Adios and Hola! May 27, 2014

This week has been CRAZY. First of all, my beloved Sister Berry has been transferred to Pleasanton and I am sitting here with my new companion! We've literally only been companions for 4 hours! haha!

Her name is Hermana Boyd and she's great. Yes, Hermana. She's a spanish-speaking sister taking a few transfers in the english program. So that's fun! She's taught me a little bit of Spanish!

A lot of good things have happened this last week. We were able to set a baptismal date with Allie!! We were really excited about that! I asked her about her baptism and she was still like,"I don't know, I just don't know if I'm ready." (she's been saying that for MONTHS.)

So I got really sick of her dragging her feet so I said, "Allie, I know you're ready. I know you want this and I know you have a testimony of this gospel. If you don't pick a date to get baptized, it's never going to happen. So go get that calendar and pick out a day that you would like to get baptized." I don't know what got into me, but it worked! She went to the calendar and picked out June 20th! I promised her that we would do everything we could to help her reach that date and we challenged her to do everything she could to feel ready. So we're excited about that.

I'm really sad that Sister Berry is gone because we grew really close the past 6 weeks. But I know it's a huge blessing to have Hermana Boyd here because Livermore is like little Mexico! Plus she's an awesome missionary, so that's awesome.

How was everyone's Memorial day? We got to go to a driving range yesterday for memorial day, so that was really fun! Sister Berry and I got pretty good at driving with irons! haha!

Things have been happening really fast the last few weeks and months and it's strange to me that I'm coming up on my year mark! It seems like yesterday I hit 9 months!! It's funny though because Sister Berry and I came out together and so did Hermana Boyd! So it's fun to be with my own people.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Hermana Harris (: 

Conferences, Meetings, Ice Cream... And hot, thirsty pansies

This week was really interesting! 

We had Zone Conference, Sisters Retreat, and church for 8 hours, so we may not have done as much work as we would've liked to. But it was good anyway. Sisters Retreat was awesome!! First of all, it was really good to see all of the wonderful sisters in the mission. There's 107 now! It was great to touch bases with former companions and roommates and meet new sisters. Also, we had been told about a special guest speaker that would be coming all week. We didn't expect how awesome it would be! We got into the meeting and it was still a surprise. Then I saw Sister Elaine S. Dalton walking down the isle up to the stand! Oh my gosh! It was amazing that she got to speak to us. She was talking to Sister Watkins and she said, "They may be YOUR missionaries, but they were MY young women." She was really sweet. She told us how much she loves us and how she feels a connection to us because we were her young women. Then we got to meet her and shake her hand afterwards and when she shook my hand, she looked in my eyes and said. "Wow. I am so proud of you." It was a really good meeting and all of us wished that she could stay. The whole day was awesome because we also got to hear from President and Sister Watkins. I usually don't like big long meetings like that, but it was a really good one!

On Sunday, a miracle happened! We have an investigator named Irene and she is 13 and really adorable. We have been trying to set appointments with her for weeks and every time we do, it falls through. SO we invited her to church on Sunday. She told us she didn't want to get up for sacrament meeting at nine, so we told her young womens would be at 11. So we went with a young woman leader to pick her up at 11 and she was there, all ready to go!! So we took her there and everything was perfect! The lesson was about gaining a testimony and they had ice cream sandwiches afterward! She's really shy, so she didn't say much, but she loved it! The girls were really nice and it was just perfect. She got a personal progress book of her own! So we're really excited about her! 

This week was debatably the hottest it has ever gotten anywhere. On Wednesday, it got up to 101 degrees here in Livermore and guess who was on bikes? That's right, us. We felt like pansies, but it was literally so bad that we had to come home every so often just to be inside with a cup of water. Nobody let us in, so we just had to go to our own house. Haha pathetic. But the people here say that it shouldn't get that bad again, so here's hoping.
The work is going well. Things are happening. Sister Berry and I are setting a lot of good goals to hopefully set this place on fire!! 

I love you all!
Sister Julie Catherine Harris 

Pictures! May 12, 2014

  

Sister Berry and Sister Harris at home in Livermore

Hello everyone!

It was so good to see y'all yesterday!! It was a whole different feeling from seeing you on Christmas. I felt more emotionally stable! I really do miss all of you though!

This week was great! Not much is new since we talked yesterday. Miracles are happening in this area and we had an awesome week. After totalling our numbers last night, we were able to see the fruits of our labors, so that feels good.

I had a wonderful birthday full of missionary work and good food! Thanks everyone for making my birthday special!

It is weird to be 20 but also awesome. I feel like I actually am an adult now, so that's great!

Mother's Day was great. There was a wonderful lesson in Relief Society about how women are important and about how we all need each other. There was a slideshow that showed pictures of women in the scriptures and then it switched to women in the ward. It was sooo good it about made me cry!

So that's the update. Things are great and I'm loving this area more and more every day!

I love you all!

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

gOOD mORNING, cALIFORNIA! May 5, 2014

It's a beautiful day! The last couple of days have been getting up into the nineties, but today is nice and cool. I guess it's a great way to end the miracle-filled week we just had!

Things are happening here. I found out that the Livermore zone is one of the lowest baptizing zones in the mission. But I'm excited because we have a zone goal of seeing 15 baptisms this transfer. Fifteen! On Saturday night, we all got together and started a zone fast for the missionary work in this area and for the fifteen people that we will help bring into the fold. It was a great experience and now we just need to exercise our faith!
So Sunday was amazing. It seems like fast Sundays are always the best on the mission even though you're hungry, tired and starving. It is a testimony to me that sacrifice truly does bring forth the blessings of heaven. So we had a member is a college professor and she invited two of her students to church on Easter. Unfortunately, there were so many new people there on Easter that we weren't able to talk to them. I guess that's good problem to have. But this week they came back! We had the opportunity to teach the Gospel Principles class (for people who aren't members and less-active members.). So we taught the Restoration and it was a great experience. The less-actives were testifying of the Restoration and telling experiences from their lives and the Spirit was so strong! We invited Mercedes and Mitchell (the couple) to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and they said they would. So it was a great lesson but it didn't end there. After Relief Society, the member who brought them invited us over to their house after church to spend more time with them. So we brought over the Restoration dvd and watched it with them. Again they felt the Spirit and we planned a temple trip in a couple of weeks with them and the members. It was amazing! On the day we were fasting and perishing with hunger, the Lord blessed us with two new investigators! It was really exciting!

We're doing well here. We're working hard, praying, and working some more. I'm excited for this upcoming week to see what blessings the Lord has in store for us! Isabel is progressing toward baptism and even stood up for us in a strange situation. A mother came over to Isabel's apartment to pick up her son and when she saw us she started acting strange. When she was about to leave, she started trying to argue with us about Christ and religion. She didn't want to listen to anything we were saying, so we just smiled and nodded. Sometimes that's all you can do. After she left, Isabel said "Sorry about that, she's crazy. I'd rather talk to you guys than her any day." I'm so impressed with Isabel's strong testimony and desire to be baptized. It has really been an inspiration to me. 

I'm excited for mother's day! It kind of snuck up on me! But I'm excited to see some of you and to others, Happy Mother's Day!

I love all of you!

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

"The difficulties which come to us present us with the real test of our ability to endure. A fundamental question remains to be answered by each one of us: 'Shall I falter, or shall I finish?'"

Thomas S. Monson  

Julie Harris