Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Amber's Closing Quote

I would like to thank EVERYBODY who has been a part of these last amazing 18 months of my life. You have been such great examples and teachers to me and have always made me feel loved. I will never forget the lasting friendships I have made. One of the many things I have learned is that we cannot find any greater happiness then by SHARING the gospel and LIVING the gospel. Just like Alma, "I do not glory of myself....this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance, and this is my joy." (Alma 29:9) I have the greatest blessing of seeing one of my recent converts receive her endowments and then 2 weeks after I get home, I will see her be sealed to her husband. There is no greater joy then this. Do all you can to keep sharing the joy of this gospel with EVERYONE around you! -Sister Amber Heward
yea this past week was really awesome. we set a baptismal date with one of our investigators for june 1st. if she keeps all her commitments and reads and prays then she will for sure be ready to be baptized by june 1st. it was so cool though because we weren't planning on having a lesson with her or even setting a date but it happened. it was such a testimony builder to me that this is the lords work and when he wants his work to progress then it will progress regardless of what other people choose to do. in doctrine and covenants, in chapter 3 it says that it is not the work of god that is frustrated but the work of men. it truly is. we are the ones to choose not do be obedient to the rules or to spread the gospel but the work of god will move on. anyways, I was able to go to the chiropractor this morning to get fixed and all that good stuff. don't worry, nothing is wrong. I just felt completely out of place and we have a chiropractor in our ward so I thought what the heck. so anyways, everything is going awesome. so we have this place in our area called the greens and it is completely full of Mexicans. there used to be a Spanish branch here but it got dissolved into the ward and now there is just Spanish classes. we had dinner with a Mexican lady last week and it was so awesome because it was like I was a Spanish missionary for a little while except I didn't know Spanish at all. well I love you all. thank you for all you do and I hope you all have an awesome week! Love Elder Levi Bowen Heward

Sister Heward's Coming Home!

For those of you that don't know, Sister Heward is flying in next week on the 14th! She reports on May 26th at 1 o clock So yes this week was pretty crazy...i'm sure this week will be crazier but oh well. So some pretty sweet stuff happened this week. First off, Wednesday was zone conference which is always awesome but even better was that night i got to go to the temple to see Jen get her endowments out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you believe that???? It's seriously like a dream. I honestly couldnt stop smiling and at times when we would get up and change our clothes and stuff she would turn and look at me and smile. Then even better was walking into the celestial room and seeing Jen right there come up and give me a hug and she says, "thank you so much. thank you. thank you." of course we both had tears in our eyes. And i said to her, "no, thank you Jen. There couldn't have been any better way for me to end my mission then this. I was so blessed to be there. And to think a whole year ago she was baptized. Gosh where does the time go. Then get this. We rode to the temple with President and Sister Godwin (yeah they were invited also so we felt pretty lucky to ride with them) and by the time we got out of the temple it was 9:30 (curfew time) and then as we were driving away sister godwin says, " honey do you think there is a frozen yogurt place around or something we could go to?" hahahahah can you believe that? Me and sister ott looked at each other in the back seat not sure what to say cause of course we wanna go get some frozen yogurt with them PAST CURFEW!! hahah so President totally drove us to a frozen yogurt place and we just sat and ate it together. Then we got to their house at 10:30 then finally made it home by 11. insane huh? It actually was really cool to watch though. Because i can't even comprehend how exhausted they are (cause zone conference was all that week) but they still wanted to make time for frozen yogurt with us. They really taught me to enjoy EACH day and don't let each precious moment or memory go by without making it the greatest. Even when times are exhausting, we need to make the best of it =) They are so awesome!! okay for our awesome miracle this week. So our zone leaders are really into encouraging us to find "seekers" or those who want to listen and be baptized right away. So after we had gotten out of a lesson with a less active that didn't go well at all, i was so frustrated. and as we were driving away i said "man i am so SICK of teaching people who don't wanna listen. I feel like we are just forcing it down their throat. What do we do to find seekers!?" haha so we looked at each other and said "alright let's put this to the test." so we said a very sincere prayer asking heavenly father to guide us to people who will listen. we both felt like we needed to tract and picked a street together. We made goals with each other and Heavenly Father that we would talk to EVERYONE we saw. We got to the street and i realized there was a former investigator on the street. As we were getting out of the car we noticed a less active, heather, had just walked by with her friend. Well we ignored that and walked up to the house and no one answered....we were down on ourselves thinking that was why we were at that street and then we both realized that we were supposed to talk to HEATHER and her friend. We decided to hurry and drive to see if we could find them (kinda creepy stalkerish i know haha) well we didn't find them and i just parked on a random street. Man we felt so bad and prayed again to heavenly father to apologize for not talking to them and asked for one more time to guide us to them or wherever we needed to go. We both felt strongly to stay on the street and tract it. Well i was getting out of the car and look across the street and you wouldn't believe what i saw......Heather and her friend getting our of a car and going into her friends house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was completely blown away! I quickly told sister ott to look across the street and she looked and then stared at me in amazement. I started getting tears in my eyes because this was no coincidence and i knew without a doubt we were really supposed to talk to these girls and something awesome was about to happen. Well we walked up and knocked on the door and heather answered (this isn't her house so we acted surprised that she answered) and we were like "wow what are the odds seeing you here?" haha then her friend walked up and started talking to us and began telling us how she has been wanting to go to church with heather but hasn't been able to and also her sister amanda has been reading the bom and wants to be mormon!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah it was pretty incredible and we totally had just found 'seekers'. Miracles really do happen. Also later that day we tracted into a girl named Ligaya who said right after we introduced who we were "I think i just prayed you here." =) sweet huh. She had just bought a house in eastvale and was really looking for a church to go to with her kids and had just prayed a little bit ago and then we knocked. man i love when that happens. Well i love you all SOOO VERY MUCH!! This gospel is amazing and i love being a missionary! see you all soon! -sister amber ruth heward