Temple Trip and Service Projects

My Wonderful Family,

I absolutely love Simi Valley and the members are incredible. We went to ward council this week and they are so focused on missionary work. Basically the whole time, they talked about who they could prepare for us to teach and referrals we should visit.

It has overall been such a great week with wonderful lessons and great service opportunities! This week many wonderful things happened! We were able to meet with a many of our wonderful investigators and a few less-active members.
 

We went on a hike to the cross last p-day with our district.
It was such a fun district activity!

We were able to meet with one of our investigators M this week and bring another member with us! We brought a returned missionary sister from Chile with us and she did such a great job. During our lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ she felt inspired to show the new "Because of Him" video from Mormon.org. It was very powerful to illustrate what Christ really means to her, and that video really brought the spirit into our lesson. If you haven't seen that video, CHECK IT OUT. The church posted that on mormon.org and lds.org for Easter and it is incredible! 

M also came to church for the first time yesterday! He actually came an hour and a half before our sacrament meeting started, but the elders in the other ward were able to find him and bring him to their gospel principles class and priesthood meeting, and then bring him to our sacrament meeting. He really enjoyed our ward. So many people were friendly and came up and talked to him! He really liked how members of our congregation give talks every Sunday.

The district: Elder Davisdson, Elder Eggleston,
Elder Crapo, Elder Elkington, Elder Jones, Elder Nalder,
Me, Sister Proctor, Hermana Cannon and Hermana Romero

We also had an incredible meeting with one of our investigators L! We had her lesson again at our Relief Society president's house. It was a good meeting about following the prophet, scripture study, and prayer. We were able to show her how to get the scriptures on her phone and she absolutely loved that! We talked to her about how she could just search a key word every day and read a few scriptures on her phone as part of her daily scripture study. She was really excited to be able to try searching the Book of Mormon by topic so she could get much more out of it.

She also came to church for the first time this Sunday! She absolutely loved sacrament meeting. She is Jewish and is used to going to church services in Hebrew. She was so excited that it was in a language that she could actually understand, and she said that parts of the meeting reminded her of Jewish services too!

She also came to our Gospel Principles class and the lesson was on covenants! They talked about baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and temple covenants. When they talked a little bit about the temple and eternal marriage she completely lit up! She started whispering to me how great of an idea that was because she has been married for over 30 years now and it would be wonderful to be married forever! She had such a great experience at church yesterday and she told us that she wants to keep coming back!

During our lesson this week we talked to her about baptism and she basically told us that she would be willing to be baptized but she has a fear of water. We were so excited to hear that she is making so much progress and is thinking about baptism! We are going to bring her to the next available baptismal service so she can see what it is really like and that there is nothing for her to be afraid of.

The Los Angeles Temple with birthday girl Sister Proctor

We had such a wonderful experience at the LA temple this week! It was so peaceful and a much needed experience. We went with Sister N, who I talked to you a little about last week. In the car we were able to talk to her more about experiences from her mission, why she decided to leave the church for a little bit, and how she is doing since she's come back. It was such a great opportunity to spend a little more time with her and try to strengthen her at least a little bit. It was so cute because when we got back to our apartment she told us that she really didn't want us to leave because she had been feeling so good throughout the whole day we were together! She is so wonderful and always tells us encouraging things about remembering how important this mission will be to us for the rest of our lives.

The famous "Lion King" tree at the LA Temple

We also had a great lesson with G this week! We watched "The Restoration" video with her and talked to her more about prayer and scripture study. She is still adorable and she just knows that the Book of Mormon is true! Her mother is so awesome and is trying to get a FHE together this weekend with all her less-active family. We are so excited for that! Hopefully that will work out so we can try to bring all her family back to church. She and her mother came to sacrament meeting and our Gospel Principles class this week. They loved it, and we found out that G might also want to go to girls camp with the ward this summer! G is really doing great, and she is so excited for her baptism that's coming up!

For service we steamed tablecloths for a wedding! A woman we are teaching
has a son who is getting married this weekend. We got to spend lots of
time talking to her and steaming together. Here's our action shot!

We had some great service projects this week! We spent HOURS with a woman we're teaching, steaming tablecloths for her son's wedding. It was really some great bonding time and it was really fun!

We also had a Mormon Helping Hands project. There were a few projects all over Simi and for ours we were able to paint! We also chatted up one of the non-members there and I also tried to convince this 19-year-old member to go on a mission! I now basically try to convince everyone to go on a mission! Seriously, the mission is so great and so the blessings are incredible! I now try to tell that to everyone because this mission is life changing!

A picture from our Mormon Helping Hands day on Saturday!
Elder Jones, Elder Davidson, Me, Sister Proctor, Elder Crapo, Elder Elkington,
and a few members behind us. We painted the outside of a YMCA and it was a blast!

Today we are going to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library here in Simi Valley and I've been so excited all week! A member in our ward is able to get us in for free! I will make sure to send you some great pictures next week!

Sister Proctor and me at the temple doors!

I honestly love this ward and working with Sister Proctor! She and I are so different but we work really well together! It helps so much that we already know each other really well and understand each other! The work here in Simi is going great as usual!

Much Much Love,
Sister Mason