Sister Jessica Garfield California San Fernando Mission

Hello everyone!   Sitting down right now, I can't even remember any of the things I wanted to talk about in this email. Sorry guys. This might be a little scatter-brained. We had a really good week though! Lots of teaching. We are so blessed. Favorite Spiritual Moment: On Saturday, we got to take a couple of recent converts in the YSA ward to do temple baptisms! There were two recent converts, Ramin and Qaseem, and a friend of theirs from the ward, Nancy, came too. It was super cool! Qaseem had never been to the temple before, and Ramin had only been once. They both got to be baptized, and also got to baptize for their first times. They both did a really great job! It was so cool to get to see them in the temple and to feel the Spirit there. As you may have guessed from their names, both Ramin and Qaseem were not exactly Christian before they were baptized; one of Qaseem's parents were Muslim, even though Qaseem himself didn't really practice it, and Ramin is stra...

Hey everybody! I hope that you all have had a good week! Ours wasn't too out of the ordinary, but it was still a pretty good one.  Favorite Spiritual Moment: For this person's privacy, I'm not going to say exactly who this was, but one of our recent converts broke down in front of us the other day because she's really struggling with a member of her family who she just wants to help, but she doesn't know what to do. Now, that sounds really depressing, and we did what we could to help her figure out the situation, but the cool part was how much light she had with her throughout this whole experience. When she was telling us about what was going on, it was really interesting, because we could just see her soul aching for this family member, because she knows how much the gospel has blessed her and helped her with the same problem the family member is going through, and she just wants to help them to have the same blessings. I thought back to when I first met...

Hey Everybody! Holy crap, this week was so busy! We have so much work, and it's just really amazing. The YSA ward has 8 or 9 recent converts, as does the West Hills ward, and most of those still need recent convert lessons, so we have been all over the place trying to meet with these people and help them continue to progress. We also had several lessons with people who aren't baptized yet too. It is just so cool to get to be teaching so often! I don't think I've taught so much my whole mission until now; it's just so amazing. I'm grateful for a strong companion like Sister Jarvis to be there with me! Now we just need to figure out how to teleport from West Hills to Northridge and back so we can have time for everything. ; ) Favorite Spiritual Moment: The California Los Angeles Mission had a mission conference on Saturday. We had to get up at 4:30 am to be on time, because it was down in Santa Monica, and I had to be there at 6 to practice a song with i...

Hey Everybody! This week, we went on two exchanges! It was pretty fun, but it's going to be really nice to have both of us in our area all week. We had a lot of fun with the other sisters though!  Favorite Spiritual Thought: At church yesterday in Gospel Principles I think, we were talking about working hard and being self reliant, while relating it to the gospel and how God can help us. When we were talking about how our attitude affects our work, someone told a story that went something like this: "Three men were once working in a quarry, very hard, all day long. They all had the same job. When asked what he was doing, the first man responded, 'I am cutting stone.' The second one was asked the same question, and said, 'I am earning three gold pieces per day.' The last one said, 'I am helping to build the House of the Lord.'" This caught me crazy off guard, but I thought it was super awesome. Favorite Miracle: When we went to sacrame...

Hey everybody!  This week was so weird. We just had transfers, and it has been a really weird adjustment to have pretty much every companionship in the mission as a hybrid between the city and the valley! My new companion is named Sister Jarvis. She's from Seattle, has been out for about 14 months, and she's an ASL missionary! She has spent most of her mission in the ASL branch, so it has been interesting to see how that has affected her mission. It's really funny; every once in a while she'll just sign while she talks and she won't even realize it. It has also made backing when driving really weird because she keeps trying to give me directions through sign language. ; ) We're figuring it out though. Also, this week we introduced ourselves to this one guy who said he wouldn't remember our names, so I just went, "It's easy. I'm Sister Garfield, like the cat, and she's Sister Jarvis, like in Iron Man." So we have a comic book charact...

Hey my awesome family that I love! So. Transfers: I am staying in West Hills, but my companion and I will also be picking up the YSA ward over here, which actually covers almost this entire valley. It's a freaking huge area. ; ) I'm not a huge fan of YSA, but I think it should actually be pretty good. This YSA ward has had a lot of baptisms lately, so the ward is full of all these cool recent converts that love sharing the gospel. One of them was even found through the Book of Mormon experiment. My new companion is going to be Sister Jarvis. We will both be STLs, but Sister Jarvis hasn't been an STL before, so I'll get to help her learn the ropes. The only thing I know about her is that she is apparently also an ASL missionary, which will be good for our ward since there are a few deaf members. I'll hopefully be able to tell you more about her next week. I also may be the designated driver, which will be interesting. At least I'm not driving in downtow...

Hey everybody! I hope you all have had a great week! This one was an interesting one for me. We had zone conference this week, combined with a few of the LA zones, and it was sure interesting! It did help us to pick up on a few more of the rules and culture points though. Hopefully things continue to smooth out as we combine more. But most of the LA missionaries seem pretty cool. It should be good to get the chance to work with them pretty soon. Favorite Scripture: Mosiah 16:6-9, especially verse 9. I love how it talks about the Atonement of Jesus Christ in these verses and why it's so important. I think that the comparison to light in verse 9 is really great, because that's exactly what Christ is: an example to each of us. Favorite Miracle: First off, Sister Trujillo and I are convinced that Jason is going to be able to get baptized in a couple of weeks! We had a couple of really good lessons with him this week, and there is just so much light about him. It is ...