Today is my last day in Rio Rancho.

Today is my last day in Rio Rancho. At least for the next 6+ weeks. Tomorrow is transfers and I'm getting myself shipped off to somewhere new! Ha, every time we go somewhere since we found of Saturday Sister Markus says "Last time....." like, "Last time talking to people on 2nd street..." So, we've had a lot of "Last times" in the past few days. I did keep telling people that I knew Heavenly Father was just waiting for July to send me down to El Paso but I'm hoping that that's not true! I'm kind of crossing my fingers for Santa Fe because it sounds cool but of course where ever will be great.

This week we did a lot of service. Rio Rancho has a weird weed ordinance where if a city officer notices that you have weeds in your yard you get a warning and if they aren't cleaned up by a certain amount of time (I think 2 weeks) you get fined for it. So lots of people need help weeding, especially older people. This week we did a few hours of weeding and then we helped a member in our ward lay the ground for a gazebo they are building, that was kind of fun. We were hoping too to be able to help another member to lay some tile but it didn't happen. We were able to have a really good experience with our weed pulling service though. Our Spanish Sister tracting into one of our do not contact members who accepted the offer for the 4 of us to come weed. I knew her since she had become a do not contact soon after I got here and we were able to help her and set up another time to see her again! So service does soften hearts, who knew (ha, probably everyone)!  

This week was also as I'm sure you all know Independence Day. It was a pretty regular day for us except that we went to our ward's BBQ in the afternoon and watched a few fireworks with some of our members in the evening. Most of the exciting stuff happened after we went home though since it really doesn't start getting dark until around 8:30 and we had to be home by 9. We were a little worried though that our neighbors were going to burn our apartment down since they were lanunching stuff towards the roof. Thankfully though, it didn't burn down and we are all still alive. Oh, we also went to 3 BBQ's this weekend and were invited to another one so we probably won't be eating hamburgers and hotdogs for a while. That reminds me, did I tell you that last week I had pizza 5 times? It's weird, it's like every once and a while everyone just decides that they need to make the same thing. Something in the water I guess... 

Our ward mission leader also got released this week, which I would be more bummed about if I was staying around, He was awesome and it's always sad to see a go leader go, but we met with the new one yesterday and he seems like a really good guy that is going to do really well. The only challenge for him though is that he only moved into the ward about a month ago. So Sister Markus will get to teach a new comp and a new WML all about the ward, ha she will do great though. 

Well, that's about all we did this week, a few lessons, including my first drop lesson where we dropped the investigator (usually they just ignore us until we give up) which was so much like a DTR you would have thought we were back at BYU, but that's about it. Speaking of BYU, we had our apartment inspectors come by this morning. We forgot about it until last night and them we were to buys to clean so we had to do it in the morning. It wasn't bad but especially with getting all my stuff packed up it reminded me of the end of the semester at school where you're trying to pack, do finals, finalize your storage and all of that and your landlord comes by to inspect your apartment, which you promptly forget about until the morning of. Not to worry though, it went fine. 

Well, I hope you all have a fantastic summer and continue to do awesome thing! For my thought I'm going to steal the quote and question that President Miller sent us today. “If we teach in the manner the Lord has prescribed, he can send his Spirit to edify and enlighten those whom we teach. If we do not teach His way-if we teach according to our own knowledge and according to our own intellect, and if we slavishly tie ourselves to our own preparation or to someone else’s wisdom or text-our teaching ‘is not of God.’….

If we rely on debate techniques or sales methods or group psychology, we are preaching the gospel in some other way, and it is not of God…
Intellectual things-reason and logic-can prepare the way, and they can help us in our preparation. But if we are tied to them instead of to the Spirit of the Lord, we are not teaching the gospel in the Lord’s way.
The Lord stressed that truth when he said: ‘Put your trust in that Spirit which leadeth to do good-yea, to do justly, to walk humbly, to judge righteously; and this is my Spirit’ (D&C 11:12)
This is the way we must teach the gospel”

My question for you, “Why is it so difficult for most of us to believe the Lord will speak through us?”

I don't know why it would be hard for us to believe, maybe because we feel like we aren't worthy, or maybe because we don't understand or recognize how or when it is happening. Maybe we are too afraid to try? Whatever it is though, I promise that the Lord will speak through us if we let Him. When I first came out and first started talking to people, I wanted to know why I didn't always know what to do or say. God says like a million times in D&C open your mouth and it will be filled, and other such similar things. And here I was with no idea what to say, I felt like my mouth was open and nothing was happening. Someone in one of our meeting though talked about prompting of the spirit though. When you think of a prompter, like in the theater, it doesn't give you every word, it only gives you a few, to get you started. Then you do the rest yourself. In the theater of course it is something that you have memorized but, the Spirit works the same way most of the time. It will get you started, but because the purpose it for us to learn and grow, it wouldn't do us any good to just be told what to do all the time! You'll get what you need and then you do the rest! 

Anyway, talk to you all soon! 

Love, 

April