Sister Huber Takes Houston: May 26th, 2014

WHAT A WEEK!! holy cow. it was SO GREAT :)

I have fallen in love with this area. I really don't know if I could ever go back to a family ward!! Nothing is better than working with & teaching your best friends about the gospel. Thats exactly what it is here!

So on Monday Sister Loo and I showed up the elders at the golfing range which was SO fun. We are making it a weekly thing now haha. She golfed at SUU so she is pretty much a pro. She is teaching me her ways ;) I hope you are proud dad! :)

We taught ... and ... the Plan of Salvation this week and split it up into a couple different lessons. A group of the ward members met up at another members house and all helped us teach them the last part of it and then everyone in the room went around and took turns bearing their testimonies of the plan, and even ... and ... bore their testimonies and it was SO powerful. Their testimonies are absolutely incredible. When we started talking about their baptism their faces seriously lit up the room. I don't pick favorites or anything, but I am probably more excited for their baptism than any other so far on my mish. They are beyond ready and they seriously cant wait! Cutest thing ever haha.

.... ..., ..., ..., haha. Oh boy. We taught him both the restoration and plan of salvation this week. Most intense lessons of my whole mission! We taught him the entire restoration lesson, and at the end his questions were about the spirit world and baptisms for the dead... So the next night we went over with 2 of our RM friends to teach him the Plan. Holy Moly. If it werent for those members we brought with us, Sister Loo and I would have died haha. He had the craziest questions I have ever heard. And for every little thing that we said, he needed us to show him a scripture proving it to him in both the BOM and the bible. At the end we had to explain to him that it all comes down to his faith and him praying about the BOM and Joseph Smith. He is really sincere about it and he accepted baptism when he finds out for himself that it is true! Deep down we know that he knows its true. He is just having a hard time accepting it. He is worried about losing his past beliefs by accepting this gospel, and is having a hard time realizing that we are only adding more to what he already knows!

We taught Viet more about Joseph Smith this week and made sure that he understood the importance of him in the restoration and about the book of mormon. He is heading to Virginia for the week, but said that once he gets back he plans to quit his job so that he can start coming to church!! The boys in the ward have been great with wrapping their arms around him and bringing him in. He was a little uncomfortable at first because he is super shy, but this week he came out of his shell a little bit more and has become really close with the ward!

... said that she has prayed and really feels that the 14th is when she needs to be baptized. We were actually able to do a church tour with her mom this week and she seems really open to the gospel as well! She said she is so excited for her daughter to be baptized, which in most cases it usually isn't that perfect! :)

We had Zone Conference this week, and president gave a really good discussion on pleasing man vs pleasing God. Here are just a few insights from it :)

Ezra Taft Benson explained: “The proud stand more in fear of men’s judgment than of God’s judgment. ‘What will men think of me?’ weighs heavier than ‘What will God think of me?’ . . . The proud love ‘the praise of men more than the praise of God’ (John 12:42-43). . .”

"First, when we seek to please God, we gain lasting peace and strength; when we seek to please men we ultimately lose the respect of others and experience personal regret. Second, when we choose to please God, we are sometimes required to confront a negative, although short-term pressure from others. Finally, as illustrated by Peter, we can refine, strengthen, and improve our determination to please God over time. There is great hope for all of us!"

As missionaries, we face situations every day where we have to choose between pleasing God or Pleasing the world.Going against what the natural man would do can be really hard sometimes, but never does it bring lasting happiness! As we do the things that our heavenly father would have us do, and strive to make Him proud every single day, that is when true, eternal happiness comes!

We got a new investigator named ... this week. We met up with him at the temple and read from the BOM with him. As soon as he met the missionaries, he instantly stopped smoking and hasnt ever picked it back up! Talk about a miracle right there! He is on the quiet side so we are trying to get him to open up a little bit more, but he definitely has a lot of potential! He has been coming to church and has been progressing pretty well so there might just be another baptism in the near future!

So Friday rolls around, and David is supposed to be getting baptized the next day. We still had the entire 4th lesson to teach him, and he still needed to have his baptism interview. He had work all day on Friday, so we had to go to teach him at 8 that morning before he left for work. So we were a little bit stressed to say the least! We had been trying all week to meet with him but he has been working like crazy so it never could happen! So we crunched in the lesson and he got his interview, and we were super relieved that it all worked out and that he was still ready to go for the next day. So then comes Saturday, the craziest day of my life. Sister Loo and I were running around getting things ready for both the baptism, and the church open house that we had that night, and everything had to be ready by 3:00 because his baptism was at 4. So we get to the church and had to clean out all the roaches from the font, and barely had enough time for it to fill in time for the baptism. We then get a call from James, saying that David isnt home. We were calling his cell phone, and his house phone and his moms phone and he was completely MIA. James was throwing objects at the windows and no one was answering haha. So then we started to panic a little bit. Its funny too cause on our way there Sister Loo goes, "There hasnt really been much opposition before this baptism which is weird!". There is ALWAYS opposition. So we are there waiting at the church and James is sitting in front of Davids house, and people start showing up for the baptism. 4:00 comes and David is still no where to be found. At 4:30 bishop decided to cancel the baptism. He stands up and bears his testimony and said that he still wanted to make a meeting out of it so he opened it up to a testimony meeting. We texted James and told him and he was furious. Sister Loo and I were just way sad and didnt have any idea of what to do. We had been praying for an hour straight and we just felt at peace and we didnt know why. So she goes up to bear her testimony, and James starts calling us. Its now like almost 5:00. So I go out to the hall to answer the phone, and he said that David had just pulled in the driveway and ran into his house to change and then they would be on their way over. The baptism was still on!!!! They showed up towards the end of the testimony meeting and david got baptized!!!

It turns out he had gone to work that morning and had some trouble getting back so he was WAY late. And his phone wasn't working. haha. hows that for some opposition?! It is literally a MIRACLE that everything still worked out!

We were late for the Open House, but thankfully had some other amazing missionaries holding the fort down until we could get there. The ward brought their friends & family and missionaries in the zone brought investigators and everyone was at the church having ice cream, and we were doing church tours, and at the end everyone was playing volleyball. It was a huge success and so much fun! I'm surprised I still had any energy by the end of the day! :)

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to speak in Sacrament meeting. Bishop just told me to speak on whatever I felt prompted to so after some thought and prayer, I chose the topic of Conversion! It actually turned out a lot better than I expected it to. I used Elder Christofferson's talk called "When Thou Art Converted" and Elder Bednar's "Converted Unto The Lord". Those are both amazing talks that you should read! I gained a lot from it personally, and if anything, I learned that conversion is not a one time thing. It is a process that we all must be going through over and over, step by step. Its much more than just a testimony of the truth. "Testimony alone is not and will not be enough to protect us in the latter-day storm of darkness and evil in which we are living. Testimony is important and necessary but not sufficient to provide the spiritual strength and protection we need. Some members of the Church with testimonies have wavered and fallen away. Their spiritual knowledge and commitment did not measure up to the challenges they faced."

Even when we are converted to this gospel, adversity is still going to come!! But its those experiences that bring us closer to our Father in Heaven, and create an even deeper conversion in us :) If you dont already have a testimony of this gospel, get one! Do those things to strengthen your faith and create that foundation for your life. Once you have that testimony, let it grow within you and let it turn into action! A testimony is having a perfect knowledge of something, but conversion to that testimony is when you ACT upon it and BECOME something from it :)

Church yesterday was great! We had lots of investigators there, and members just keep bringing their non member friends! New investigators are just coming from all different directions! YSA's are seriously the best at missionary work. I committed myself to be just as on fire as they are when I get home from my mission haha. They are so awesome :)

I love this gospel with all of my heart. When I started living it to its fullest, when I finally let it become a part of who I am, and as I acted upon my testimony of it, I received such a happiness that I can't even explain to you! THIS CHURCH IS TRUE!!

I love you all so much and hope you have another amazing week!!

xoxo

sister huber

Sister Missionary Postcards

P day Donut run :)

Pupusas. A central american food that roberto made for us. The greatest thing I have EVER eaten!

Roberto's hundred pound turtle.

MTC girls at Zone Conference

My best friend and I

At dinner on Thurday night, we were told that it was a tradition that every missionary that comes over has to slide down the stair rail backwards and get their picture taken.. dont really know how that got started but we were told that there was no choice! hahaha.