Week 52; Queeeeeen Creeeeeek, out in the boonies!

Yes, I'm out in the boonies and desert and farmland of Arizona, it didn't come to as big of a shock to me considering Ive been in Gilbert and Mesa my entire mission, its been great though. It made me realize that you REALLY do love the people you serve. About 8:45 pm on Thursday night I broke down crying, because I was so overwhelmed and homesick... Not home sick of HOME, but homesick of my last area! I had learned to really love these people! The were my second family! But its alright, its never goodbye; Its see you later!

 

Anyways, Monday and Tuesday we spent a lot of time saying goodbye to members and getting pictures and spending time before I had to leave. It was kind of overwhelming considering the fact that I knew and had spent time with so many of these families! And of course I had to pack and try and figure out where everything would fit and all that!

 

Wednesday was transfer day!! And as you already know I was put into the Bella Vista zone! Which is technically in the San Tan Valley, but we are right next to the Queen Creek HS. Oh, here's my new address by the way! 1482 E. Maddison Circle San Tan Valley, AZ 85140 --

I also met my new companion; Sister Chase from Logan, UT. :) She is just the sweetest thing ever! We cover 2 wards and I can already tell this will be a good area! Lots of potentials for teaching and lots of people that we can help hear the gospel! After transfer meeting, and transporting all of our luggage and things, I had to drive back to the mission office with one of the sisters to get her drivers info turned in, and also we got lost.... but that's not a surprise considering I'm horrible at directions and sense of direction.. haha. Later that night we had an appointment with a member family, and stopped by the WML's house in one of the wards. Set goals for this next transfer and the ward and shared ideas. It was a great night! OH and I failed to mention that we live in our area, so we don't have a car and ride bikes EVERYDAY! This will be great for the last 6 months of my mission to keep in shape ;)

 

Thursday we cleaned ALL day! The house that we live in, was currently occupied by Elders and was so GROSS! We did all the needed and nitty gritty cleaning. I feel comfortable enough laying on the floor now if we wanted to! haha.It was so gross before hand I couldn't stand it!  Later that night we met with the WML in the other ward that we cover and had splits. We went by a few people including one of the investigators that they are currently teaching, named Linda. She is so sweet and is from Wisconsin. :)

 

Friday was of course crazy! I honestly don't think there wasn't a crazy day this week, all busy, but of course that's always good :) We had planning that morning, following planning, Sister Chase had to go to a training for the the 12 week trainees. It was really great, we received alot of inspiration for our area and we were also able to see all the sisters! After that meeting/training we were stopping by the mission office to see if there was any mail.. I didn't have any :( but we were trying to find our way there and we got lost... due to the fact that non of us knew were we were going. haha. We had an appointment to meet with a less active family, but we shared a scripture and got to know them, we talked to them about the importance of coming to church and all that! They said they would make it an effort to come to church!

 

Saturday was great and packed as well! We had a few miracles too! We contacted alot that day, but the miracle of that day was that we were contacting a former investigator and he answered the door and told us that the reason he stopped investigating the church was because some missionaries told him he couldn't come to church unless he stopped smoking and drinking, which wasn't true at all! He also told us that we could come back later, cuz he had company over! But miracles, as I have said before do really happen!

 

Sunday went well. We went to both wards, in the Pecan creek 2nd ward, they asked me to say the opening prayer in Sacrament meeting, which I have never done before... It was kind of intimidating, and they introduced me in front of the entire ward, and then Pecan creek 1st ward they asked me while they were announcing the rest of the program, to come and bare my testimony and tell a little about myself! Put on the spot? No problem! 

 

Anyways, hope y'all are having a great week and hope to hear from y'all soon!

 

God be with you all till next week!

 

♥ Sister Holcomb :)

That's my girl!

Good Bye Sister Wiggins and Bishop!

Week 51- IM GETTING TRANSFERRED!!

I can't believe it!  After 6 transfers, and 9 months of being in the Desert Ridge Zone, I'm leaving! It was a great last week in this area and so many miracles happened!  Donna is finally reading the Book of Mormon!  We had talked to her about the importance of all the great blessing and knowledge that we receive from it and she actually read it!  One night we got a text from her saying that she wanted us to come over and help her understand something that she was studying!  It was so great to help her understand it! 

We went to the temple with Linda to do baptisms for the dead, and the boy in the picture is Brother Keith, he did the male baptisms and confirmations for Linda's family! 

One night we had dinner with a LA in one of the Elders wards. And we ate legit Chinese food, it was so yummy!

Sunday we did a musical number, we sang "The Olive Tree". It was a trio, 2 Sisters from the ward & I, while Sister Wiggins played the piano with another sister from the ward! Donna and her family were able to come to church that Sunday too! Sherri was out of town and wasn't able to come to church, but she will next week! That's pretty much all the exciting stuff that happened this week! 

 Here's some pictures just for this week! 

She would love to get letters and hear from everyone!  

Sister Lindsay Holcomb

1001 N Burk St

Gilbert,  AZ 85234

THE BIG 50 WEEKS! Officially 6 months left!

So this past week, yet again was an enormous blessing and of course tons of miracles happened! Of course Monday was the normal crazy day where we just do things to get ready for the week, same ole, same ole! Email, shopping, laundry and what not! Tuesday was more of a crazy day for us! Tuesday mornings are regular for us to have the same "new missionary meeting" and then district meeting, where we receive training. This last week was the whole zone together for training from the district and zone leaders! Had several member lessons, and contacted a ton! Wednesday was great as well, we talked with lots of members of what we could do to help missionary work move forward, and bounced ideas off of each other! Thursday we contacted a referral given to us by a member, she has cancer and were going over to offer service. But she wasn't feeling well, so we thought we stop over another time. We had an appointment with one of our current investigators, Sherri. We taught the Restoration to her and she said she felt the spirit. It was a great lesson, we were on cloud 9! We stopped by a few less actives house and tried to share a message but no one answered the door. :(  Its starting to get warmer here so less and less people (not that a ton of people are outside anywaysss...) are outside or even home. Spring break is this week, so its gonna be a slower week than normal. But with great trials come great blessings! We also had a few more member lessons that day too! Its always great to hear the testimonies of members and what there stories are and everything! We were going around for a few hours on Thursday just street contacting and tracting and this little girl was inside her house and was like.... "LOSER" and we just responded with "Hey! How are you?" and than she said it again and hid when we looked where she was.. It was hilarious! Than later that day when were walking around we saw a bird just straight up drop an egg... and it was moving around and everything.. So sad :( The rest of the night we had member visits, which was nice! Friday was probably thee busiest day of the week we had weekly planning and than 3 appointments pretty close in time to each other. One with Sherri, one with Rebecca, and one with Linda (one of our recent converts) With Sherri, we taught about the first vision... The spirit was so strong and we were ready to invite her to be baptized. We helped her recognize that it was the spirit testifying of truth of what we taught. One of her kids than walked in and caused quite the commotion.. She knows what we taught is true & its so cool to see the spirit testify to people.

Saturday was full of contacting and Sunday, OH Sunday was the miracle for sure! Fast Sunday was thee best! To hear all the testimonies of the youth that participated in the celebration was awesome!  And Sherri, and her kids were at church as well. Sherri said that she really enjoyed testimony meeting and that she LOVED coming to church. The best part was the moment in Sacrament meeting when Noel, her daughter leaned over to me and Sister Wiggins and told us she wanted to go on a mission one day!  :')  Later on that day, she told her Mom (Sherri) on the way to the car that she wanted to go on a mission, and Sherri turns to her and says "Well honey, the first step is baptism" .... LIKE, it blew our minds! Sherri is so prepared!!!! So she knows why we are here, and how she can become closer to her Savior and its through baptism!!! We plan on inviting her to be baptized this week! And Noel is so cute! After her mom told her baptism was the first step, she said "Okay, but first I'm gonna come to church next Sunday, and every Sunday, and I'm gonna bring my scriptures!" She's 10!  She is so golden :) They are definitely a tender mercy of the Lord!

 

The Lord is definitely in this work! I love being a missionary, and I love that fact that I can experience things like this everyday! I know this work is true and I know that this gospel is true!

 

LOVE YOU ALL! Have a great week! :)

 

--Sister Holcomb ♥

Week 49- The blessings of diligence!

This week has been full of wonderful blessings from our Father in heaven and we are so blessed to experience everything that has happened this week! Monday we had a lot on our plates and didn't have a lot of time to do everything that we needed to, we emailed, obviously the most important thing of the day (; then because we didn't have any money yet, we went and dyed my hair! Its back to brown because its way to expensive to keep up the red! We finished all normal pday things, napped, wrote letters, and what not. After that we taught a family, that we are currently teaching an FHE, we taught them the song "I am a child of God" and taught them the meaning and concept behind the song. It was a lot of fun, after that they fed us dinner and we had HUGE vienniza pizza! It was HUGE! After dinner we joined the Waghers for their families FHE! It was great, we talked about the atonement, and our favorite hymns! :) After a long day of all busy-ness we finally came back home and planned and crashed to sleep!

Tuesday was an even crazier day! A lot of disappointment, but that's where the Lord humbles us! We had 3 appointments scheduled with our investigators, but unfortunately all 3 canceled on us! We street contacted some catholic people, and got offered beer. Of course I kindly declined! HAHA! We were out with one of the Laurels when all of this was happening! and she is so awesome! She is my sisters age, so it was kinda of cool to experience missionary work with someone the same age as Sydney! We ate at a new family in the wards, house. It was great, she told us that she had used a pintrest recipe and it was fantastic! We shared a message with them and then chatted with them for a few! The husband talked about BYU and then Sister Wiggins had heard that there is a BYU cali?! So he looked it up, and we kind of decided it was fake : /

Wednesday was great and crazy and busy AGAIN! We had a zone temple trip, it was great! We brought a soon to be missionary with us from one of our wards and we talked about her mission. Its so cool to see how excited she is for her mission! She is going to Chicago West mission - Spanish speaking! After the temple trip we had to change the oil in our car so we did new missionary training hour on the IHOP bench outside the restaurant, we stopped by one of our recent converts house, and it was kind of last minute so we left for dinner and came back. We helped Lauren's mom organize some papers, other then that we couldn't teach because she just needed our help. We also tried setting up something to meet with her mom (since she isnt a member) but she was so busy with organizing it didn't follow through. Maybe this week, right after we left there house, we went to one of our wards correlations.... but no one was there. So we just went home and called members to set up times when we could come over and share a message with them. Fun stuff! :)

Thursday was just as busy, if not more busy then Wednesday was! Thursday I woke up not feeling very well, so not much got done, but we tried to do as much as possible. We didn't get out of the apartment till about 1 pm. We went by the Waghers to see if we could get sister Wiggins camera, because she had left it there the night before. But she wasn't home so we rode around on our bikes for a little and tried to talk to people so we could invite people to the Easter pageant, and we talked to about 5 people, when this mean lady just completely blew us off! She said, "I'm leaving, get out of the way" and got in her car. I just smiled and said, "have a great day!" I was a little heart broken but just saw her as a child of God. We had dinner with a new family in the ward that moved here from Payson, AZ and it was super fun! They fed us some good orange chicken and pot stickers! :)

Friday we had planning, and the zone ordered a pizza. Stopped by Donna's and met her mom that was in town from Cali and met her best friend who came for the dedication on Sunday. She also introduced the church to Donna when they came to a time out for women in Phoenix.

Saturday was kind of a slow day, but definitely still fun. We woke up and helped a members neighbor pack, because she is moving. Long story behind it, but it was fun helping her. After that we got dressed in our missionary clothes and went over to the HUGE field where they were doing the dress rehearsal for the cultural celebration! It was amazing!!!! Just to see how many youth were participating amazed me! After doing that we went over to the Waghers and helped her clean her house for a bit, went over to Donna's for the showing of the cultural celebration. It was so great! A member sent me the link, and you can watch it if you can!

 

Sunday was the dedication of the Gilbert AZ Temple, and it was so great! Sister Wiggins and I went to the morning dedication and it was a very beautiful ceremony :) It was cool to think that President Monson, our prophet was like 20 mins away from where we were! We went home after ward and ate lunch, we stopped by a recent convert and told them they could go to the dedication, we went to the 3 pm dedication, after ward had dinner at the Waghers, and Sister Waghers daughter did our nails :) After that we shared a message and went home!

 

This week like I said in the beginning was a great week and full of many wonderful blessings, I know this is theeee longest update that I have ever done, but I hope you enjoyed it! Love you all!

 

Here's my apartment address 3225 E. Baseline Rd #1115 Gilbert AZ, 85234

 

WRITE ME & ILL WRITE YOU BACK!

 

--Sister Holcomb :)

Here's the link to the cultural celebration for the Gilbert Arizona temple.. for those of you that can watch it :)
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MjQGeawDGvo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Week 48, we moved again!!!

This week was a whirl wind of everything! CRAZY WEEK FOR SURE!

 

Monday we took pictures at the Gilbert temple, because it was for sure perfect weather for it! Sister Stanley was credited for taking these awesome pictures, I've included just a few of them.

 

Tuesday we had new missionary meeting and district meeting, we talked about diligence and it really made me realize that I need to work harder as a missionary, so Sister Wiggins, and I talked about goals and things that we could do to focus more and that helped, but then on Wednesday we had exchanges with the STL's (sister training leader) and talked about what we could do. We talked about the goals of what would help. On Friday we had planning and she came after planning and talked to each of us about how we would feel about moving, and we agreed that it would be better for Sister Wiggins as a new missionary and me, trying to still be diligent. And without distractions. So we moved! Don't worry if you have sent letters to the newer address because the other sister live in the other apartment and will give me the mail at meetings. Our new address is:

 

3325 E. Baseline Rd.

#1115

Gilbert AZ 85234

 

Saturday we moved officially, and unpacked and got back to work! Had a few lessons this week, this next week will be way more successful, I can feel it! I hope you all have a great week! Hope to hear from you soon!

 

Love, Sister Holcomb

 

HWR.... RWH!!!!