June 17, 2014 Miracles and Mysteries…

Hello everyone!
This week has been insane! A lot of plans fell through, but there were also a lot of surprises! 

All week, Sister Boyd and I have been working soo hard to find people to teach, help our investigators progress, meet new people, do service, and other things. It's really tough when you are working as hard as you can and can't see any kind of progress or success from it. It didn't help that one of our roommates, Sister Swapp was sick this week, so we were doing splits with Sister Livingston and taking turns 'Swapp-sitting'. So we didn't have a lot of lessons or contacts and it was coming up on the end of the week. Sunday rolled around and we needed 6 more lessons to reach our goals. 

Well, miracles happen! Not only did we get 6 lessons, but we got two new investigators!! It's amazing how the Lord blesses us when we are serving Him and serving others. One is Ernie and he is a really interesting fellow. He has no idea what he believes, but he is willing to take the lessons and just 'listen and learn'. But we're hoping he'll learn and progress and get baptized! The other is Jack and he's the son of a current investigator of ours. He has studied Theology a lot and just wants to study the Bible with us. So we'll see what we can do to help these people come closer to Christ.

Monday was amazing! It was a much needed trip to Santa Cruz!! We ate at Pizza My Heart, a pizza joint that is only near the coast (meaning not in Livermore). We all missed it so we just had to eat lunch there. We spent time on the beach and to our surprise, there were tons of other missionaries there too! It was a nice surprise that Sister Bassett was there because she's serving in Santa Cruz now! So we had a lot of fun just hanging out, catching up, and playing in the waves. After the beach, we went to the Mystery Spot. It's a place in the Santa Cruz mountains where the gravitational pull is different, so crazy things happen there! I'll try to send pictures! It was really trippy and awesome. 

It was great to go to Santa Cruz and spend time with some of my favorite people and just have a day to relax. I can honestly say that I am serving in the best mission in the world. (:

I have been at a really interesting and vulnerable place recently. I have been struggling with a lot of things and trying to figure out other things. This whole transfer so far has been a hard one. Possibly the hardest. On top of that, Sister Livingston is going home in three weeks and she has been like a sister to me for the past 9 months of my mission. But I've been finding a lot of comfort from the scriptures recently and it has helped me to realize that things are okay. 

There will always be more to discover, more to do, more to feel. There is joy in serving the Lord and in the grand scheme of things, this is a very short time. So I've been trying to make the best of it and take every opportunity I can to serve others and the Lord because I love Him. When you really break it down, nothing else matters. We do this because we love Him. And He loves us. I have learned on my mission to never take that for granted. We have a work to do here and our purpose is to help everyone to feel that love.

I hope everyone has an amazing week!
Mom and Dad, have fun in Belize! (:
Amo Jesu Cristo;

On fire with missionary work! June 9, 2014

Hello everyone! This week has been significantly better than last week!

We have been working so hard this week and the work is starting to pick up a little bit! I can just smell the miracles and baptisms that are going to happen soon!

We got ahold of Isabel this week and she said she wants to get baptized and go to church every week, but her family is in the way. Her mom is in town from Mexico and her sister has cancer and lives out in Tracy, so she's having a hard time and is really busy. Also, it's a miracle that my companion speaks Spanish because she can communicate really well with her.

Ali is still up the air about baptism. One day she wants to and the next day she doesn't. So we're still trying to encourage her and be there for her.

Things are going well here. Besides biking in 104 degree weather all the time, I'm happy and content. Livermore is probably the hottest place in the world. At least the hottest place I've ever been.

But it's okay! That just means that it's on fire with missionary work! At least it will be! I really do love it here and I'm loving the people in the ward more and more every day. I love them so much that I just want to help them with everything and teach all of their friends! haha!

Sister Boyd and I are doing really well. This week we went on exchanges with the STLs and it was so much fun! Exchanges are always great and I feel like miracles always happen. Our STLs are Spanish speaking missionaries, so we were eating at this restaurant and this man who works there just came up to her and they conversed in Spanish for no longer than 30 seconds and then she wrote down his phone number. Turns out, he just came up and told her that he had been reading the Book of Mormon and he wanted them to come and teach him. It was a miracle! I wish that English people were like that!

Anyways, things are great, we're working hard, and Livermore is hot.

I love you!

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

Missions aren't easy... June 2, 2014

Hello everyone!!

This week may or may not have been one of the most stressful weeks of my mission with nothing to show for it. It happens.

Taking over an area after 6 weeks isn't easy. But I guess you could say that missions in general aren't very easy. The Lord knows that we will go through difficult challenges, but does He make them easier? Not always. Most of the time He just makes us stronger.

That is something that I have noticed this week. This week my faith took a hit. Your whole mission people tell you that hard work and obedience bring miracles and my whole mission that has proved true. But then you have those weeks where you're doing your best and you're on your knees every morning and night and everything falls through and nothing seems to work out. It is times like that when the Lord is shaping and strengthening us to rise to the challenge. So I'm still rising. (: I know that great things are going to happen this transfer.

Enough with the complaining. Other than all of that, things are going well. We're trying our best with our investigators and others and trying to have a lot of faith. I cannot tell you how many referrals we have given to the Hermanas this week. Thanks to my Spanish-speaking companion! She's the best!

So I don't have a lot to tell y'all about this week, but I have been strengthened physically and spiritually. Between riding our bikes for miles every day and fast Sunday, I have been truly blessed. On Sunday I fasted for all of our investigators and also for my companion and myself(that we would be able to have the faith to see miracles). My testimony of fasting has been strengthened because I feel better already. I feel hopeful and ready for a new week. Come at me!

Even though this week was really rough, looking back, I can see the Lord's hand in it. I don't know the area and I don't know anyone here, yet somehow I was able to lead us around the area to people's houses and various places around town. I'm weak and have asthma but I was able to lead my companion up hills and across many miles. The Lord takes care of us. He won't make it easy, but it's not supposed to be easy. This week is going to be amazing; I can feel it. (:

I love all of you!

Sister Julie Catherine Harris

2 Ne. 31:20

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