy but she wanted to learn more and for us to come back. We have come back probably about 10 times but she is never there. But now, literally the entire apartment complex recognizes us. So when we went back the other day, these group of probably 10 little kids ran up to us because they recognized us and starting asking us TONS of questions. We gave them pictures of Jesus with our phone numbers to give to their moms and saw them run over to a group of moms sitting outside. We knocked on Rosa's door and she wasn't there again so we decided to go talk to the moms. And we were able to teach 3 moms about the Book of Mormon and they said we could come back! That's 3 potential families!! God is so good :)

☆We had a really good lesson with Emilia. She has the strongest testimony of the Book of Mormon and of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but for reasons she can't control, she can't come to church or be baptized. We fasted and prayed for a miracle and we are still waiting for it but we know that in God's timing, he will prepare a way. 

Spiritual Thought

In the Book of Mormon, two of the best missionaries were Ammon & Aaron. They both worked hard and gave everything they had to the Lord but saw different results. 

☆Ammon (Alma 19:35) "And it came to pass that there were many that did believe in their words; and as many as did believe were baptized; and they became a righteous people, and they did establish a church among them."

☆Aaron (Alma 20:30) "And, as it happened, it was their lot to have fallen into the hands of a more hardened and a more stiffnecked people; therefore they would not hearken unto their words, and they had cast them out, and had smitten them, and had driven them from house to house, and from place to place, even until they had arrived in the land of Middoni"

We are all going to experience different missions. We are going to experience different joys and different trials. Our success is not measured by the results but is dependent on how much we give to the Lord. As long as we are doing everything we can, the Lord will direct our mission exactly as it needs to be. 

I am excited to work even harder with Hermana Midence this week and see all the miracles that the Lord will work here in Cerritos. I love being a missionary and I love each one of you! Hope y'all have the best week:)

Hermana Dudley.

emma.dudley@missionary.org

1.FSY! These youth are going to be fuego missionaries :)

2.Cerritos at the Aquarium

3.Emilia!

4.Went to the LA Temple Visitor's Center with Brenda

5.The Lopez family had as over for dinner. We love them! And they are such great fellowshippers to the Perez family

6.next to the Aquarium. Not quite the ocean but almost there!

7.Follow Up Zone Conference

8.Hna. Midence with the two missionaries she's trained (Hna. Veikoso and me) & Hna. Rivera Edith the two missionaries she's trained (Hna. Amezquita and Hna. Young)

9.Hna. Midence and I at the Aquarium

10.LA temple