the phone call.

Hello family!

So here in the México Torreón Mission once a missionary has only three months left the Mission Secretary, Hermana Navarrete, calls and asks which airport is closest to your house. It´s the famous phone call that means that you´re on your way home. On Tuesday morning my companion and I were studying when the phone rang and I started freaking out because I saw that it was the Mission Secretary. When I answered Hermana Navarrete asked me if I like the Olympic Games, and what was my favorite event. I told her I liked swimming, and we talked about how once the athletes are about to finish they go even harder. Then she read to me Alma 36:24, which says, "Yea, and from that time even until now, I have labored without ceasing, that I might bring souls unto repentance; that I might bring them to taste of the exceeding joy of which I did taste; that they might also be born of God, and be filled with the Holy Ghost." And started talking about how I´ve worked hard as a missionary and I just started crying. It was so sweet everything that she said, but it still felt awful. After that I was a little bit emotional for a day or two, but I think I´m all good now. We´ll see how I am as I get closer to finishing up. 

It was a pretty normal week. There aren´t any progressing investigators in the area right now, so we´re doing a lot of finding and working with the members to find new investigators. I´m kind of short on time, but guess what? I think we might be able to go to the broadcast of the re-dedication of the Mexico City Temple!! I am so excited. Even though there are a a few temples that are closer than the one Mexico City, it´s the temple that everyone loves because it was the first one here in Mexico, and I think one of the first ones outside of the United States. I heard a cool story about the temple a few weeks ago: in 1985 there was a huge earthquake in Mexico City and many buildings were destoyed, but the recently completed temple stayed standing. Many people saw angels surrounding the temple during the earthquake, supporting it. And many people who weren´t members were witnesses as well, and were converted to the gospel when they saw that miracle. Beautiful, right? The Lord loves His saints here in Mexico, just as He loves them all around the world. I have come to love them as well for their dedication and devotion to the Gospel, and I hope to someday be able to go to the Mexico City temple. 

I love you all!

Love,

Hermana Southard

durangoooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello from Durango!

Yep, I´m back! I was transferred today and arrived in what will probably be my last area (crazy!). The area is called Central 2, which is right next to my first area, Guadalupe 2. I came here once on comp exchanges as STL here in Durango and we always traveled through the area to go to district meetings when I was in Guadalupe, so I am a little bit familiar with it already. I am honestly so excited to be back in Durango. Even though Durango and Torreón are only 3 or 4 hours apart, it feels like they belong to two completely different missions. The people here in Durango are so much more receptive to the Gospel and I am so excited to be working here again. I´m also super excited because I´ll most likely get to see members and converts from Guadalupe during Stake Conference and activities. I´m in the same stake/zone that I was in when I started the mission, so it kind of feels like everything´s come full circle. And, this area is right in the center of Durango, with all of the markets and museums and shopping, so I will definitely be enjoying my P-days here :)

On Saturday an investigator from the area I just came from is going to be baptized. His name is Gael, and he´s an 11 year old boy who is the son of an inactive member. We´ve been teaching him for about 2 months and it was such a blessing getting to teach him. The way we found him was interesting: my first week in Roma we were eating with a sister and when we shared a message afte the meal and asked for a referral, she told us that she had heard that an inactive member of the Church that she had known before had recently moved back into the ward boundaries with her daughter and grandkids, and that the grandkids weren´t members, but she didn´t know exactly where they were living and was going to try to find out to pass us the referral. That same day, we left her house and a short while later ran into and contacted Norma, Gael´s mom and the daughter of the inactive member that the sister from the ward knew. We set up an appointment and went back the next day. Even though Norma still hasn´t attended Church, she started taking her kids to Church and we began teaching Gael and preparing him to be baptized. It has been an incredibly spiritual experience teaching him. Even though he´s young, he understands everything so well, and during the whole teaching process I thought about how the Lord had prepared him to accept the Gospel at this time. Actually, on Saturday we attended the baptism of another 11 year old boy and I was thinking about how some of the strongest converts that I know are 11 and 12 year old boys, many of whom are the only members in their families. As we were watching that baptism I remembered the scripture in Alma 13:3-4 that talks about how priesthood holders here on the earth were prepared to come to the earth and receive the priesthood since the pre-existence, where they showed exceptional faith and good works. It´s so amazing how these young, young boys have been prepared and allowed to accept the Gospel at an age that allows them to exercise the Aaronic priesthood in the offices of deacon, teacher, and priest, prepare for a mission, receive the Melchizedeck priesthood and serve in the Church their whole life. They´re part of God´s priesthood army, and I feel so priviledged to be able to help some of them learn and accept the Gospel. 

I forgot to mention that my companion is Hermana Perez, from Cancun. I´m going to finish up the last two weeks of her training. Hermana Tuitupou was training her and we basically switched places- she´s in Roma as STL and I´m here with her trainee. 

Well, I am super content. I know that there will obviously be lots of trials in this area, as there are in every area, but I am so happy to be here and I know we´re going to see lots of miracles. Durango is where I belong here in the mission. I love you all and hope you have a great week! I am, as always, so grateful for the oportunity that I have to be a missionary. I know that God lives, that He loves us, that Jesus Christ is His Son, and that this is His Church. There is no doubt in my heart or mind. I love preaching this gospel because of the joy it brings to my life and the lives of all those who accept it. 

Love, 

Hermana Southard

no time....

hey family!!

I am so sorry that I can´t write today, but this is so you know that I am alive and well. Thank you so much for your letters, I skimmed them and am going to read them tonight, because right now we have to get ready to go to our district meeting that starts in an hour. This week was absolutely nuts. We had four sisters in the area Roma 2, instead of 2 because one was on bed rest recovering from a sprained ankle, and we spent a lot of the week helping them out. Four in a house made for two causes a few problems. :) And we had a Zone Conference where we invited the members and it was a bit hard keeping them under control.....we basically spent all week putting out fires. Ha ha hopefully this week will be better. And yes, I will write more next week. But I love you and hope you have a great week at the cabin!!

Hermana Southard

23 years

Dear Mom and Dad,

Happy anniversary! I was thinking about you guys on Saturday....

(most of her letter was personal and she asked us to not share a lot of it, but here are some excerpts)

I don´t have more time, but here is what I would like you to send to Lindsey and Sabrina:

Hey girls! I hope you are having an awesome week at girls camp. I have so many fun memories of girls camp, and the experiences I have there helped me to strengthen my testimony, especially of who our Heavenly Father is and how much He loves me. I feel like in junior high and high school and my first semesters at BYU I really gained a testimony of God as our Heavenly Father. There are so many people that I have met here on my mission who don´t know or understand that God is a real Person, who thinks and feels and loves us so, so much. I want you to know that I know that He lives. He is an incredible Being, the Creator of all, and my Father. The relationship I have with Him is trusting and loving, and I have felt His love and concern for me so many times that I know that He is guiding me and molding me into the person He wants me to be. I love Him with all my heart and I love to show my love for Him through the service I give Him. He is a King and I am His daughter, and He is helping me to become a queen. 

Since coming on my mission, I have also gained a strong testimony of His Son, Jesus Christ. I know without a doubt that Jesus of Nazareth, who was born in Bethlehem, is the Son of God who was sent to redeem all of the children of God. Because of His sacrifice, I can overcome sin and death and return to live with Him and my Heavenly Father and the people that I love the most--including you two--forever. Because of Him I can someday marry in the temple and be with my future family as well. He died so that I could be happy with the people who I love, both those who I already know and love and those that I have yet to meet.

The plan that God created for us is perfect. It is not easy, but the blessings we receive are so many that it is worth any price we have to pay. I testify of the love of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen....

These past two months have been so difficult, and I don´t know how long the trials will last, but my faith has increased enormously. I love you all!

Hermana Southard

PS: On Friday when we went to Leadership Council I saw Hermana Tuitupou, who came to renew her visa. We took a picture holding up 14 fingers to celebrate completing 14 months last week. When I told her you´re coming to pick me up she got so excited: I´m gonna meet your parents?? I feel like they´re my parents too. Our parents are coming!!"

Hey Family!

Hey family!

I feel like I´ve been able to breathe today for the first time in over a month. The past four Mondays have been crazy busy with about a million things to do, and all last week was super crazy as well. We had to stay up really late a few nights in a row getting everything ready for the Zone Conference on Wednesday and the conference for the hermanas on Saturday, but we made it through and it was a really special week. And today my companion and I "relaxed" by spending the first three hours of the day cleaning the house...it feels so good though. 

 The conference that we had for the sisters was really special. I got super stressed because it went about two hours longer than we were planning, but I hope that the sisters enjoyed it and were taught by the Spirit. I also think that during the week I was running on the adrenaline of the thought of everything we had to do, and I felt all the stress and worry after the conference was over instead of before it started. But like I said, I think it turned out well. Hermana Ramos spoke on improving personally and one thing she said that I really liked was that here in the mission, we get to put in practice all of the values we learn in the Young Women Personal Progress program. The Assistants spoke on consistancy in the work, and shared the example of the wives of Nephi and his brothers who journeyed through the desert....I laughed when one of them said that we´re here in the desert of Torreón instead of in Durango. I think my favorite part of our presentation was when we talked about the temple and the covenants we made there. The Spirit was so strong as the sisters shared their experiences in the temple, and I think they liked the pictures and quote we gave them. And our mission president spoke on the value we have as sister missionaries and the contribution we can make in the work, and it was incredible. All of the late nights were worth it :)

On Friday we also did an activity with the stake YW where we did splits and they accompanied us literally all day, from about 11 am til 7 pm. I hope it encouraged them to go on a mission.....the poor girls were suffering from the heat! They kept telling us how they can´t believe we walk around in the sun all day. When we returned to the church at 2 for lunch one young woman walked in and literally threw herself on the floor, she was so exhausted. Torreón is not for the faint of heart :)

The pictures are from the Leadership Council we had last month, in June, when we went to EFY and the conference on Saturday. The young women we´re with in the photo from EFY are all from our ward. Ingrid, the YW next to me, is awesome. She accompanies us to lessons all the time. 

I love you and hope you all have a great week! Thanks for everything. You guys are the best.

Love,

Hermana Southard 

I got to go to EFY too!!

Hey family!!

I know I always say that I´ll have more time to write next week, and maybe some day I actually will have more time. Today were transfers and even though neither my companion nor I were transferred we were waiting in the bus station for three hours for a sister who was supposedly going to arrive in Torreón to pick up her new companion who just arrived from the MTC when we were finally informed that she´s not going to arrive until tomorrow. So now we´re running around trying to get everything done before P-day ends. But it´s all good :)

So, to answer your questions Dad the photo you sent me of the house (on Google Earth) is the part where the land lady lives. We live in the part that´s covered by the tree in the photo. It´s a small house, but it´s cute and in a really safe area. We do live close to a college, but the college campuses here aren´t open to the public like they are in the US, so we can´t go in and contact. But in the evenings we usually go there to contact the people who go running around the campus, and that´s been a good way to contact a lot of people. I don´t really know what you want to know about the area, but one thing that´s really different from my other area is that there aren´t many people in the streets, so it´s harder to contact. And it´s super hot. I think we´ve been over 100 degrees every day here.

So the highlight of our week this week was getting to participate in the local session of EFY. EFY here is different than it is in the US- it´s put on by the local stakes, and the session that we attended was held by the three stakes here in Torreón: Torreón México, Torreón Reforma, and Torreón Jardín (the stake I´m serving in). When the assistants called and told us that we were going to participate last Monday they didn´t really give us much detail about what we were going to do (because I don´t think they really knew either) but it ended up being a bigger group of youth than I expected. We did a special activity where the youth divided into YW/YM and my companion and Hermana Ramos, the mission president´s wife, and I worked with the YW while Presidente and the assistants worked with the YM. Hermana Ramos gave a talk on how the YW can make the choice to serve a mission and then asked Hna Hernandez and I to share our experiences of how we decided to go on a mission and our testimonies of the work. After that we did an activity with the YW where they divided into companionships and we helped them to prepare a small lesson on one of the commandments from PMG chapter 4, and then they taught it to each other. My companion and I also did a practice for them with Hermana Ramos as our investigator, and afterward we talked about how they felt and what they learned, etc. It was a really neat experience, and there was one young woman there who isn´t a member of the Church and decided that she wanted to meet with the elders to be baptized. We took her address and sent her referral to the offices and told the secretary to send it ASAP, and found out yesterday that the elders have already been to see her and she attended Church yesterday! All investigators have to attend Church 5 times before they can be baptized, and she said in EFY that she wanted to be baptized in 5 weeks, so she´s off to a good start! I was so, so grateful for the chance to go and participate in EFY. I absolutely love talking to the youth about missionary work. I had forgotten what it feels like to be at EFY, but the Spirit was super strong. At the end of the activity Presidente Ramos spoke about how the best way to prepare for a mission is by maintaining your virtue, and after he finished they asked all of the youth to stand up who were committed to prepare themselves to go on a mission, and almost every youth stood! Yesterday a couple from our ward was telling us how their 17 year old daughter loved the activity and is super excited now to go on a mission. It was so cool to be with them. We´re going to help out with another stake YW activity this Friday, so I´ll have to let you know how it goes next week :)

Well, this week is going to be super crazy. On Wednesday we have a Zone Conference, on Friday the stake activity, and on Saturday the special conference for the sister missionaries (to answer your question Mom, no, I´ve never served in Gomez or Lerdo. They are part of the state of Durango, but they´re a lot closer to Torreón, which is in the state of Coahuila. I´ve only been in Torreón, Coahuila, and Durango, Durango). So we are going to be running around like crazy this week, but I love this opportunity to serve. I love you all so much, and thank you so, so much for all of the emails!! I wish I had more time to write, but I´m excited to read them all later :)

Love,

Hermana Southard

just so happy :)

Hey family!!

Okay, I really mean it when I say that I don´t have any time today.....in the morning we went to the center of Torreón to meet with the other Sister Training Leaders and plan a special conference that we´re going to have for the sisters in Torreón, Gómez, and Lerdo on the 25th. We´re going to speak on being true disciples of Jesus Christ, and how being a true disciple requires courage, and I am so excited. We asked the Assistants to speak on being constant, and the mission president is also going to speak. It´s the first conference that´s going to be especially for the sister missionaries, and I think it will turn out really well. A few weeks ago we had a meeting with the Zone Leaders and the Assistants and the APs told us that each zone was going to hold a special conference (aside from the zone conferences that we have every month) directed specifically to the needs of the Zone. My companion and I asked them later if we could do a conference especifically for the hermanas, and they decided to have it be for all of the sister missionaries here in the three cities close by. So today we planned out everything we´re going to say and made a powerpoint, and next week we´re going to make covers for the sisters to put on their daily planners. On front we´re going to put a picture of the temple where they received their endowment, and on the back we´re going to put this quote from the most recent general conference: "Once we enter into covenants with God, there is no going back. Giving in, giving up, and giving out are not options. In the kingdom of God, there is a standard ofexcellence for exaltation. It requires valian tdiscipleship! There is no room for average or complacent disciples. Average is the enemy of excellence, and average commitment will prevent you from enduring to the end." (Elder Kevin W. Pearson). 

Like I put in the subject line, I really am so happy. The truth is, our area is really difficult, but we´ve also been able to see lots of miracles in this week. One of those miracles was when we were contacting on Thursday and we met a woman who was super nice but didn´t live in our area and didn´t give us her address because she´s going on vacation, etc. We kept contacting in that area and a few minutes later she came back up to us and gave us popcicles that she had bought for us. There are so many people in this area who reject us in a not very nice way, and her small act of charity really gave me hope that there are good people in our area who don´t dislike us for trying to share the Gospel with them. 

I wasn´t able to read your emails very thouroughly Mom and Dad, but I´m going to print them and read them and ask my mission president what we can do tomorrow in my interview with him. Yes Mom, I forgot to tell you that I got the package from the company and your 4th of July package on the 3rd. Can you believe it got here so fast??

I love you all so much. Thanks for the emails, and I promise I´ll have more time to respond next week :) I love you and miss you, but we´re busy and the time is going fast. This is the Lord´s work, I know it. 

Hermana Southard

The pictures are from when I was in the mission office on the 3rd for Leadership Council :)