Moving Forward

This week was super weird. We had to spend a ton of time packing and cleaning and moving and unpacking, which was super annoying, but we are finally all settled in to our new place.

It is pretty ugly on the outside but the inside is nice:

Glad that's over.

Our miracle investigator Ashley texted us and told us that she doesn't want us to come back :( We think somebody must have said something to her about the church (something FALSE!) so that was lame. Then we had to go tell this other investigator, Kate, that we couldn't come back to teach her anymore. The sisters had been "teaching" her for a couple weeks before I got there. Except they weren't really teaching her. It was more just her arguing with everything they said and HER trying to convert THEM. So that needed to stop. We showed up and the first thing she does is tell me that the Book of Mormon isn't true, so then I had to tell her that it WAS true but she wouldn't come to know that unless she prayed about it. She told us that she would never pray about it, so I told her we weren't coming back anymore.

But that's okay. We are going to go out and find more wonderful people to teach who want to learn and want to grow closer to the Savior.

Bonnie is doing good. Still excited for her baptism in September. When we are having rough weeks, she is always a ray of sunshine. She was talking about how it was a mistake for her to have moved to Tehachapi because a bunch of terrible things have happened to her in the past year that she's lived here. But then she paused a thought about it for a minute, then said "Except, I guess if I hadn't moved here I wouldn't have met y'all, so maybe it was a good thing after all!" :)

I don't have much else to say this week, other than I LOVE THE GOSPEL! It is such a blessing :) This transfer I have gone on a lot of random rants to Sister Dow about how other church's doctrine doesn't make any sense and how I am so grateful for the truths that we have. It just makes so much sense, and brings so much peace and joy!

Have a super duper week!

Sister Daelemans

Men are that they might have Joy

I am eating Sonic right now. I have been good at eating healthy recently, but I am stress eating because guess what? We are moving apartments. I am so upset about it. I just moved in and got unpacked and now they are moving us because the lease on our condo is up and the owner wants to sell it instead of continuing to rent it. Bleh. Missionary apartments also tend to be very messy and cluttered because most missionaries are like "Eh, I'm not going to stay here for very long, so I'll just make a mess because it doesn't matter. And I'll leave all my junk behind because I can't take it with me." So we have to clean the whole place and sort through a bunch of stuff left by generations of missionaries past. It is stressing me out. Okay, rant over.

Yesterday in church they announced a boundary change for the wards up here in Tehachapi. The Tehachapi ward (where I was) is really big compared to the Bear Valley ward (where I am now) so they took a chunk from T-hach and gave it to BV. It's just really funny that it happened right after I got moved. It's like the ward just moved with me :)

Miracle of the week: We were tracting and we met a lady named Ashley and the first thing she did was invite us inside and ask what message we had to share with her. So we taught her the whole Restoration and she was really listening and paying attention and wants to read the Book of Mormon and find out if it's true! She is so so awesome and so prepared! It was a huge tender mercy. I have had cool experiences tracting in the past that made me realize why we do it, but this was probably the most amazing one yet. And my companion Sister Dow, who hasn't been out as long, said that she now has a testimony of tracting as well. The only thing that will hold Ashley back is that she has to work on Sundays and can't come to church. But we are meeting with her on Thursday, and hopefully something will happen that will allow her work situation to change.

Bonnie is doing fabulously. SHE IS THE CUTEST OLD LADY ON THE PLANET! I will need to get a picture with her this week to show you how dang cute she is. And she is so prepared! We taught her the Word of Wisdom this week. We knew that she drank coffee because we saw it in her kitchen, so we weren't sure how she would take it. When we committed her to live the Word of Wisdom during the lesson she said "Yes, of course! I drink coffee but I will just have to stop." Wow, what amazing faith! :)

I got to meet Hong and Mike this week. They are our other investigators. It is really interesting to teach them. Hong has very limited gospel knowledge, so we have to keep things basic for her to understand, but her husband is very familiar with religion and has lots of questions. Some of his questions are super random though. We need to help him feel the spirit more and help Hong to understand what we're talking about. But I am excited to continue teaching them both!

Recently I have been reading 2 Nephi 2. It is only one chapter, but it has so much in it. I don't even know what keeps drawing me to it, but I ended up studying it 3 days in a row, and then in church we talked about the Fall of Adam and Eve, which is what the chapter is partially about. Clearly I am supposed to be learning something important from it. One thing that I've learned from it is that Satan's goal is for us to be miserable, like him, but God's goal is for us to have joy. v25 "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." The chapter also talks about how in order to have joy, we need to face opposition and to experience pain and sorrow. We need the bad to recognize and appreciate the good.

I have definitely seen that to be true, in life before and during my mission. Some days are really hard, but they make the miracles so much more sweet. I love me investigators so much more because of all the miserable rude people I talk to. God's plan is so good! :) We just have to recognize the good when it does come and to find joy in it.

I hope that you may all be able to find joy this week, in spite of whatever opposition you might face. Find the good in every day!

Love,

Sister Daelemans

The Golden Bear Sisters

I have too much to say, so I will try to summarize everything the best I can:

New Companion: Sister Dow! She is from Maine, so another East coaster! (woot woot!) Been out 6 months, has never been in another area. Pretty quiet, we get along pretty well so far.

New area: it's....an adjustment. Covering 2 wards is SUPER STRESSFUL! Sunday at church was ridiculous running back and forth between classes and meetings and having everyone try to stop you in the hallway to say hello to the new sister (me.) Bleh! It was definitely not a day of rest. But there seem to be a lot of really great people in the 2 wards.

The First ward is Golden Hills. It is basically the more rural outskirts of Tehachapi. They call that area Golden Hills because it sounds a lot nicer than Dead Brown Grass Hills. Actually, it is very pretty when you are looking at it from a distance. All of the streets are super random and confusing, so I felt lost all the time (thank goodness Sister Dow has a GPS.)

The Second ward is Bear Valley. So Bear Valley is weird. It is basically a gigantic gated community out in the mountains. I expected all of the houses to be very large. There are indeed many large houses, but it turns out there are also many normal sized houses as well. It is very pretty there, with lots of trees and a couple of ponds (apparently the locals call them "lakes." I scoffed at that when Sister Dow told me – I guess Californians have never seen real lakes before.) Many of the people that live there have horses. We also see a lot of deer and we've been told that there are also a number of mountain lions. Please pray that I won't be eaten by one. The ward boundaries also includes several other valleys in Tehachapi outside of Bear Valley, that aren't gated, but they are all very pretty and not very highly populated. Because everything is spread out we are spending a lot more time driving places than I am used to and it is driving me nuts!

Investigators: We are teaching an older lady named Bonnie. She is the cutest little old lady ever! She loves the Gospel and Jesus Christ so much :) Last night we went over to teach her a lesson but she had just taken some medication that was making her very sleepy and she was trying to stay awake so hard but she just kept falling asleep mid sentence. We ended up just sharing a scripture with her instead of a lesson. She is hopefully going to be baptized the end of September. We also have 2 other investigators that have already been taught for a little while, Hong (she's Chinese) and Mike her husband, but they have been out of town, and then sick, so I have not actually been able to meet them yet. We also started teaching a girl named Anna. She is in her 20s but is mildly mentally handicapped, so I'm not exactly sure how that is going to work out yet. I guess we will figure it out as we go.

Random: We went raspberry picking today. There is a member here that has a field of raspberry bushes that people can pick themselves and then leave money in the "honesty box." She told us we could come and get as many raspberries as we wanted for free, so we did.

Miracle: We were in between Golden Hills and Bear Valley last night when we realized we were out of gas. We had an appointment in Bear Valley, so we just continued in that direction, and decided we would just buy a little gas to keep us going, because we felt super bad about having to get gas on the Sabbath. We drove the 8 miles to the gas station on empty. Crisis averted! ......Except the gas station didn't have power. And it was the only gas station within 10 miles. We continued on empty until we reached a members house, who thankfully had some emergency gas in a can that they were able to give us. And, it was a double miracle because we didn't have to buy gas on a Sunday!

More random: There seem to be a lot of weird people that we talked to this week. One lady yelled at us and basically told us we should go to Africa instead of California because the people in California "already have Jesus". On the flip side we talked to a preacher who was very nice but he told us that the reason California has so many fires is because it's a consequence for all the wickedness here. He told us that what we were doing was very much needed in California right now. I would be interested to see what the two would say to each other if they met and randomly started talking about religion.

We were terrible about taking pictures, but here's what I've got for the week:



​Also, look what this street is called!! :D

Have a great week!

Sister Daelemans

Goodbye Tehachapi. Hello....Tehachapi?

We got transfer news. I am getting transferred to.....Tehachapi! Wait, what? Yes, you heard me right. In our tiny little town there are actually 3 wards. Right now I am in the Tecachapi ward, and I am getting transferred to the Gold Hills and Bear Valley area, which covers the other 2 wards in town. I am super super happy with this! I knew I needed to be transferred, because I have been in the same area for 4 1/2 months and felt like I was running out of people to talk to. But I wanted to stay in Tehachapi for the rest of the summer, because it is the only cool area in the mission. The only place where it is not 95-110 degrees right now. Well, Heavenly Father must love me an awful lot because I got to have both wishes :) The 3 wards in town share a building. It felt really weird saying goodbye to people because I will still see a lot of them on Sundays in the hallways at church. I am really excited for the change. The only bad thing about being transferred is having to pack up all my stuff.

We found out this week that our Cambodian investigator does believe in God, but she also still believes in Buddah. She says they are all good and they all help her, so why not believe in all of them. I am realizing more and more what a barrier the whole language thing is. I wish so much to be able to talk to her and tell her all about the Gospel, but most of it would go over her head at this point. It also makes me realize how dependent we are on Heavenly Father as missionaries. Even with people who speak English, we can't teach them or help them understand anything without the Spirit. I definitely don't know how to go about teaching Ladeth. But I know that the Lord will help Sister Hale and her new companion to know how to help Ladeth understand the Gospel.

Cool story. We tracted into a lady last week and we were able to teach her the first lesson. We set a return appointment for the next week (this past Saturday.) Now, you have to understand that appointments we set with people that we have tracted into hardly ever go through. Like, ever. So, we went back but were pretty skeptical as to whether she would actually be there. Well, not only was she there (and had remembered that we were coming back) but she had read in the Book of Mormon all the way through most of 2nd Nephi! There are recent converts who have already joined the church who haven't even read that far in the Book of Mormon! Sister Hale and I were both so shocked because we've never found people through tracting like that before! It was really cool, and I am so excited to find out what happens with her in the coming weeks. It's sad because I won't be in the area any longer to teach her, but I will hear from the other missionaries what happens. :)

I am excited for this new transfer. I can't wait to see who the Lord has in store for me to meet and teach in the coming weeks!

Much love,

Sister Daelemans

Hello August. Good riddance July!

The month of July is finally over. I think this has been the longest month of my entire life.

When people don't come to church, sometimes you just have to show up at their house Sunday morning and tell them you're walking there with them. It worked with the Cambodian lady we're teaching! Her name is Ladeth (la-det) and her two sons, 3 and 5, came as well. They were super noisy in church, and I could tell she was getting frustrated with them, so I spent most of Sacrament meeting drawing the younger one pictures of fish and snakes to keep him quiet so she could pay attention. Then, they were off to primary and she seemed so relieved to be able to go to class and not be distracted by her children. After church we taught her the Plan of Salvation, and she really seemed to understand! It is so interesting teaching someone who doesn't have a Christian background, and who has a language barrier. But she wants so much to understand and to learn! We got her a Book of Mormon in Khmer (the language they speak in Cambodia) and she was so happy! It is a very confusing looking language. You should Google it. At the end she told us "her brain was full." It may take her a little longer, but I can see wonderful things in store for her! What we taught made so much sense to her even though it was things she had never heard before. The Gospel is so true and just feels right in people's hearts. We're not teaching them something new, just reminding them of things they knew previously but forgot when they came to earth.

Have a great week! And please pray for California to get some rain. That would make my companion Sister Hale very happy indeed!

Love,

Sister Daelemans