Loving Life in Los Angeles

                                                                                                                             Dec. 15, 2014

Hey! Today is the start of a new transfer. Hermana McFadden finished the mission and my new companion who is getting here tomorrow is Hermana Hungria from Ecuador. I am really excited! We came to the mission together but she was in the Chile MTC. Also I'm staying here in Los Angeles. 

This week has just been kind of a blurr, but that is a good thing I think. I did an exchange this past week with one of the hermanas who is in her first cambio in the mission and it was one of the coolest experiences. We saw all kinds of miracles. The first was a recent convert that has been struggling lately has been almost impossible to find. She is 17 yrs old and we have been worried about her. Well we stopped by that day and she was home with her sister and starting asking us questions about her personal progress and asked if we could help her out. She has been going through a tough time lately so it really was such a miracle that we were able to have some time with her. Also at the end of the day we had like 15 minutes left before we had to go into the house and we said to each other that we were going to invite someone to be baptized before the day ended. It was so great because like 3 minutes before we had to go home we knocked on this door that is on the same street as our house and a girl answered and we asked her if we could share a short message of Christ and she let us in! She is 19 yrs old and has a 3 year old son and looked so tired and worn out. Her family was teasing her that she let us in and was talking to us but I was grateful that we were still about to feel the spirit, teach her something simple and invite her to be baptized. She said Yes too! It really is so cool to see how mindful God is of us and of all of His children. I have been thinking a lot lately about our agency and the agency of others and how much it affects missionary work and whether people have the opportunity to accept the gospel or not. It is a beautiful thing to witness other people letting the spirit touch them and being willing to learn and to change and seeing it in their eyes when they really do understand or really do feel the spirit testifying of the truth.

Also, we had the primary program yesterday in sacrament and I witnessed quite possibly the cutest primary program instance ever. This little girl, Fernanda, was asked to share her testimony of what she had learned that year in primary (she is about 4 or 5) and she walked up nervously to the pulpit, stared at the audience wide eyed for like 30 seconds and then said really slowly, "You should never hurt animals.....and always leave them alone." Her little lip was quivering the whole time and then she just stared at the congregation breathing heavily until her mom came and got her and then she started bawling. Ahhh I love the primary program and good thing it's a hit in all parts of the world

I love you guys! Thanks for everything!

Love always,

Hermana Chalmers

hermana pendley, the mission secretary. i love her!

hermana mcfadden and i at the christmas conference in san pedro

hahah trying to get hermano jose to take a selfie, he didn't understand it at all haha

SOY churrasco. i love my life

Mi querida familia,                                                                                                      Dec. 8, 2014

This week was so good. I learned a lot of good things. Lots of little miracles also.

- We ate lunch with an Hermana that is recently reactivated and after we finished eating we shared a spiritual thought with her. It was my turn to share so I pulled out my scrips and turned to Helaman 3:35.

 "Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctifcation of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God."

I really love this scripture and I wanted to share it with her and turn it toward missionary work but as we read it, the part where it says, "they did fast and pray oft" stood out to me and I felt like I should share with her about the importance of those two things. It turns out that this hermana has been having a hard time finding a job. She barely had enough money to give us lunch and has been praying so hard for help and not knowing what else to do. She said that it had never come to her mind to try and fast as well and that the scripture was an answer to her prayers. It was really cool for her to be able to see how the Spirit can work through us to help others and also how the scriptures hold the answers to all of our questions and help us to receive constant revelation for even the simplest problems and questions.

- Also we found a family that is awesome! It is a mom, Carmen, a grandma, Teresa and the son, Eduardo. We taught them and they were super excited about it all, especially Eduardo (he ended up coming to church and even stayed after with us to watch a ward baptism!). At the end of our lesson we invited him to pray and he said he would even though we was a little nervous but it was so funny because right before he prayed he said... "yeah... Im going to turn off the lights" and shut off the lights real quick, said the prayer in the dark and then turned them back on. hahah.

- We taught some recent converts, Jose and Magdalena, (they are cousins and are both about 50 or so) and invited them to invite some neighbors or friends to a ward activity we are having next week and they ended up getting into an argument about being judgemental on what neighbors to invite and who REALLY deserved an invitation even if they would say no. Hahah it was quite the scene to observe.

- In a contact in the street the other day we talked to this really nice guy who told us, "Sorry it's just, I don't have time to be Mormon." How ironic is that one? We tried to explain to him that really the fact was that being Mormon would make all the other time he has even more worth using and really the most important thing he could be doing with his time was finding the true church and coming closer to Christ. He wasn't really having any of but I thought that was interesting what he said, such a backwards thought when you really think about it.

I love you guys a lot!

 Thanks for everything! 
Feliz Navidad!

Love always,

Hermana Megan Chalmers