Christmas Week

The Week of Christmas is over, and what a week it has been! It has been super cold and windy here in Lancaster, but we have kept busy and it has been great!

We did a lot of tracting this week but didn't get to talk to a lot of people because hardly anyone was home to answer the door, and those that did seemed pretty annoyed with us. You would think people would have more time for Jesus this time of year, but apparently not.

One of the families we ate dinner with this week was doing "The 12 Days of Christmas" for another family in the ward (the 12 days leading up to Christmas they would leave some treat or gift or something at the family's door, then ring the doorbell and run away.) We ate dinner with them Christmas Eve, and after dinner we went with them to make the final delivery. It was pretty fun, but the other family opened the door as we were running away and said "GOT YA!" We were caught!

At another member's home they had a wood burning stove inside their house and we went over and roasted marshmallow with them and their grandkids. (We used Peeps instead of regular marshmallows, which is a really great idea and I don't know why I never thought of it before!)

On Christmas we got to Skype home. It was really nice, but an hour is just not long enough!

But the biggest thing that happened this week was:......RICHARD GOT BAPTIZED! Afterwards he told us that he felt "new." It was a wonderful thing to see—an 80 year old man coming out of the water, as pure as a newborn baby. He also told us that it wasn't as hard as he thought it would be (I'm not sure what he thought he would need to do exactly, but I'm glad he had a good experience.) It was such a privilege to teach him and help him prepare for this important ordinance. Here is a man who has known the Gospel is true for most of his life, but because he felt inadequate of this great blessing, held himself back from taking part in this wonderful Church and all the blessing that come with it. This past week, I was reading in 2 Nephi 26:24-28, which to me seemed like it was speaking directly to Richard's concerns: 

"He doth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation. Behold, doth he cry unto any saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price. Behold, hath he commanded any that they should depart out of the synagogues, or out of the houses of worship? Behold, I say unto you, Nay. Hath he commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but he hath given it free for all men; and he hath commanded his people that they should persuade all men to repentance. Behold, hath the Lord commanded any that they should not partake of his goodness? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but all men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden."

God wants each of us to be able to receive these great blessings. It doesn't matter what sins someone has committed in the past, all are free to repent and come unto Christ, and to partake of his Salvation. In Richard's case, there wasn't even that much he had to change in his life in order to be worthy of baptism. He is kind, loving, humble, and knows and loves the Lord. He loves Joseph Smith and loves the Book of Mormon. He loves to learn, and has a burning desire to understand the Gospel more deeply. We should not let our inadequacies keep us back from moving forward. Christ has his arms wide open to us, we just need to allow ourselves to accept him and his atonement.

Love you all! Hope you have a wonderful New Year!

Sister Daelemans

It's a Wonderful Life

Well, this is the week of Christmas. WHAT?! Have I been here that long?? Everyone keeps asking me if it is difficult being away from home, but I can honestly and truly so no. Not yet anyway. As missionaries, pretty much every day is the same, and we miss a lot of the build-up to Christmas because we're too busy doing other stuff. So, no Christmas Blues for me!

This Saturday we had a Christmas Devotional with all the missionaries on the east side of the mission. They fed us Costco muffins and donuts and hot apple cider and then the best treat of all: they let us watch a movie!! We watched "It's a Wonderful Life" which is pretty much one of the greatest movies of all time. If you have never watched it, then go repent and watch it right now! One of the main themes of the movie is the impact that each person has on other people's lives, even when we don't realize it. George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) thinks that the world would be better off if he had never been born, but when he sees what the world would actually have been like if he hadn't been born, he realized how many lives he has touched just by living his simple life in a way that served other people. As missionaries, we talk to people all the time. LOTS of people. Many of them are not interested. Some people hate us (the other day some guy we met started yelling and cursing at us because we were presumptuous enough to believe in God—that was an interesting conversation.) It is sometimes hard to think that we make any difference at all, when so many people we talk to are not interested. But really, you never know how much the small exchanges we have with people on a daily basis can effect them. God places us in the paths of other people for a reason, and with our limited view we cannot always see the grander design of Heavenly Father's plan.

The scripture that we have been sharing with a lot of people these past few weeks for Christmas is Helaman 14:2-8. It is a prophecy about the signs that will be shown to the Nephites at the time of Christ's birth in Jerusalem. 

"And behold, he said unto them: Behold, I give unto you a sign; for five years more cometh, and behold, then cometh the Son of God to redeem all those who shall believe on his name. And behold, this will I give unto you for a sign at the time of his coming; for behold, there shall be great lights in heaven, insomuch that in the night before he cometh there shall be no darkness, insomuch that it shall appear unto man as if it was day. Therefore, there shall be one day and a night and a day, as if it were one day and there was no night; and this shall be unto you for a sign; for ye shall know of the rising of the sun and also of its setting; therefore they shall know of a surety that there shall be two days and a night; nevertheless the night shall not be darkened; and it shall be the night before he is born. And behold, there shall a new star arise, such an one as ye never have beheld; and this also shall be a sign unto you. And behold this is not all, there shall be many sign and wonders in heaven. And it shall come to pass that ye shall all be amazed, and wonder, insomuch that ye shall fall to the earth. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall believe on the Son of God, the same shall have everlasting life."

How beautiful this prophecy is! When the Savior was born, the sun went down but there was no darkness, only light! At Christmas time there are many lights—on houses, on trees, in windows—but their true purpose is to symbolize the light of Jesus Christ. He is the light of the world. He is the way back to our Heavenly Father. He shows us the path we must take, and drives away the darkness of the world. I am so grateful to know my Savior Jesus Christ and to be able to share the message of his Gospel with others. The Gospel brings light and understanding to people's lives and allows them to see the purpose for which Heavenly Father has placed them here.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Sister Daelemans

Pictures are from last P-Day—we went bowling with some of the other sisters in Ugly Christmas Sweaters!

What a Week!

What a crazy week! I have only 15 minutes left to write this email, so we shall see how things go.

First: Our Ward has CRAZY huge boundaries, except it is all mostly desert/middle-of-nowhere/lone-and-dreary-wilderness type land. There are some members of our ward who live about 45 minutes away, and we figured that the missionaries have probably never visited them before, so we planned a trip one day to go out and see them. I'll attach a picture of us on our way there. You can see Joshua Trees in the background. It was great. A lot of the members we couldn't even find because they must live out on a dirt road somewhere that our GPS wouldn't take us to. But one member we visited has a goat farm, so she showed us all their goats. It was pretty neat!

Second: We got to go to the temple this week! The LA Temple is HUGE and it took us about two hours to get there. It is out of our mission boundaries, so it was a little weird leaving, but also kind of nice because I am starting to feel claustrophobic here in Lancaster. Anyway, a member drove us and it was just such a nice day out. I Love the temple! And the feeling of the Spirit that is inside reminded me of why I am serving a mission, that I want other people to have the chance to be in the House of the Lord and to have that same amazing feeling!

Third (and most miraculous): Richard is going to be baptized!! He finally committed and he will be baptized on December 26th! It was been such an interesting journey with him. He has known for most of his life that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's church on the earth. But he was afraid to commit to baptism because he felt inadequate. Well, with much prayer, he has finally started to overcome these feelings and to understand the path that Heavenly Father wants him to  take. Sister Khumaryan and I are overjoyed!

Anyway, that's all I can think of though I know I am forgetting something important, but whatever.

Merry Christmas!

Sister Daelemans

Baptism #2

Rita got baptized! It was a wonderful service. Her boyfriend flew in from Colorado to perform the ordinance, and also confirmed her on Sunday. During her baptismal service Rita got up and bore her testimony. The Spirit was so strong! She was so prepared for the Gospel and I know she will only continue to grow and progress.

Our ward Christmas Party was also this week. It was super fun, there was so much good food and the children did a nativity. It was funny because for costumes they all just put different colored bath towels on their heads. It was very cute!

This year the church made a video about Christmas. #ASaviorIsBorn. You should all go watch it and share it on social media! Christmas time is the season that people's hearts are more open to hear about the Gospel and about Jesus Christ, and it's a time that we can also find a lot of common ground with people. A lot of times when we introduce ourselves to people we say, "Hi! We're missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!" and they say "That's okay, I'm a Christian" .........as if we aren't Christian as well. The name of Jesus Christ is LITERALLY in our church's name, people. But with this Christmas message we've been able to invite a lot of people to go watch the video. Maybe they didn't want to talk to us, but hopefully when they watch the Christmas video they will get a better idea of what we actually believe and their hearts will be softened.

Anyway, it's cold here but not as cold as it in Maryland and Utah so I guess I can't complain. Stay warm! I love you all!

Sister Daelemans

Week of Thanksgiving

Well, Thanksgiving was pretty crazy. We got invited to four different Thanksgiving dinners, but only had time to go to three, and only had room to eat two! 

This week was my first baptism! Levi got baptized, and it was a very sweet service. His mom gave the talk on baptism, and had a hard time getting through it because she was trying not to cry. It was very touching to see how much this meant to her. Their family had been less-active, but with their son's baptism you can see in them a renewed desire to be active participants in the Gospel and in the Church, and they seem to have grown closer together as a family.

Love you All!

Sister Daelemans

A whole transfer gone already?!?

My first whole transfer is now complete! This also means that my time with Sister Khumaryan is half over, since in six weeks she will be traveling back to Armenia. I don't know what I'm going to do without her!

This was a good week.

First, our investigator Rita will possibly be moving her baptismal date from January to December 5th! Her boyfriend, who she wants to be the one to baptize her, won't be able to travel to California in January, which would mean postponing her baptism until February. Not good. BUT, he was already planning on coming to Lancaster the weekend of the 5th, and Rita said she would like to be baptized then! YAYAYAYAY! She is already so prepared!

More good news. We have been teaching a man named Richard, who is an older gentleman that lives in a veteran's home. He knows the gospel is true. He knows the Book of Mormon is true. He knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet. But, he hasn't been coming to church. Why? Because before he met us he had been going to a Baptist church, and he is absolutely terrified to stop going because he believes all his friends there will hate him if he leaves them for the Mormons. Well, that's a problem. Last week we tried to help him overcome this fear, and to trust that if he did what he knew God wanted him to do, God would help him and bless him no matter how big of a sacrifice it would be. Richard didn't commit to coming, but he said he would think about it. Well, God works miracles ladies and gentlemen. HE CAME TO CHURCH THIS SUNDAY!!! He "claims" it is because he missed the bus that usually takes him to the Baptist church, but Sister Khumaryan and I think otherwise. He is a very special man. Whenever we teach him the Spirit is so strong. He has had several opportunities throughout his life to accept the Gospel, through friends who have been members of the church, but never did. This time he will though. I just know it. All prayers for him would be greatly appreciated. If he comes to church again next Sunday I am certain there will be no stopping him after that! :)

With Thanksgiving coming up this week I have been thinking about how grateful I am to have to Gospel. Gratitude is the catalyst for every other good virtue (according to some General Authority but I can't remember which one.) When we are grateful, we are more humble, we are more faithful, we are more generous, we are more loving. I know that if it weren't for the Gospel, I would be a very unhappy person. Many of the temporal things in my life would probably be the same, but my outlook on life would be completely different. Because of the Gospel I know who I am, that I am a daughter of God, and that my purpose here in this life if to prepare myself to return to Heavenly Father. And I know that I can only do this through Jesus Christ.

The Lord is good. He works many miracles, but we have to first have the faith that He can and that He will. I am grateful for the many miracles that I have already seen since being on my mission, and I expect to see many more!

Love you all and have a great Turkey-Day!

Sister Daelemans

Early Turkey-Day!

This Saturday my companion and I got invited to an early Thanksgiving! One of the other sister missionaries is going home next week, and since she is from Australia where they don't have Thanksgiving, one of the families in the area decided to have it early this year just for her! (I guess you could say we benefited from her non-American-ness.) Thanksgiving has grown on me over the years. I think I like it almost as much as Christmas. A holiday completely centered around eating and being grateful for all that we have :)

It was another fast week, even though not that much happened. Our two investigators who are getting baptized are progressing steadily, but we haven't had progress with anyone else. But that's okay. People have their agency, and our responsibility is just to invite them to Christ and to participate in the Gospel. If they decide not to accept this message, that is between them and Heavenly Father.

It is getting very windy here. Last night I had a hard time falling asleep because the wind was howling so loudly. And yesterday we had a crazy thunderstorm! It wasn't very long, but as we were leaving a members home and running to our car it was hailing! There was enough hail that the ground almost looked like it was covered in snow!

Here is a picture of my district. This is our last week together before transfers, when three of them will be going home and more of them may be transferred to a different area. They are great! I'm grateful to have served with them for my first transfer.

Love you all!

Sister Daelemans

One Month Down

Another week, another email.

This week did not go the way I thought it would. We had appointments and lessons scheduled for every night, but almost all of them got canceled. But it's okay!! We did a lot of service and talked to a lot of people and everything was just peachy!

One of the services we did this week was at a camp for disabled children. It is called "The Painted Turtle." They have a bunch of cabins up in the mountains and there is a lake and a gym, and it's just a really nice facility. Anyway, we went up there to help them prepare for a special Family Weekend where families would come up and stay there with their kids for a couple of days. We made beds and cleaned bathrooms and stuff like that. It was with our whole zone (9 missionary companionships) so that was also pretty fun.

We also did service at a member's home. She is going to have surgery this week, and wanted to clean her house before that happened. We helped her dust because she can't reach a lot of things in her house. Apparently, when you live in the desert, everything gets dusty super fast.

At the beginning of last week Sister Khumaryan and I had 10 investigators, 7 of which had baptismal dates. But we had to drop a lot of them because we've been having trouble contacting them or they won't keep appointments or won't keep commitments. It is frustrating, but we also know that we shouldn't be spending our time with people if they are not yet ready for the gospel. Their time will come, later on when they are more prepared.

Our progressing investigators (those who are keeping commitments) are Levi and Rita:

- I think I talked about Levi in last week's email. He is 9 and will be baptized at the end of November. His family invited us over for Thanksgiving, which I am already looking forward to!

- Rita is a woman who found the church through her boyfriend who is a member living in Colorado (I might have mentioned her as well...?) She came to church for the first time yesterday! It was wonderful seeing her there. She seemed a little nervous at first (new setting, new people, new everything) but by the end I think she felt a lot more comfortable. She even made a comment in class which was awesome! She is getting baptized in the beginning of January.

We have another investigator named Richard. He is in his 80s, and has had a lot of previous exposure to the church. He knows the church is true, and that the Book of Mormon is true, but he is currently attending another church where he has a lot of friends and is afraid to leave. He fears that all his friends will reject him and that he will be completely alone if he joins the church. We are doing our best to encourage him, and we see that he is slowly but surely gaining more confidence in the knowledge and faith he has in the Book of Mormon. Hopefully next Sunday he will come to church!

Love you all!

Sister Daelemans :)

PS

I realized I've been super bad at attaching pictures! This one is from the MTC, when we got to go to the Provo Temple for P-Day. 

Halloween and Stake Conference

This has been a very good week. Our ward had a Halloween trunk-or-treat and chili cook off, which was super fun. Sister Khumaryan and I didn't hand out candy for the kids, but we handed out pass along cards with pictures of Jesus on them. Jesus is much better than candy!! 

This weekend was also Stake Conference, which was really great. On Halloween, missionaries are usually sent home early so that they are not outside during trick-or-treating, but because there was the adult session of stake conference that evening, we got to go to that instead! There was also a session on Sunday morning.

(While going to Stake Conference was great, it was actually kind of annoying as a missionary because whenever we would invite people to church, we had to explain when and where church usually is, but then tell them that we wouldn't have normal church this week, and then try to explain why and what a Stake is, and it was just annoying and probably really confusing for people.)

As missionaries, we knock on a lot of random doors. I honestly have felt up until this week that this is a complete waste of time. Well, not anymore. This past week, within the space of half an hour, we found not one, but two new investigators on the same street while tracting. Both of them have baptismal dates and we will be going back to teach them this week! The Lord really is preparing people for the Gospel, it is just a matter of finding them!

We are teaching a 9 year old boy whose family are members, but because they didn't have him baptized when he was 8 he will now be considered a "convert baptism." We have been teaching him for several weeks, but his family finally decided on a baptismal date. November 28th!! So excited for him!! He is scared of water, so next Saturday we are going to take him to someone else's baptism so he will know what to expect and won't be scared for his own baptism.

Love you all! Hope everyone had a great Halloween. Now we have Thanksgiving to look forward to!!

Sister Daelemans

Transfer 1 Week 2

I have been here for two weeks. Week one felt like an eternity. Week two has flown by. Each day seems infinitely long but then at the same time it feels like yesterday I was sitting here at the computer emailing you about my first week. Sister Khumaryan tells me the whole mission feels that way—each day is long but weeks and months seem to fly by.

Fun fact about my companion: she knows five different languages—Armenian, English, Spanish, Russian and Greek. I tell this to people and she says "No! My Greek and Russian are so bad!" and I'm just like, "Whatever, you are amazing!"

It is getting cold here at night, and sometimes even chilly during the day. I was not expecting this, because before I came out here I kept checking the weather for Bakersfield, where the temperature is a lot higher. Here in Lancaster though I guess it can get pretty cold in the winter and some members have told me it sometimes even snows.

I had my first Zone Conference last week. My Zone has nine sets of missionaries, and we all gathered with President and Sister Wilson, as well as the senior missionary couples in our mission, to receive further missionary training. It was pretty great. President Wilson was talking about how as missionaries we need to be bold. He gave each of us a small rock. He looked at me and said "Sister Daelemans, what is that?" 

I said "......It's a rock."

He said "Yes, or you could think of it as a little boulder.....And that what I want each of you to be: a 'little bolder'!" :) It was pretty funny!

The Gospel is True!! I'm so grateful to be a missionary and to share the message of the Restoration with people every day!

Love you all,

Sister Daelemans

Lancaster Greenie

Well, folks, last week I told you I was an official missionary. This week though, I am ACTUALLY an official missionary. Officially.

I flew into Bakersfield last Monday and met President Wilson, my mission president, and a bunch of other people, and did a bunch of orientation things. On Tuesday I was assigned my trainer/companion and the area I will be serving in for the next 6-12 weeks. My companion is Sister Khumaryan. She is from Armenia and only has 12 weeks of her mission left before she goes home, and I feel very lucky to be her last companion before she leaves. We are assigned to the Lancaster 1st Ward/Area. As far as I understand, Bakersfield is in Central Valley, and Lancaster is in Antelope valley, about 2 (?) hours southeast (??) of Bakersfield.

Lancaster is a desert. I saw my first tumble weed the other day (people told me they were in Utah but I never saw one while I was there.) It is also very flat, with the Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance. Part of our area is farm land that surrounds Lancaster, and we have to drive on dirt roads to get to some of our appointments. On Thursday we had a crazy thunderstorm with hail and everything, and our phone kept giving us flash flood warnings. We were fine, but there were areas around us where there were mud slides that got cars stuck in the roads. Apparently, some of the cars are still stuck.

Since I have been here, I have already had many opportunities to talk to and teach people, and have seen many miracles. Most of our time is spent trying to contact potential investigators (people that the missionaries in the past have talked to and who seemed interested in the gospel) and former investigators. We knock on a lot of doors and talk to a lot of people, but most of them are not interested. Also, it seems like a lot of people out here have talked to LDS missionaries already. Apparently our area has been heavily tracted by missionaries in the past.

Sister Khumaryan keeps telling me that I brought a lot of good luck with me, since this week we found four new investigators and all four of them committed to be baptized. All of these are miracles, and I wish I had time to tell you the story for each one, but suffice it to say that the hand of the Lord was definitely guiding us to these people. These people were already prepared and ready for the gospel, and all my companion and I did was to show up at the right time to tell them about it.

God loves each of us so much. And I love you too!

Sister Daelemans

MTC Adventures

Family and Friends,

Well, I am officially Sister Daelemans now, name tag and all! I have been in the MTC for just over a week now, and I really don't even know how to express all the things that I have learned and felt here. It feels like I have learned more about the gospel here in the past week than I have in my entire life. There is a very strong spirit that resides in every inch of the MTC (even non-spiritual random places like the gym and cafeteria.)

I came into the MTC thinking that what I needed to know was the doctrines and the lessons in Preach My Gospel. I've since come to understand, through a lot of humbling, how much more there is to know in order to teach people. Being a missionary is learning to love people with God's love. Everyone I will be teaching has different needs, and I've learned that the most important thing to accomplish as a missionary is to show these people, these children of God, how the Gospel can help and bless them. We practice teaching "real" investigators (some of them are actors pretending to be investigators, but some of them are actually real, though we don't know which ones are which.) From the experiences I've had practicing teaching these investigators I can tell you this: teaching is hard. And teaching is even harder when you try to rely on yourself and your own knowledge and not the Spirit. When you let the Spirit take over, it ceases to be your lesson, and becomes his. It's a cool experience to know that what you're saying isn't coming from you. It hasn't happened every time that I have taught, but the times that it has were amazing, and truly humbling. My companion and I could feel the love that God has for these people, even though we had only met them a few times.

My companion's name is Sister Isom (pronounced like Awesome, but with an I. And she is pretty awesome!) We are both going to Bakersfield, and so are the two other sisters in our district, (our district is the group of missionaries that all have classes together.) There are also four elders in our district, who are going to serve in Roseville, California. We all get along pretty great and have helped each other to learn and grow together.

Besides teaching, we also have class. A lot of class. In fact, we probably spend 8-9 hours in our classroom each day, and sometimes we go stir-crazy. But our two teachers are amazing and we have learned so much from them.

This past weekend was general conference, and it was a really cool experience to be able to watch it with the hundreds of other missionaries at the MTC. We all sat in a giant auditorium (it was really just the gym) and watched conference together. It was kind of funny, because anytime one of the speakers would say something "quote-worthy" or specifically about missionary service, you could hear hundreds of pens clicking open so that the missionaries could all write down what was said. (We were told when we first got here that "A short pencil is better than a long memory," so I am constantly taking notes and writing things down.) I learned so much at General Conference! It seemed like every talk was about missionary service, but of course it wasn't. But it just goes to show that the messages shared are all inspired and you can find an answer or guidance so matter where you are in life. If any of you didn't get a chance to watch Conference last weekend, I invite you to still go and watch it! It should be on YouTube and on LDS.org. [Can you tell I'm a missionary?! I've already started committing people to do things ;) ]

Our district has already received our travel plans. We leave the MTC next Monday at 3 in the morning. For some reason we will be flying to Denver first (??? don't ask me why...) and then on to Bakersfield (I didn't even know there was an airport there.) It seems that I have been in the MTC for ages, but at the same time it feels like I just got here. When you hear from me next I will be out in the field teaching real people. I know that the Lord has called me to serve in Bakersfield for a reason. There are people there who are ready to hear the Gospel, who have been waiting for me to come knock on there door to share the glorious message of God's love for them. There is power in testifying of God's love for people, in telling them that God love's them, and that He is their Father. I cannot wait to continue serving him for the next 18 months with all of my heart and with all of my effort.

I love you all!

Sister Daelemans