Hermana Garner is home!!!

Hermana Garner made it safely home last week!  Here are a few pictures to show you her return!

We are thrilled to have her home!!

Family!

Welcome home crew!

Home!

Reflection

Dear Family and Friends,

I love you so much! Thank you all (for the millionth time) for the wonderful examples you all are for me, and thank you for your support and love as I have been here serving the Lord here in Piura. I truly could not be more grateful :)

This week has been amazing. My companion and I have been able to maintain positive attitudes, even though this week was Peru's Fiestas Patrias (it's kind of like Independence Day in the States, but this year it ended up being like 5 days of holiday) and there honestly weren't a whole lot of people that wanted to recieve us. 

One of the highlights of this week for me was Fast and Testimony meeting on Sunday. It was an amazing opportunity to humble myself before the Lord and ask for His guidance and His peace about the work that I've given in the last year and a half. I was also able to bear my testimony in Sacrament Meeting and it was a neat experience for me. 

However, today was such an amazing day. We had the opportunity to go on a trip as a zone to the mountains of Piura in a place called Canchaque (Cahn-cha-kay) because we were able to meet a goal of 1200 contacts as a zone for 3 weeks straight! It's a 3 hour bus ride from Piura to there, and then a 2 hour hike (1 1/2 hours in, half hour out) though some of the most beautiful scenery that I have EVER seen. Dad, you would have LOVED this. 

As we were driving home this afternoon, I was reflecting on the experience, and I'd like to share with you all a thought that I had about the hike and our lives here on earth: During the hike there were several parts that were a little bit confusing...with paths going in several directions and some confusion about which way was the right way. Several times we had to just hope that we were going down the right path with a prayer in our hearts that everything would turn out all right. Usually, after a few steps down one of the paths, we would find some kind of tip that this was the right way to go--shoeprints from previous members of the group, cookies that they started leaving behind to guide us through the tricky spots, or somtimes people that were coming the other direction down the trail that mentioned that others from the group had just gone this way. I loved that becaused it's truly so applicable to our lives and the gospel. Every single one of us is going through the "hike" of this life for the first time. Sometimes, we're not really sure which path to take and how we're supposed to know if it's right or not. As we willingly take a few faithful steps down the path that we think might be the right one, it is often THEN that the Lord brings us the calming reassurance  that this is the way that He wants us to go. I know that even though we don't always see Him, the Lord is always in our lives. If we're willing to take a few steps into the unknown, we can have the surety that He will give us the reassuring guidance that we need to keep going ahead. I'm so grateful for that personal guidance that He's given me and I hope to keep relying on it as I continue my journey here on this earth.

I know that this gospel is TRUE!! Live it to the end! I love you all so much and I want you all to know that I know that Jesus Christ lives and He loves us. Remember Him every day of your lives and you will always be blessed. 

Love,

Hermana Garner

Our p-day adventure to Canchaque! 

The Atonement is REAL.

Dear family and friends,

It's so amazing how, even after almost 18 months in the mission field, one can learn so many new things every day. I love this life so much. Even though it can be pretty rough sometimes, there is no greater blessing than the blessing of being able to learn. I am so grateful for all of the parts of Heavenly Father's plan that worked together to make this probationary state possible for each and every one of us. This week I have been re reading a few of the General Conferences talks from April. Those of you that have not gone back yet to see the words of the Lord's servants from this conference, I encourage you to repent and do it now. There is so much truth to be found there in that modern scripture, and just like when we read or re read the Bible or the Book of Mormon, there are always new things that we learn and new ways to apply them. 

One of the highlights of this last week was the interviews I was able to have with the new mission president and his wife. Presidnet and Sister Rasmussen are seriously so amazing. They are so full of energy and life and so much power and inspiration. I testify to each one of you that the Lord really does call and qualify each and every one of his servants. I went into this interview with a lot of questions and mostly just a really large burden that was becoming unbearable. As I was able to express my concerns and feelings to my priesthood leader, He helped me see HOW to trust in the Lord enough to take the burden I was carrying off of my shoulders and lay it at the Savior's feet. I know that a lot of times we think that if we need to go talk to the bishop or to a priesthood leader, it's because we need to confess something, or because there's something that's out of line in our lives that we feel we need to realign, but I'm here to tell you all that even though that is true, they are also there to be our guides and to help us in our spiritual progression...even in the everyday things. 

I want you all to know that there truly is a person that is capable of understanding us perfectly and helping us "bear our burdens with ease" (Mosiah 24:14-15) and that Person is Jesus Christ. I know that He lives and that His help is real and it is something that exists today, for EVERYONE; from the vilest sinner to the everyday perfectionist. I know that He has provided the way for each of us to return to the presence of our Father in Heaven to live in joy and in glory for the eternities, but in order for Him to help us, we need to learn to LET him. We have to trust in Him enough to ask for help....with complete faith that in HIs time He will respond and give us the relief we need. 

I guess I don't have a whole lot of time to tell you all about the experiences from this week, but I want to leave you with the promise that we are each capable of recieving a true and lasting reassurance of His love if we truly look for it. I love you all so much. Never give up the fight because you never know if the victory is just around the corner...and it doesn't do much good to give up and then realize that you were so close. 

I love you all! Have a wonderful week and don't forget to look for the Lord's hand in your lives!

Love,

Hermana Garner

Blessings and Trials

Dearest family and friends,

This week has been a really good week. I feel like Hermana B. and I have really gotten into our rhythm of teaching and the lessons we've had have been so powerful.

Something that has really impacted me over the last couple of days is the inspiration of our bishop in who he has asked us to visit. As I may have told you all, before the last transfer ended, we had our ward conference. In that conference there were several less active members that ended up going. A few of them were members of the S. family. The family have been members for a really long time, but only half of the family is active. (and those that are active are very strong members of the ward) Anyways, there were a few of the members of this family that went to the ward conference. After that the Bishop asked us if we could try to visit their family more frequently and see if we can help them come back to church. In the last couple of weeks Hermana B. and I have been trying really hard to help them out. This last week it has been so neat to see how the Lord has opened so many doors for us and has helped us to get just a little bit closer to them. Tonight we're going to have a FHE with their famliy and we are really excited. Hopefully it will all turn out well! 

In spite of our best efforts, we're still struggling finding new investigators...however, yesterday we went to visit a member family and we asked them for referrals and it was amazing because the dad and mom both had referrals for us and their daughter is going to go with us this week to visit their family friend. It seems pretty promising and we're looking forward to seeing how it works out this week. 

I love my companion so much. She is teaching me how to be more teachable and how to go with the flow a lot more. She's helped me get a totally new perspective of the mission and I am so grateful for her.

Something that I've been working on this week is listening during my prayers. I always have so many things to ask Him to bless, but sometimes I don't take the time to actually form a question and wait for His response. I invite each of you to no only pray, but to listen as well. Love you all!

Have a wonderful week! 

Love,

Hermana Garner

new week, new learning opportunities

Dear family and friends,

I just want to start out thanking all of you for your prayers and thoughts and love. I really do feel it all the way down here in Peru and it’s a huge support and strength for me. Thank you so much!

This week has been a little bit difficult for a couple of reasons. One, we still have been having a kind of hard time finding new investigators and it’s a little bit discouraging. Aside from that, pretty much none of the people we are teaching (less actives, investigators) came to church yesterday, even though we’ve been focusing on helping them come to church…which was kind of discouraging. However, we have also seen a lot of miracles and have been able to strengthen our companionship as we really depend on each other to keep up our animos and keep going strong.

However, on Tuesday, we had the opportunity to get to know President and Hermana Rasmussen! They are really neat. They are certainly very different from President and Hermana Rowley, but it’s not a bad or a good difference, just different. It was  a nice meeting. It was a little bit different because we got there and after the first hymn and prayer, they had us all come up with our companions and introduce ourselves. Then they showed a slideshow about their lives.  Fun fact about them: they’ve pretty much been together since their senior year in high school! Sister Rasmussen told us about them in English and Elder Soto (the Assistant) translated it to Spanish. She’s pretty funny and really outgoing and keeps trying really hard to speak Spanish, which is awesome. They’re really nice. After they introduced themselves, they gave us all HOMEMADE COOKIES.I pretty much died. Peruvians have the tendency to think that all cookies should be hard and it was wonderful to bite into a wonderfully soft cookie with m&ms and chocolate chips. Mmmm. It was also kind of funny because today Hermana Bazan and I were in centro and they passed by in their car with the assistants and kind of saw us at the last minute and shouted “hermanas!” and waved…then they circled around again to get a better chance to wave to us. It was kind of funny, but a really sweet gesture.

In other news, I think I’ve told you guys before about an investigator that we’re teaching named Martha. She is really progressing a lot. Even though she has kind of a hard time reading and retaining, she’s reading her Book of Mormon, and she does the “additional study” in the back of the pamphlets that nobody ever does, and she goes to church and pretty much every other activity that we invite her to. This week we went to visit her and at the end of the lesson (it was about the Plan of Salvation) we invited her to go to church again this Sunday. She said, “Well, Hermanas, I might as well be honest with you. I really don’t like going to the Mormon church.”  When I heard that, my heart literally sank. It was so sad. She explained to us that it was because she didn’t feel the “Holy Ghost” like she had felt it in the evangelist church that she was going to when she was dealing with her son’s addiction to drugs. We tried to explain it to her, and at the end of the lesson we felt like it was a little bit better, but then yesterday after church, she told Hermana Aida the same thing. I have been praying so much for her in the last few days. We’re trying to help her make more friends with the members to see if that will help her feel more comfortable. Today she’s going to go to our FHE with a member family, so hopefully that will be a good opportunity.

So that was kind of the sad part of the week. However, we had a truly amazing experience with one of the Rescued sisters that we have named Hermana Isis. She’s a mother of 3 kids that has had a lot of problems with her marriage. Her husband is an RM but he’s been inactive for a really long time. At the beginning of this week, she told us that she just felt tired…that she’s just ready to give up. It made us really sad to hear that, so we suggested to her that we fast together. She agreed, so on Friday after lunch we went to her house and started our fast with a very specific purpose that she could find the strength to keep going and to have peace in her relationship with her husband. On Saturday morning, we decided to pass by just to see how she was doing.  When she saw us she told us to come in and once we sat down she just said “Does fasting really work that fast?” (okay, it sounds way funnier in English, but it was really normal and a very reverent moment when she said it in Spanish.)  She then told us how she had been fasting and just doing all the normal things in her house when her husband came home from work. Normally he just goes straight upstairs and sits down to watch tv without saying hardly anything. However, she said that Friday night was different. He walked into the house, sat down near the kitchen where she was cleaning up and starting just talking to her. She was totally surprised, and then he surprised her even more by asking her if she wanted to go out together for a little bit. She told us that it was the neatest thing ever. They went out and even though they couldn’t eat because she told him she was fasting, they had a really good time and were able to talk about a lot of things that she said they hadn’t talked about in a long time. It was such a neat thing to see how just a few hours of fasting with a purpose that was so personal to her was able to be answered in such a special way. I’m so grateful for the power of fasting.

I love you all so much. I know that this church is true. I am so grateful for the person that the Lord is helping me become through the experiences I’ve been able to have here in the mission. I love Peru. I love this gospel. I love my Savior Jesus Christ and I love the Plan of Salvation that gives hope and meaning to everything we do.

I hope you all can find something here that helps you in your personal circumstances. If you’ve felt impressed to do something, take President Monson’s advice and “never delay a prompting.”

Love you all!

Hermana Garner

p.s. sorry the format's all weird...the internet was messed up so I had to type it in word and copy and paste.

First week of Transfers!

Dearest family and friends,

What a week! This week has seriously been filled with so much work. Hermana B. and I have been contacting and teaching like crazy, and our numbers really reflected our work...weeks like last week are so gratifying...you just feel like what you're doing is so worth it. 

This week we rescued Hermana M.!! Thank you all for your prayers on her behalf. It's been working so well because now she and her husband both had their interviews with the bishop and they've decided to move back together, which will be something really amazing for their kids. We've also started teaching her husband, so it will be awesome if we could rescue the whole family. 

I am so grateful for such inspired leaders. This week in our sacrament meeting our bishop announced a ward caravan that they're going to have in August to go to the Trujillo temple. It was neat because about a month ago Hermana G. and I had talked to the bishop about organizing a caravan to the temple because there were a lot of members excited to go and we thought it was a good idea. However at that time, he told us that the bishopbric had decided that the members should go on their own account and that there wasn't going to be anything organized for the ward to travel there in the near future. It was really sad for us, but we accepted it. However, on Sunday when they announced that the area presidency had suggested that they make plans to go to the temple before the end of August, they were willing to follow that counsel! It will be such a blessing for the ward members, especially for new converts like Hermana A. and for rescatados like Hermana M.. Now we're working on helping them be worthy and prepared to go. :) Going to be a great blessing!

This week my companion Hermana B. and I had a truly amazing week. I have been so touched by her excitement about being in a new area and her desire to work hard and give all that she has. She has brought with her a renewed desire for me to work harder and be better every day and that has really inspired me in the last 7 days that we've spent together. Yesterday we finished off a really successful week with a truly amazing experience. There is a brother that is in the bishopbric in our ward that asked us about 3 weeks ago to visit his wife. With my last companion we visited her several times, but thought about dropping her because she wasn't progressing and sometimes the comments that the brother made were really distracting and made it hard to feel the Spirit. But, yesterday when we went to visit them, Hermana B. and I took control of the lesson and shared the message of the restoration of the gospel. The Spirit was SO powerful when we shared it. The sister opened up to us about some of the fears she has about the church and her husband shared his testimony and...wow. It was so powerful. Both of them ended up crying and the peace of the Spirit was so present in that room. I am so grateful for the inspiration that goes into transfers and just how perfect they always are. I love my companion and I am so grateful for this week...and looking forward to next week.

That is just one of the truly powerful experiences that we've had this week. I love my companion and I know that even when it's not exactly what we want, transfers are always inspired.

Love you all so much! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Garner

first picture as companions!

In the zone meeting 

My three companions! 

Our new convert, rescatado and their daughter that they blessed yesterday!

Lots of Changes, Lots of Blessings

My dear family and friends,

I hope you know how wonderful you all are. Just so you know. :)

This week has been a great week. A major part of our week was spent doing a bunch of different activities in preparation for our Ward Conference yesterday. We saw Meet the Mormons on Wednesday, worked on Family HIstory on Thursday, had a HUGE pot luck/dance/talent show on Friday and we cleaned up the church on Saturday. Then Sunday was the Ward Conference. 

All of the activities went really well (except the one for family history...literally nobody showed up. But we hadn't planned that Peru would be playing in the south american cup...haha) and we had a TON of investigators that showed up...especially on Friday. Even though at first it kind of seems like a lot of time spent in activites it was actually a really good thing for our ward, because lots of times it's easy to just be friends on Sunday and forget about everyone for a week. However with the activites so close together it helped the members-and the investigators-to be close together for more than just one day this week, and you could reall feel the difference on Sundayduring the conference. 

Hermana G. and I have been having a bit of a hard time lately finding new investigators, so hopefully this week, we can visit some of the people that were able to go to the activities. Your prayers for our finding efforts are and will continue to be much appreciated. :) 

On Friday, Hermana G. and I had a really neat experience. We went to the house of a sister that we're teaching that's currently preparing to be baptized, named Irina. She's a really neat person. When we were preparing to teach her, we were having a hard time thinking about what we should teach. We decided to go with what we had planned during our weekly planning, but with the mind and heart open to anything else that the Spirit would guide us to teach her. It was so interesting because we started talking to her to follow up on her BOM reading, and the conversation just so naturally flowed to talking about commandments of God and also about the tendancy to adore Saints here. It was a really neat moment because Hermana G. and I just looked at each other, nodded our heads in agreement, and opened up the scriptures to talk about the 10 commandments. I loved that because it meant that we were both being guided by the Spirit. I have loved these last two transfers with her and I love working with her. 

Today, Hermana G. left to go to TUMBES...in my same area El Triunfo!! And, she'll be there with Hermana S. I'm seriously so excited for her. I'm so grateful that the Lord has put them together. I know that they're going to do so many good things for the people there. I'm going to miss Hermana G. so much...we really have become the best of friends. I have learned so much from her and I love her a lot. I'm so grateful for amazing companions and the impact they have in our lives! 

I am now with Herman B., also from Lima. She's 19 (her bday is next monday) and she has 6 months in the mission. She comes from Catacaos and is excited to be working in her second area. We will no longer be sister leaders. She's super cute and small and loves to talk and we get along just great. She also lived in the US for about 10 years, so she's going to be able to help me out a lot with my English!! ;) President and Sister Rasmussen will be getting here this Wednesday, and next week we'll have the chance to get to meet them. Super excited! 

This work is true. I know that the Savior lives. I love Him and I love this work.

Love,

Hermana Garner