Category: Prune Hill

Not a whole lot happened this week, as far as missionary work goes. That’s always disappointing, but I know Sister Hansen and I have tried our best this transfer, and I’ve seen reasons for why I needed to be here. And, I’m really going to miss the ward here. But I am excited to move on! We received transfer news this Saturday and I’m going to Gresham! I’m going to be in the Columbia River ward with Sister Burton. I don’t know her or the area, but I can’t wait to see what’s in store for this next transfer!

Here’s a little bit more about what happened this week…

We had a fun dinner and FHE with a family this week! They are one of my favorites and I am definitely going to miss them.

We also had a game night with a bunch of youth, which ended with them dumping water on all the missionaries because we lost hahaha. It was so much fun and a great way to get the youth closer with the missionaries!

Another great part of my week was a district lunch we had at Sister Schott’s house! She is sooo awesome and made a ton of food for us, and then we surprised her with a district t-shirt! Our district t-shirts are so legit, and I’ll have to get pictures today! I’m really going to miss this district, and I think they’ve been my favorite one so far.

ALSO, I got to talk to my family this week for Mother’s Day!!! I miss and love them so much and it was good to see that they are just as crazy as ever! Just 7 more months until I get talk to them ahahaha. Being a missionary is so worth it, but I definitely miss my family.

Anyway, that’s pretty much all I’ve got for you all this week! The last thing I wanted to share with you is a talk that I’ve been studying, which really struck me as I read it. It’s from Elder Holland (my favorite!) in October 1999, called “An High Priest of Good Things to Come.” He discusses how we can have joy in Christ, that our efforts will be recognized even if we can do no more than to desire and to try to be better, and that there is always something wonderful in the future to fix our eyes upon and look forward to! I love this quote at the very end where he says,

“Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.”

What a marvelous promise! I can testify that God does desire to bless us, and that we can trust in Him to remember perfectly all of the good deeds we have done, the commandments we’ve kept, and the service we’ve rendered. And just as perfectly, we can expect Him to forget all of our sins if we choose to repent.

Have a good week, and happy late Mother’s Day to all of the wonderful women who have impacted my life, especially my own mom!

Love,
Hermana O’Barr

I will try to scrounge up some more pictures from this week. Until then, enjoy this picture of my companion “studying.” Ahahaha I love her! (But she did not love me after I accidentally knocked this down.) 🤣

We had a pretty great week here in Prune Hill!

We taught two different seminary classes, which was super fun! I always loved seminary, so it’s awesome to be able to go back. I think the teachers really appreciated us as well, because they are struggling keeping the attention of the kids this late in the year, and we were able to get them energized and laughing early in the morning.

We also finally taught a lesson to one of our new investigators this week! It was probably the most meta conversation I’ve ever had, though. This guy is an awesome, super deep thinker. He studies a bunch of philosophers and has lots of questions, which we did our best to answer. We’ll see what happens when we go back to teach him next week!

Another fun thing that happened this week was going to a Relief Society activity, where we did speed friendshsipping! I love the sweet sisters in this ward and it was a really great way for us as missionaries to get to know them in an informal setting. Sometimes missionaries come across as intimidating even to members of the church, so it’s nice when we can befriend the members and show them that we’re just normal people and that they can trust us. Member trust is huge because people aren’t going to trust us with their friends to teach if they don’t trust us!

Anyway, we were supposed to have a lesson with another new investigator this week but he wasn’t home, so that was a pretty big bummer.

But it’s okay, because our weekend was super awesome! Elder Finley organized a huge service for one of his investigators on Friday night! The zone worked with a bunch of non-members to clear trails on her horse ranch, and then we had a bonfire with hot dogs and s’mores. He also organized a fireside of sorts, so we had musical numbers (I did one, of course haha) interspersed with spiritual thoughts and conversion stories. It went together really well and I hope all of the other people there could feel the Spirit! If nothing, it was a welcome break from the insane amount of finding time we have per day. It is really hard for us to think of new ways to find when nearly every door has been knocked and there is only one tiny park and zero stores in our area.

Anyway, Saturday was a wonderful day as well. We went to Luz and Anthony’s baptism!!! I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to teach them and I know their lives are going to be so blessed by this next step they are taking. I got to see Ali again at the baptism, and he just told me all about how much better his life is! He found the connection with God that he was missing and longing for, and I can see how much it’s changed him and given him a happier perspective on life. That eternal perspective changes everything! It doesn’t mean that things won’t still be hard and painful sometimes. But when we know that a loving Heavenly Father sent us here to learn, that He sent His son and the Holy Ghost to guide us and allow to return back home one day after everything that we have learned, life seems so much easier to bear and so much more joyful! We are not meant to be downtrodden and miserable. Heavenly Father only wants us to learn and build relationships as we help others, then we can go home to Him and live with our families forever! That knowledge has blessed my life for as long as I can remember, and only does so more the more I learn about God’s plan for us.

I had a great Sunday as well. I always love fast Sundays and I felt the Spirit testify to me often throughout the meetings. I also met a returned missionary from PR who was visiting the ward! It was so cool to talk to her! Sister Schott is convinced it was a sign that I’ll be going soon, I honestly have no idea what will happen haha. All I know is that I’m trusting Heavenly Father to put me where He needs me to be. I decided a LONG time ago that I would serve Him anywhere and in any capacity, so I will go where He wants me to go. Something that’s helped me a lot during my mission is the talk, Do We Trust Him? Hard Is Good. I’ll attach a link because I think everyone should read It! I testify that as we continue trusting in God, He will help us become who we are meant to be through all of our trials. Have a fabulous week!

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2017/11/sunday-afternoon-session/do-we-trust-him-hard-is-good?lang=eng

Love,
Hermana O’Barr

This week was full of lots of ups and downs, just like usual! But as you all know, I like to focus on the ups!

Monday was super awesome. We played lots of sports as a zone, and when we got home that night, I discovered that Sister Schott, the member that we live with, had gone and bought me a bunch of flute music because she wanted to hear me play! She is literally the best!!!

We also had a great time going to mutual with the youth this week. The ward mission leader from another ward came and taught self-defense! He is the top volcano scientist in the world and is a 5th degree black belt. He’s like the most legit old guy I’ve ever met!

Anyway, we also had exchanges this week! The STLs slept over at Sister Schott’s and then I spent the day in our area with Sister Proctor, which was fun because then I got to know her a lot better and we spent time heart-attacking more members with cookies.

Another cool part of our week was that we finally got a new investigator! You all know those are few and far between here…

I think the best part of my week though was that I found out that Luz and Anthony are both getting baptized next week!!! I am so so excited for them and I hope I’ll be able to go back to Portland next Saturday to see them! What an incredible privilege it is to see two more of the people I taught decide to make covenants with God!!!

Also, Ali messaged and told me about going to the temple visitors center! He loved it and said it was really special when he went. He is working on finding a few names to actually take and do baptisms, and then I should be able to go with him! For those of you who don’t know what that means, we believe that anyone who didn’t accept the gospel in this life will have the chance to learn and accept it in the spirit world after they die. We perform things like baptism and other saving ordinances for those who have passed on so that they can accept the gospel and make covenants with God. We believe that we have a special responsibility to do this for our family members who came before us, so we use websites like familysearch.org to find their records and take them to the temple. Pretty neat, no?

Anyway, here’s your little dose of funny for the week. I normally don’t like fish, but Sister Schott was determined to have us all eat salmon for lunch yesterday. So I tried it, and it was actually pretty good haha. The first thing she said to me was, “Proud to you!” It’s so funny because my comp does this thing where she says stuff wrong to bother people (i.e. proud to you, mean at you, scared from you, etc.) and now Sister Schott and I have started to pick up on it. This isn’t good for someone who is planning on becoming an English teacher haha.

I hope you all have a good week! Try something new, or do something out of your comfort zone. Mine was just a stupid little example, but I’ve been so blessed by the number of times I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone on my mission! I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Love,
Hermana O’Barr

This has been a great week! My new area is tough, but a lot of our hard work and faith was rewarded by miracles!

This week we also had a super great district meeting about happiness, which I think did a lot to pump us up to continue working. A scripture that our district leader shared and asked us to study is Mosiah 4:9-12, and I would definitely recommend studying it because it’s one of my favorites!

After district meeting we had our first miracle of the week! We found a new investigator named Dave and then taught him the next day with an awesome young woman from our ward!

The next day was pretty great as well, because we went on a mini exchange with the STLs to help them get to all of their appointments on time. It was super fun to spend some time with Sister Davis (She was my STL in Portland, and she followed me here to Vancouver!). After we got home, Sister Hansen and I were exhausted and really hungry for some reason haha. So the member we live with, Sister Schott, drove to Chick-Fil-A for us (She’s the bomb!) and we used our personal time before bed to hang out and play card games with her.

The next day was nuts, though! We blamed it on it being Friday the 13th, but all of the times we tried to talk to people, they were in awkward or weird situations! It was okay though haha, it’s good for us to be able to work through the awkward and keep trying to teach people!

And, the rest of the weekend was full of miracles! We got a call from a lady who was visiting her non-member friend and wanted to bring her to church! We informed her that it was stake conference, but they came anyway and her friend had a great time! Last night we brought her a Book of Mormon, and we’re going to start meeting with her every Friday! That means we got TWO new investigators this week, in an area where everyone is seemingly happy with their lives. What a miracle to see our hard work paying off already.

The other awesome thing that happened this week was, drumroll……………………..
ALI GOT BAPTIZED!!!! It was such a special moment and I am so so grateful for the privilege I had to find and teach him while I was serving in Alameda. He is going to be an incredible member of the church, and I can tell that his life has truly been changed. If I don’t have any more success the whole rest of my mission, all of it would be worth it, just to see that one special soul join the church and bear his testimony of all that that means to him. I cannot adequately describe just how fulfilling and joyful it is to see one of your best friends join the covenant path!

The rest of the weekend was just so good as well. I loved getting to see Hermana Vazquez and members from the Spanish group at the baptism. AND, we had stake conference! I learned a lot, but I just wanted to share one simple thought with all of you. One sister got up and talked about how to help families study the BoM and learn from it. She said:
1) Read it
2) Liken it
3) Live it

I LOVED her message because as we like the BoM to ourselves, or in other words, think about how it applies to us, it becomes so much more real and interesting, and so much easier to apply its teachings in our lives. Hold tight to the scriptures, brothers and sisters, they are the foundation of our testimonies and they contain the sure and certain way to return to our Heavenly Father. Have a fabulous week!!!!

Love,
Hermana O’Barr

Hopefully people will send me more pictures from the baptism soon.

Hello everyone! I’ve now been in my new area for almost a week! Things have been a little crazy trying to adjust, but overall I’ve been blessed with a lot of peace about my new area. It is definitely a difficult area, because it’s been whitewashed a ton of times, it’s super tiny, and most of the people are very wealthy and uninterested in changing their lives. However, I love my new companion, Sister Hansen, and the Prune Hill ward. I am so excited for all of the new experiences I will have, and I know there are people I’m meant to meet here! Anyway, here’s how my week went down.

Monday–We did so much! We visited a wall of Washi tape (you just know I had to buy some!), ate Indian food, signed transfer journals, went to froyo with Valeria (I love her!), ate dinner at IHOP with Ali, baked a billion cookies, and deep-cleaned the apartment. And cried. A lot.

Tuesday–We had to go say goodbye to even more of my favorite people and it was so sad!!! I LOVE these people and they have truly become like an extension of my family. Even though it has been rough not knowing about PR at times, I am SO grateful Heavenly Father allowed me to come to this mission.

Wednesday–We had transfers! I could tell right away that my mission experience is about to get a whole lot different, but I’m really excited! Sister Hansen is the bomb and so is the member we live with!

Thursday–We had so much fun! We did 2 services on Thursday. One was packing food into boxes, and the other was mucking out and leveling horse stalls! It was really awesome AND I got to see Elder Finley again! He was my old district leader and it’s going to be fun to serve around him again.

Friday–We had a super interesting day that eventually ended up with us getting a razor blade in our tire. But, this really nice Romanian guy named Nic helped us put the spare on, so we’re going to go back with a plate of cookies and hopefully make him and his cute family into new investigators.

Nothing that interesting happened Saturday or Sunday, but it was fun to get to know the ward a bit better, and I fasted for revelation to help us jumpstart this area, and I already feel like I’ve received some good ideas!

I hope you have a fantastic, gospel-filled week! I’ve been reviewing conference talks this week and one of my absolute favorites was “One More Day” by Elder Taylor G. Godoy Of the Seventy. He talks about how our personal sacrifices to live the gospel make it all the more meaningful to us, but also how no sacrifice we make is anything in comparison with the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ. He says “…of one thing we can be sure: we all have a “today” to live, and the key to making our day successful is to be willing to sacrifice.” I loved the perspective that his talk gave me, and it definitely strengthened my resolve to be better each day that I have been granted to live here on this earth. Never forget how important it is to live this gospel with all of your heart!

Love,
Hermana O’Barr