Words of Wisdom and Rainbow Bikes... January 27, 2014

Buenas Dias!

This week was great! It seems like it hasn't been very long since I emailed last Wednesday. 

Great things have happened this week. We got a text this morning from our ward mission leader, telling us that Mason is getting baptized this Saturday in his new singles ward in Colorado!! So we're really excited for him and hope that he does well.

Right after I emailed last week, we went to do service at the Google campus. At Google, they have all of these random, rainbow bikes all around that people can just ride from building to building. They don't belong to anyone, they're just there! So on our way back to the parking lot, from planting some plants by the creek, we happened to find two empty Google bikes and we rode them to our car! We felt so cool! Google campus is really pretty and it's literally ON the bay! 

This transfer has been going really well so far. The work is definitely picking up! We finally got to meet with Yvonne this week because she's feeling a little bit better! She has been praying about a baptismal date, but has not gotten an answer yet. We started teaching her the lessons again because it's been awhile. In our lesson with her, she bore powerful testimony to us about the Book of Mormon and about how she knows the church is true. I think she's still a bit iffy about Joseph Smith, but we explained to her that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion and that if it's true that means that Joseph Smith is a prophet. So she's still pondering and praying, but she will be baptized soon! 

Also, on January 8 and 9, Quentin L. Cook is coming to our Stake Conference!!! We invited Yvonne and told her he was an Apostle of the Lord and she got really excited. It's going to be awesome!! 

This weekend, we got to go on exchanges with the STL. It was so much fun! Sister Young got to go into the Spanish program for a day and i got to hang out with Hermana Santidrian! She's from Spain, so we had a lot of fun together. Exchanges are always really fun because we get to learn from each other and have fun adventures! So she taught me a bit of Spanish! It was such a fun day! We taught one of our favorite less-actives named Sister Estiva and we taught about the Word of Wisdom. We taught really well together and it was a really good lesson. I gained a testimony of teaching with the Spirit. When you have the Spirit with you and you want to do God's will, He will give you the words to speak even when you weren't planning on saying them. I feel like I have never taught as boldly as I did in that lesson. But it turns out, it was just what she needed. After the lesson, she said, "Sisters. You were so inspired to come here tonight and teach me this. How did you know that I drank coffee?" The Spirit was so strong! It's amazing how the Spirit will give you exactly what you need in order to bring people closer to Christ! It was amazing!

We had a really good weekly planning and we decided that this week will be ham week; meaning that we will be "going ham" on missionary work! It's awesome! We set high goals and we're going to do everything we possibly can to have no regrets! We're really excited about it and we know that good things will happen this week. We're trying our best to have faith and trust in the Lord so that we can see the miracles that He has in store for us. 

I love my mission so much and I love all of you! 

Let us all press on!

Much love, 

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

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In the Ghetto.... January 22, 2014

Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday! P-day was a holiday, and yesterday was crazy. So I'm emailing today! 

This week has been really crazy! It's interesting what we go through to strengthen our faith and grow closer to Heavenly Father. 

On Friday, we went to lunch with the elders at Chili's after service because it was Elder Vazquez's last day (and he's my best friend). We had let the elders borrow our car so that they could go to service and we were riding with the other sisters. So we ate and it was really fun and then we left with the sisters. Then we got a phone call from the elders and they were dead serious. They told us we needed to come back to Chili's immediately. So we turned around and went back. We pulled up to the parking lot and saw two things: three elders standing around our car in shock, and broken glass everywhere. Someone had broken into our car and stolen Elder Morgan's backpack. My purse was also in there but nothing was taken from it! Blessed! It was scary. We all just stood there and looked at it for a few minutes and then Elder Vazquez called the cops. They wouldn't do anything, so the elders just said that they would take care of it and they took our car to the shop. So we were left carless in the apartment for a little while! gah! They couldn't get it fixed that day because Salt Lake didn't get back to the mission about fixing mission cars. So the elders helped us tape a trash bag on our window and it was that way the rest of the night. Welcome to Santa Clara! Haha! It was an adventure for sure. But it's all fixed now and all is well. 

Other than that, the week was still crazy. haha. Our investigators are dwindling, but we have picked up a lot of solid less-actives. We met a 17 year old girl named Tina and she is really cool! She's less active and the young women president gave us her name. The elders couldn't really connect with her, so we went over and we are now best friends. As we were leaving she told us that we should all hang out sometime! Flattered! I'm still cool! 

Good things have been happening and we have been having really good lessons and really good contacts lately. Yesterday, Sister Young and I both started working on humility. We discovered that there are sooo many different kinds of pride and that everybody has a little bit of it. We found out that we both have different kinds, but we're both super prideful. We started working on humility yesterday and the day went soo well! It was a testimony to me that Heavenly Father always wants us to progress and that He will bless us for our efforts. So I'm still working on that. 

Missionary work is the best and I'm enjoying it so much out here. I've been realizing lately just how quickly the mission flies by. I hate it! But with each passing month, I gain more experience and learn more things about the Gospel, the world, and myself. So I guess it's good. 

Oh and by the way, transfers just happened and there are so many new missionaries in the zone! We have two new roommates, so there are 5 girls in the apartment now! One of them is from Mexico and one is from France. We are having so much fun! And also, every zone has two STLs now like Zone Leaders. And our STLs are from France and Spain. It's awesome! So many changes!

I hope y'all are doing well! Have a wonderful week!

Love you!

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

Psalm 23

So many bessings... and Silly String! January 13, 2014

Hellooo! 

This week was great! Although we were a bit sick, we managed to get 21 lessons and 270 contacts! The Lord is blessing us in so many ways!

So last week, we weren't able to get ahold of Yvonne and we though she was ignoring us. Well, we actually got to see her twice this week! She has been very sick, so was sleeping every time we went over. She agreed to let us teach her the lessons again because it's been awhile, and she's praying about a baptismal date!! We're really excited and we're seeing her again tonight.

Mason is officially moving to Colorado on Wednesday, so we're sad, but he said he wants to continue learning with missionaries there. 

Funny story. The other night, we went over to visit Sister Millar and her wayward son, Peter was outside with his friends smoking Marijuana. We rebuked him before we went inside and then visited with Sister Millar. Sister young randomly asked, "Sister Millar, do you have any silly string?" We all exchanged smug looks to each other and she said yes. So we went outside again, stealth mode, loaded with silly string. We went up to Peter and pretended to apologize for rebuking him. Now, we have a great relationship with Peter, otherwise what happens next would seem mean. He said a bad word to us in jest and then we whipped out the silly string and sprayed him! I have never seen him move so fast! He literally ran away! It was hilarious. We all laughed about it and went inside again. Gotta love being a missionary! 

Yesterday, us and the elders got to speak at the bishop's youth fireside in the Woodland Park ward and it was a lot of fun. We got to share spiritual experiences we have had on our missions and the spirit was really strong. Then we got to eat brownie waffles! So good!

The work is going well here in Los Altos. Sister Young and I have started an all new plan to get organized and to build up the kingdom here. When I got here, there was no paper-work done and everything was really disorganized. But we're starting all over and we're really excited!! 

A sweet experience; the other day, we were contacting in downtown Mountain View and we saw this cute old Asian woman (Mom, she had the same coat as you. The pink one with purple inside.). We started talking to her and she said that she didn't speak English. So I reached in my pocket, and just happened to have a card with the Salt Lake temple on it. I said, "I have a picture to give you." When I gave it to her, she was so excited! Her eyes widened and she gasped and said, "Beautiful!" Then she began to thank us multiple times. She wanted to pay us for it, but when I told her it was free, she looked so grateful. She started to kiss the card and she held it close to her. It was amazing to me how excited she was to see the temple. I feel like we take it for granted a lot, but the temple is literally heaven on earth! So that was a really sweet and spiritual experience that we had this week. 

I'm so grateful to be in this mission! Great things are happening here and I'm so grateful to be a part of it! 

Love you all!

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

p.s. Look up Diana Hoelssher. She's an amazing speaker!

Santa Cruz, Soaps, and Sickness...January 6, 2014

Happy 2014 everyone! 

This week has been an interesting one for sure!

On Monday, we started off the week right by going to Sant Cruz and it was absolutely wonderful! I never thought I would be on the beach on Dec. 30th with no coat! It was a beautiful day! We went with Sister Millar and her dog, Pablo and we had a great time. Most perfect moment: Eating clam chowder out of bread bowls and watching the surfers on steamer row. It was a special high-tide day, so there were TONS of surfers there! So that was fun. It was also really good to be with a dog on the beach (:

There were some good moments this week. Our investigators are all pretty much the same, but they're progressing. One awkward moment: There's a less-active in the Los Altos ward and she's an elderly woman they call Babushka. Sister Young thought she was Russian, so we were going to go over and watch The Restoration with her in Russian. We found out as we're sitting in her apartment that she actually speaks Armenian and no English whatsoever. And of course, The Restoration doesn't come in Armenian. So it was a really awkward moment trying to decide what we were going to do. I noticed that she had a bunch of pictures of Christ in her apartment, so we both showed her our favorite pictures of Him and bore our testimonies. She didn't understand a word, but the Spirit was there amid the Armenian soap opera and Mexican cookies (She made us eat them..). She speaks almost no English, but toward the end of our visit, she comes and sits next to me on the couch and starts playing with my hair. Then she said, "Good baby." as she lovingly stroked my hair. It was weird, but endearing. So we left, having had no idea what just happened. haha.

This weekend, Sister Young and I have been deathly sick. On Friday night, we weren't feeling good, so we decided to get as much sleep as possible so we could be better by Saturday. Saturday rolled around and we were feeling even worse. We were quarantined in the apartment all day. It was torture. So we made plans to be better by Sunday. Sunday came and Sister Young was better, but I was even worse than I was on Saturday! So we missed all of church and were in the apartment for another full day. I'm still feeling sick, but I'm determined to email, dangit! Sunday was good, though because we asked the elders to come and give me a blessing and it was a really good blessing! It really helped me to be at peace and to not be discouraged by my sickness. So I'm feeling a little bit better and it's just good to be out of the apartment. Also, wonderful members brought us food both days, so I'm grateful. I'm hoping I'll be able to work this week!

We had a great New Years! We ate with the Fitzpatricks again on New Years Eve and we had a great time. We celebrated New Years at 9 because the elders are both from Pennsylvania and that's midnight there. So it was fun. New Years on a mission is a lot of fun!

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years and are doing well on your resolutions. One of my goals is to be more meek and to develop more humility. 

Love you all!

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

pictures 1-3-2014

Sister Harris and Sister Young at Santa Cruz

 

It's a Wonderful Life! December 30, 2013

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This week was a whirlwind to say the least! Christmas was amazing! We got to spend time with the Fitzpatricks (an awesome family in the Woodland Park ward) and we had really good food! I also got to see my adorable family, whom I love and miss very much! It was really good to see you guys and get to talk to you over Skype! Thanks so much for your support and testimonies. I get strength from them every day!

It was a wonderful Christmas season full of music and love. It was also kind of stressful because in our mission, every missionary has to get Preach my Gospel certified (meaning that every missionary has to role-play the 5 lessons to their DL, ZL, or STL and pass off certain points.) My zone has a goal to get everyone certified by the end of the year. For some reason, I was stressing out about it more than I had stressed about anything else on my mission. So I've been praying a lot for comfort and strength to be able to do it. On Saturday, we went on exchanges with our STL (Sister Bassett (:) and she gave me a pep-talk that really helped. So yesterday, we had a free hour and so did our District Leader. When I prayed about it, I was prompted to just open my mouth and I knew that God would help me. Again, I'm not sure why I was so torn up about it, but we met with the District Leader, I exercised all the faith and courage I had, and I passed them all off! All 5 of them! In one sitting! I know it was all the Lord's doing, because I could not have done that on my own. Miracle I tell you!

That experience made me come out of my funk and now I'm just rejoicing! Satan was working on me really hard this last week and I just told him that that's enough. So this weekend was fabulous!

So about our investigators. Mason has dropped his baptismal date and is moving to Colorado ):. So we're kind of sad about that, but we know that he'll get baptized eventually. Yvonne is doing really well and is absolutely loving the Book of Mormon. She can't get enough of it and she bears her testimony about it every time we go over! She is really prepared, so we're really excited for her. I have learned to love the people we're teaching and our area.

So, yes. Things are going really well here. And to make it all even better, we're going to the beach today with Sister Millar!! She's our very favorite kind of less-active and we love spending time with her. So that will be a lot of fun!

I love this work, and I know that Christ is my Savior. I know that God will provide for us when we exercise faith and trust in Him. I love the Gospel and I know that the church is true. I love all of you so much! Happy Holidays!

All my love, 

Sister Julie Catherine Harris 

 

 Sister Harris's new address is:

3480 Granada Ave. #286

Santa Clara, CA 95051