Sister Jessica Garfield California San Fernando Mission

Hi Everyone!  I hope that your Christmas is going well and that you guys are staying as warm as we are. It has finally started to cool down a little bit, but it's still warm enough that we were able to go hiking last P-day, in the middle of December. We saw a lot of Christmas miracles though!  Scripture/Spiritual Thought: "As we follow this divinely designed covenant path, our commitment and efforts to take upon us the name of Jesus Christ will give us the strength “to retain [His] name written always in [our] hearts.” We will love God and our neighbors and feel a desire to minister to them. We will keep His commandments and yearn to draw nearer to Him by entering into additional covenants with Him. And when we find ourselves weak and incapable to act on our righteous desires, we will plead for the strength that comes only through His name, and He will come to our aid. As we endure in faithfulness, the day will come when we will see Him and be with Him, and we will f...

Merry Christmas Everyone! Hello from the Hollywood ward! I have to say, Christmas in Hollywood is super weird. It is definitely show business out here! We've still been trying to work with the less actives in the ward. We've met a few more of them. Now it's just figuring out how to help them progress. We keep having all these awesome, spirit-guided lesson plans set up, and then the lessons keep falling through! It's sad, but it is cool to have the Spirit in our companionship studies so strongly still, even if we don't end up getting to share what the Lord wants these people to hear. It just means that when we get to actually meet with these people, we'll have a super great lesson ready for them! Favorite Spiritual Thought: This poem was on the tables at our ward Christmas party on Saturday, with a key attached to each copy. The key was meant to represent the key to the inn, and at the bottom, there was a quote from an apostle talking about how each of...

Hey everybody!  First, for a quick transfer update: nothing has changed. I am staying in Hollywood with Sister Howard. We are so excited to get to be companions again! We are still kind of struggling to find, but we've been able to work with a lot of less actives lately as a result. It's super interesting to see how these people who want to progress have noticed that something is missing in their lives, and that they recognize that it's the gospel. We are working with a bunch of people to try to help them come back to church right now.  Favorite spiritual moment: I had the opportunity to sing at the Beverly Hills hotel this week with a choir of missionaries for a party for the Swiss consulate. Someone who was part of setting it up was a member of the Church, a man named Raju, and he contacted the mission to ask if we could sing. We were singing pretty simple stuff, straight out of the hymn book for all but one song, and mostly unaccompanied. We were supposed to ...

Good morning everyone!  This week was a pretty good one. It is starting to get a little cooler out here, and it even rained! Sister Howard and I enjoyed it so much. It really was pouring a couple of times though. ; ) We definitely got soaked a couple of times, and California is definitely not built for this kind of weather. But it was so much fun! Favorite Scripture: 3 Nephi 27:1-2. I liked this scripture because it talks about fasting, praying, and being united together. It also talks about teaching and baptizing. On December 23, the first presidency has announced that it will be just sacrament meeting worldwide, and that it will be an invitation Sunday, to help people to feel the Spirit of Christ. Yesterday, we had the opportunity as a church to fast to know who to invite, and how. It's cool to me that the Lord answers our prayers like that when we are united in common cause, His cause. Favorite Spiritual Moment: We got to help at the Elders' baptism for a ...

Hey!  I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We had the chance to have dinner with a family in our ward, along with the Elders, together. It was pretty fun! Favorite Miracle: Until recently, most of us were advised to do some of our studies at night since it isn't necessarily the safest thing ever to be out in the dark in some of the areas of our mission (ie, Compton). However, just last week there was a change in missions on the West Coast to allow us to spend all of our time from 5-9pm out finding and teaching people. At first some of us were a little skeptical about the details of the change and the ability to find people (safely) when it's super dark outside. But we have seen so many little miracles from it already! Just since Monday, we have talked to Giovanne, Gary, Simon, Jorge, Zach, Larissa, Karl, Trevor, and Dariya all after dark, most of which were on the streets between walking to people who we were stopping by. And those are just the ones whose na...