June 24th, 2013

oh my goodness. WHAT A WEEK!!! I have to say it has definitely been the hardest week of my mission so far. Everything that could have gone wrong, probably did haha. But we just kept pushing through and it is a brand new week now!! We are soo so excited for this week :)

President texted sister lockhart and I the other day and invited us over for dinner with him and sister pingree. It was so crazy because we had the absolute worst day ever and he must have gotten revalation or something because he knew something was up. And right when we got there he sat down with us and we both just started bawling hahaha. And I didnt know this, but he said that we are in the hardest area in the whole mission and that the transfer before I got here, he was considering taking missionaries out of it completely because it is so bad here. And I thought that it was just normal cause I didnt know what to expect cause it is my first area! But after being out on exchanges, I came back and could tell that it was harder than other areas. For lots of reasons that I wont go into detail haha. Just the people here are really mean. And the ward is pretty bad. But anyways he asked us if he needs to just stop putting missionaries in this area because he is pretty frustrated with things here and said has lots of other places he could use us, but we are hopeful and are powering through all the craziness!! I feel like you cant just give up on people! But now I have a feeling he is going to leave us here for a while haha. This is sister lockharts third transfer, and she has been in this area the whole time. He told us that by being here it will really help us to learn to fully rely on the lord because we really only have Him and each other right now! I am soooo grateful to have a companion who is like my best friend. If we didnt love each other as much as we do, this would be so much harder I cant even imagine!! We were on exchanges for maybe 24 hours and we were like so happy when we were back together hahaha. Anyways sorry for all the negativity! I LOVE MY MISSION :) every single second :) really though. even on the hard days, I look back on them and am so grateful for them. being here has really made me realize that no matter what the challenge is, as long as the lord is involved you can do absolutely anything!!! We were actually encouraged to pray for more challenges in our mission. sounds kinda weird to ask for more challenges, but the more you have the more you realize that they are actually blessings! We cant reach our full potential unless we have those challenges to help us grow. God wont let us be content with our weaknesses and he will push us until we reach the potential that he KNOWS we can reach. and the only way we can do that is by letting Him in our lives and getting through the things that we dont think we handle.

Yesterday during ward council, once of the members of the bishopric said that there has been more success in this ward in the past couple months than there has been in the past 3 years. how cool is that?! I feel like the work here is just getting started!! So I know it will get better. And I am really excited about it :) We have a lot of good things planned for this week! We have like 3 investigators who are SO CLOSE to baptism. they are so ready for it. soooo so exciting!!!

we are in the bible belt people!!!! holy cow. hahahaha. ahhh kfkldnsklhuiacgorhejla. <------ thats all I have to say about that. no joke, we will knock on doors and they will let us in and we will start teaching and they take over the lesson and start preaching to us. like this one guy took out his bible and read to us revelations 22:18-19. It basically says that if you add anything to the book that you will get the plauge or something like that. So he started like bashing on us and how we are gonna get the plauge cause we have the book of mormon and how it is adding to the bible which is a sin and all this stuff. and his wife looks at us and was like I think yall need to pray and ask god if what yall have added to the bible is right or not. it was so funny haha so we were just like okay we have to go now have a great day! it is so hard sometimes to bite your tonuge and not say anything. cause we obviously arent here to argue with them and you can tell who is just wanting to argue with you so we dont even try to go any farther. people here are very, very firm in their beliefs!! tons of devout baptists and catholics. and lots of other religions I cant even pronounce haha.

well this girl passed the driving test!!! hahahaha yay!!!!! watch out houston things could be getting pretty crazy!

we were at church for a total of 9 hours yesterday. I have to say that is a record!! and a huge accomplishment for me hahaha. just lots of meetings and stuff. and then that missionary broadcast! it was so amazing!! I cant even believe how lucky I am to be able to serve my heavenly father ALL THE TIME and nothing else. there isnt anything more amazing than doing the lords work!! and I love how it talked a lot about how members are missionaries and what they can do as well. every one of you are missionaries and can make such a difference!! never forget the lord is relying on all you to carry on his work!

Texas is so great and I love it more and more each day! I thought I lucked out with getting normal food here but boy was I wrong. hahaha. weirdest food here that I cant even tell you what it is cause I dont even know myself what i am eating sometimes! we are having dinner this week at some vegans house so that should be interesting. sister lockhart said that they ate there a while ago and they were literally eating the earth hahahaha. it looked like dirt and grass and tasted like it too. hahaha. but its fun to experience all of this different stuff! half the time It feels like we are on the streets of mexico and not america hahaha its kinda crazy. anyways hope everything is going great back at home!!

LOVE YOU!!!!

love sister huber

Tracting area

Studying Spanish Book of Mormon

Pass along cards... one days worth!

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Notice the cars in the background....

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Common signs there.

June 17th, 2013

I feel like every week when I email I don't even know what to say cause so much happens in a week!

first off. people here are crazy. like either they are super nice, like super SUPER nice. or absolutely crazy hahaha. there is no in between. hahaha so its actually really fun to go tracting. never thought I would say that. But I love it. cause you never know what is gonna happen. and each time without fail, we meet a crazy person and it is the funniest thing ever. so saturday we were tracting and we were in this neighborhood and a mom and her son were sitting outside so we go up to talk to them and the lady goes "what are you soliciting? there is no soliciting in this neighborhood. I will call the cops." and sister lockhart goes oh we aren't selling anything. we are missionaries from the church of jesus christ of latter day saints. and the lady goes "that's soliciting religion. I will be calling the cops on you" so then we were just like okay have a nice day! and kept walking hahaha. so then we were like 2 houses down, talking to a man on his porch. and a cop car DRIVES BY hahahahaha. luckily we were hidden behind these brick pillar things but he was slowly driving up and down the road hahahaha. and we have these little white card things that we are supposed to carry with us at all times, just saying that we are legit missionaries I guess and we are allowed to do what we are doing. and neither of us had ours so we were freaking out hahaha. anyways it was pretty funny. and the guy that we were talking to actually had like an hour conversation with us and invited us to come back and teach him and his family so that is good news!

we actually had a really successful week. We got like 4 new investigators. which is kinda a touchy subject hahaha only because when we tract, i swear like half the people dont speak english and it gets really frustrating. so their kids will have to come and translate for us. and so 3 of those investigators we have to give to the hermanas cause we cant teach them! but its still exciting because we are all in this work together!! but me and sister lockhart are determined to learn espanol. so when we are in the car going places we take out our spanish pamphlets or spanish articles of faith and are teaching ourselves hahaha. which is kinda entertaining. we are just really jealous that we cant speak spanish :( but I think that its a blessing because I feel like I struggle with my own laguage half the time hahaha. so I think I need to work on correct english first.

we taught --- this week. Who I feel veryyyy strongly about. she has already read the book of mormon and watches videos about the restoration and downloads all of the mormon messages and stuff like that. she loves what we teach her, and says that all of her beliefs line up with ours. So I think that we are really progressing with her!! we have another appointment with her on thursday. we have about 3 really strong progressing investigators that I am excited about!

Elder Golden from the seventy came to our mission this week and talked to all of us missionaries. it was really cool and I think for me it was very much needed to kinda push me to be an even better missionary! I realized all of the things that I want to be better at, and am making goals to hopefully get me to the point where the lord wants me to be! it was good motivation and pushed us all to work even harder than we were before!

We also got three new referrals from the bishop yesterday which we are very excited about! we are making plans to go and see them this week. We also do a lot of work with less actives and getting them back into the church. and we are teaching 2 people who were excommunicated. so we kinda have a little bit of everything around here!

each week we are supposed to have a certain amout of service hours, and we waited til saturday to actually do them. im not sure why. but anyways we helped --- (the guy who got baptized last week) and his wife weed their yard and it was crazy like their ENTIRE yard was weeds. it was also 105 degrees and 95% humidity outside hahaha so it was kinda intense! and we are kinda retarded and wore flip flops over there? we didnt exactly know that we were going to be doing yard work. haha so we just got going and after a few minutes I felt my foot sting way bad so I look down and there are like a million red ants on it. I have no idea where they came from but I guess you never know where the heck the bugs come from here. so it took forever to get them all off and my whole foot was covered in bites and it was like on fire haha. and it made both of my feet and my hands and my face swollen and his wife said that I was having an allergic reaction to them so it was kinda scary but what do ya do!! hahaha i just kept working and whenever i felt a bug on me i just didnt even care hahaha. after being here for a while you just dont even care anymore. so at least Im not afraid of bugs now! but oh my gosh the dogs here hahaha. people LOVE their dogs. like no one just has one dog. they all think that they need 5 dogs each. so every single house we go to, they have a million dogs barking and freaking out and it scares the heck out of me. a tiny little puppy will be running towards us and I freak out haha I dont even know why! a few times we have gone up to houses and they will have a beware of dog sign and I literally freak out. sometimes I just turn around and we dont even go up to the house hahaha. I dont know what has gotten into me.

we are going on exchanges on wednesday, and I am going with a sister who flew out with me so we are both still pretty new! her name is sister king. and I guess her companion hates tracting and refuses to tract. so they have 0 investigators, and she says that she doesnt feel like a real missionary cause she hasnt taught a lesson yet. soooo I told her that we can go tracting all day and hopefully find them some new investigators! haha so I am excited for that. but the problem is neither of us are allowed to drive hahaha. so the guy from the mission office called today and asked if I could go in tomorrow to take the driving test so that I can start driving! sooo we will see how this goes!

so to end this letter I am going to be a little preachy haha. the true missionary in me is coming out! but I cant tell you how important the book of mormon is. I regret not being as good with reading it everyday before I came on my mission. but once I got to the mtc and we got in the routine of studying it for an hour each morning, I really realized the importance of it. it is such a simple thing that we are asked to do and I know it gets hard at times to sit down and read it each day. BUT it is soooo worth it! Some mornings after an hour of study I am sad cause I wish I had more time to read it! it really does make your day a million times better! and it makes such a huge difference in your life and makes you want to be better each day. The Lord realizes the effort you put into it, and he blesses you more than you will ever know! so dont be flakey about it like I was, and read it EVERY SINGLE DAY! no matter how long you do it for. you will notice the change it makes in your life!

i love you all so much!!

sister huber

Sister Huber has to take the driving test tomorrow.... Hope she passes!!!

 Tracting...

 Her companion wasn't afraid...

 Sister Huber was a little creeped out... left on their door...

 Sister Huber with President and Sister Pingree

June10th, 2013

HELLO FROM TEXAS!!!!

oh my where do I begin?!? Right when we stepped off the plane the humidity hit hard hahaha. But I knew right away that this is where I am supposed to be and it feels so right :) The mission president and his wife were there waiting for us. they are AMAZING! I really think that a big reason that I was sent here is because of my mission president. He is the nicest person you will ever meet. Even in my first interview he was so welcoming and was just like "we are your family for the next little while so if you ever need to have a talk with mom and dad cause you are having a rough time you know where to come!" haha love him. Wednesday night we stayed the night at a members home. It was the last night we had as MTC girls! very bittersweet! Then we got up thursday morning and met our new companions and all left for our areas! I am in an area called windrose. It is very diverse I guess you could say. There are neighborhoods of mansions. Like, ginormous houses where celebrities live. And then some not as fortunate neighborhoods where when you are in their house you have bugs crawling all over you. Yeah... kinda gross. Its hard to sit there and act like it doesn't bother you when you have huge bugs crawling on you and flies on your head. And yes everything is bigger in texas including the bugs. They are HUGE. its scary. Our apartment is really nice! It is in a gated area on a lake and stuff. And we have a car so thats good news! Or bad news. Cause we aren't the best drivers... I actually can't drive unless I take some driving test hahahaha cause of my driving record. And Sister Lockhart has now crashed the car twice. I take half the blame cause ya know how we have to back each other out? Yeah well its like the blind leading the blind over here and so one of the crashes I was backing her out and then she went forward and killed the front of the car on a curb hahaha. I'm afraid president is gonna make us ride bikes from now on haha.

And... you thought I would be speaking english here.. well SURPRISE! hahaha. 75% of the people here only speak spanish. Well at least thats what it seems like. One of our investigators barely could speak english. So a lot of times we have to have the spanish elders with us. They are kind of our translators. But I have learned a lot of espanol! I think its safe to say I can now bare my testimony in it haha. But thats about it. So we will see how this goes hahaha. That investigator actually got baptized on Saturday though! My first baptism! His name is --.

Lets see so thursday we taught the -- family. LOVE THEM. Mom, the mom reminds me of aunt leslie haha. Nicest family ever. The dad never is here for the lessons. But there are 5 kids and they are all very receptive to what we teach them. They are catholic, but the mom really believes in what we teach them, and I feel like this could really go somewhere! They have been faithful in reading the bom. We are also teaching a big black guy named --. He lives in one of the huge houses and has like 5 sports cars. Anyways, his wife is a member but has been less active for over 20 years, and she has now been coming to church and taking the discussions with him and we invited him to be baptized at the end of this month!!! He is progressing so much. We have actually only taught him the first 2 lessons! Last night when we were leaving their house he gave us a hug and was like "I don't like this handshake deal. you guys are like my family" hahaha he obviously doesn't know the missions rules but its okay. 

Friday we had zone conference. Our zone is all so fun! there is about 30ish of us. They all call me sister herber and think they are soooo funny hahaha. So now that is what i respond to. 

Oh! my companion! her name is sister lockhart. We have decided that we are pretty much the same person. People even ask us all the time if we are twins. We get along so well and are best of friends! She is from utah too. But people are always like, "there is no way that anyone will be able to turn you two down if you show up on their doorstep!" haha. but let me tell you, we have had some interesting experiences tracting. very interesting. first night we had some old guy slam his door on us. we knocked on his door and he opens it and we didnt even have a chance to say one word. he starts talking and this is exactly what he said "Jesus christ is my savior, he has me speaking in tongue, I speak with him daily, when was the last time you talked to him?" and then slammed the door haha. And this might be really bad, but me and her just looked at each other and started laughing. After the door slam of course. Like he made it sound like God was sitting in his living room or something hahaha. But yeah its easy to get discouraged and down when things like that happen. But we just try to have positive attitudes and that's all you can do sometimes! Your attitude makes ALL the difference. So we made an agreement there are no negative comments allowed! I really believe that you can make or break your mission by your attitude. Hard things are going to come your way and they aren't even that bad if you are positive about it!

 And then another lady when she opened her door was just like "Do not talk to me about jesus christ" and then her husband walks up and she goes "these girls are mormons" and he starts busting up laughing. and then after she came back outside and started talking to us again and I think she felt bad for being rude and she was asking a little bit about us. And it was getting dark and she was like, "I wish there were people that I could tell you to go talk to. But I just want you girls to be safe. Houston is a great place, but it is scary and kind of dangerous so I think you should probably head home. Scary things happen around here at night" and it was almost 9 so we kinda took that as a sign to head back to our apartment.

So the tap water here is so nasty. And that's all that we have to drink in our apartment. It tastes and smells like pool water. I don't know if it is a texas thing or what. But I had a hard time drinking it for some reason so the first few days I would try to force myself to drink it cause the heat here is like nothing back at home and if you are outside all day tracting with no water you will probably die. Anyways I maybe drank a full water bottle in 3 days. That's how gross it tastes. And by Saturday I was feeling so sick and dizzy and I was trying to hold out til pday when we went to the store to get some bottled water, but then I ended up throwing up and sister lockhart was like you are literally going to die we are going to get you water haha. But I felt bad going to the store when it wasn't pday! So we decided that we were going to talk to everyone in the store and pass out at least one book of Mormon. So we are in the store and this man stops us and looks at me and was like "you were on the cover of the newspaper this morning!" and I was like no that wasn't me haha and he was like yes it has to be you! So I finally convinced him that it really wasn't me. Haha it was a nice convo starter. so then we shared with him a quick message and gave him some pamphlets and a BOM. then I didn't feel so bad about getting water. So no worries I am drinking lots now!

It is soooo pretty here. Like it is so green and the sunsets here are unreal. They have these little frogs that just are everywhere so we pick them up and play with them haha. I have lots of pictures but I left my camera so I will have to email them next week!

I feel like I am forgetting a lot to tell you! So much happens here! But I am doing great and loving it! Its hard, but its a good kind of hard. I have a feeling I am never going to not be tired over these next 18 months haha but that's alright! I love it!

I love you all! I have a new address so send everything here now and not the mission home. cause I will only get mail from there every transfer (every 6 weeks) If I even get transferred.

7303 Spring Cypress Rd. #937

Spring, TX 77379

Try to send more letters than emails cause it is hard to read and respond to everyone! I feel really bad but that's just how it is I guess! LOVE YOU GUYS!!!!!!

-sister huber

Sara's Arrival in Houston! Her Trainer and photos from the Mission...

 Arrival at the airport - with no sleep for over 32 hours

The next morning at the Mission Home 

 The new group the next day for training

Sara and her Trainer Companion... don't know her name yet! ;)

Pictures from Sara...

Sara was able to get on the email and do laundry quickly today since she is leaving the MTC in the morning.  No p-day and she still has classes, but she wanted me to post these pictures.  The big group is her Zone and the smaller group with 4 Elders is her District.  The 2 Elders on either side of her are her Zone Leaders.  They all left the MTC yesterday except the 6 Sisters in her district that are all going to Houston.