Babe's Chicken

Family,

Well another week has come and gone in the mission field, I am just grateful that it is cooling down here in the state of Texas and that everyone is in the Halloween mood. It if fun to knock doors and see everyones Halloween decorations. I love the fall season! It is the best season to be a missionary!

Decided to "Boo" some of the missionaries in our area!

 

This week was another slow one, but I am learning really fast to recognize the little miracles. The family that we are teaching is super great! They invited us to a birthday party of their daughter and they want to come to church. Church is always the hardest part for people, I don't really understand why, but when they finally come to church you feel like you have accomplished a marathon, but this week we did just that. A few weeks ago we had a dinner with an older woman in our ward. She is a little bit crazy but she has a big heart and loves to help the missionaries. When we were leaving, there was a man walking into his apartment, so we decided to contact him. Our member was pretty much jumping down his throat that he needed to listen to us. We gently played it off and walked away not thinking much of it. Earlier this week we got a phone call from the member saying that the man was interested to hear a message, so we set up an appointment and taught him in her apartment. The lesson was fine, the member got us off topic a lot talking about unvirtuous women and super random topics but all was good. She then told the man that he was going to drive her to church on Sunday, and that he didn't have a choice! We were shocked that he actually showed up yesterday to church. He is an interesting man and around us he is kind of awkward, but he made so many friends in Priesthood! It was crazy! Oh well, Heavenly Father is blessing us for our efforts.

This week there is a family in our ward that took us out to dinner, they took us to the famous Babe's Chicken! IT WAS SOOOO GOOD! I am taking my family there when we come back and visit! It is a classic Texas place with lots of fried chicken! They are some of my favorite members! AH, I love being a missionary!

 

I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ live and love us. I know that the Book Of Mormon is the word of God and that we have the commandments to help us and not hinder us. I love living the gospel because it only helps me be happier in life. I love being a missionary and sharing this gospel with others, I love Jesus Christ. I hope you all have a wonderful week!

 

Hermana Cattich

 

COME WHAT MAY AND LOVE IT!

Sunday evening walk in the park!

Tender Mercies!

Well this week was another fun week full of knocking doors but my companion and I have been able to have good, deep talks about realizing the tender mercies that Heavenly Father has blessed us with everyday. It is been a really cool experience to reflect on how we see our Heavenly Father help us and bless us everyday. This week, one of the elders that is serving in my zone, got hit by a car on his bike so we offered them our car because the elder was having troubles walking. We were without a car for a little while, but that was great! We were able to talk to so many people on the streets as we were walking, stopped people bus stops and visited a lot of laundry mats. It was really good! We also are working with a less active family, the Anguianos and they are soooo funny! They will always make us really good hispanic food but they always seem to find a way to make fun of me for not liking beans! They are great!

 

An update on Fransisco and Vivanna, (the family that we found last week!) They are awesome! We had a lesson with them yesterday night about the Book of Mormon. They are so eager and willing to read the Book of Mormon. We were also invited to the birthday party of their 8 year old daughter, which is great because we have only been meeting with them for about a week now. We have made a really good friendship with them though. The blessings of Heavenly Father are everywhere, we just have to stop and think about them everyonce in awhile. I feel like as a missionary sometimes I am rushed to meet the number goals that we have set, or to just go out and work and knock till my knuckles bleed, but Hermana Walton has really taught me to appreciate the little things. Heavenly Father has so many tender mercies for his missionaries, and I am so lucky to be able to see them first hand!

 

Have a great week, I love you all!

 

Hermana Cattich

 

COME WHAT MAY AND LOVE IT!

Wow, wow, wow. This week has had its ups and downs, but when is that not the case as a missionary! So to begin, last Tuesday our whole mission got together to watch Meet the Mormons and have a mission wide breakfast! It was so fun to see everyone and the movie was so good! There is apart about missionaries and everyone was crying. It was crazy! We had a little fireside as a mission too, our mission president is amazing! He just knows exactly what to do to bring our mission together. On Wednesday, we had interviews, and that is where our Zone gets together and our leaders train us and we have personal interviews with President Taylor! They were so good. There were different missionaries in the zone that trained on different things and the spirit was so strong! We were all crying and we had a little testimony meeting, I love my zone! The interviews with President are good but short, but you can still talk about all the things that you need to.

Wednesday we found bed bugs again. AGAIN! I am so done with bugs! So once again we had to evacuate our room, deep clean everything and wash every single article of clothing. It took forever. That's all we did on Thursday. It was so frustrating for me because we couldn't go out and work at all because we had to fix the problem we had. Beg bugs are the worst. This week we also had stake conference and we were able to bring one of our investigators, Lily! She is amazing! Our zone leaders are also teaching her too. She speaks Spanish and English and she is awesome! She made us all lunch on Friday! She loves the gospel and the Book of Mormon, she knows that she is going to be baptized we are just waiting for the actual date!

This week was hard because we had meetings pretty much all week and we couldn't really go out and work because of the bed bugs. I was super frustrated at the situation! All I wanted to do was to go out and work, and to preach the gospel, but like the mission always does, it teaches you patience. Yesterday, at about 7:30pm, we finally were rewarded for our rough week as we found an amazing family of 4! They were an answer to a lot of prayers and they are just so prepared by Heavenly Father! I am excited to work with them and teach them more about the restored gospel. One thing that struck me so much about them is that the wife told us that her mother didn't believe the family to be the most important thing in life, but my companion and I were able to testify of the importance of family. The phrase, "A missionary is away from their family for 18 months to 2 years so other families can be together for eternity!" rings so true in my mind! I love missionary work and I love this gospel. 

Have a wonderful week, I love you all!

Hermana Cattich

COME WHAT MAY AND LOVE IT      

We love you, we love you, we love you....YA!

Wow family, this week was really something else. Conference was great! I was able to watch all of the sessions with investigators, recent converts and all of the missionaries. My favorite talk was by Elder Bednar of the final session and then all of the talks from the Young Womens Session. I feel like a reoccuring theme was "build your foundation on the rock of Jesus Christ" and "perservere to the end!" I love both of these! As missionaries we teach others the doctrine of Christ so that they can start a firm foundation for their personal lives and for their families. Then, we teach them that it is not enough just to be baptized and recieve the Holy Ghost but that we need to continue doing the right things every day to further our conversion. I loved some of the answers that they gave us or things that we should do weekly and daily. We need to go to the temple more, we need to hold a regular family home evening, and we need to teach our children how to do family indexing and to actively participate in the work of salvation. These are all great lessons that I have learned and that I want to apply to my future family, in 30 years from now :) haha

 

This week was good. We knocked alot and we had a lot of fun doing it. We even did a "car fast" day which means that we don't use our car at all, we just walked everywhere. I loved it. You can talk to a lot more people and really have some interesting conversations. Its nice now to walk right now because it isn't very hot, so we are probably going to start walking a lot more. We have been doing a lot of finding and we are still working on strengthening the ward. Our ward is so big and the missionaries have a lot of work to do to "rescue the lost and strengthen the feeble knees."he people of our ward are so humble, some of them just need a gentle reminder of what the gospel of Jesus Christ did for them. I love being a missionary and working with these wonderful people.

 

I am sorry I don't have very much today, but know that I know that this is the work of Heavenly Father, and that there is no place I would rather be. I love and miss you all so much! Have a wonderful week!

 

Hermana Cattich

 

COME WHAT MAY AND LOVE IT

The Start of Something New!

Womens Conference

Mi familia!

 

I run out of things to say so I am sorry if my emails get repetitive. But first I would like to say that the Womens meeting for Conference was AWESOME! President Uchtdorf said the most perfect/wonderful things! It was amazing! We brought one of our investigators and she was almost in tears at his words. She needed to hear all that he said. I am so excited for Conference this upcoming week. It was a real testimony builder for her! Life has been great here in Texas this past week.

My amazing district!

 

We had transfer calls, and I am staying here in Carrollton for one more. I am super excited to finish up Hermana Waltons training. We are excited to stay together because we are actualy working with some cool people. One of these people is Ereano. He is amazing and one of the most humble people that I have ever met. He is about 25 years old and he loves the Book of Mormon. He knows it all to be true and he understands the importance of being baptized by someone with the authority from God. It is amazing. We had a lesson with him on Tuesday and we took him to the church to give him a church tour. He still hasn't been able to come to church because of work but we wanted him to at least see what the church building is like. We invited some members and we had a combined lesson as we walked around talking about all the pictures on the walls and explaining the importance of the sacrament room and the baptismal font. It was great! You could feel the spirit so strongly as we all shared our testimonies with him.

Texas Love for Life!

 

Last night there was a baptism in our ward, and our Zone Leaders did a musical number. It was so good! They sang the song, "Come Unto Christ" I have been thinking about that lately and how I can become more humble and come closer unto Christ. There is a Mormon Message that caught my eye and it made me really think if I am becoming the person taht Christ wants me to be, because the mission is the best time to develop the attributes of Christ and to really put all trust and confidence in Him and His plan. I am excited for the 6 months that I have left, because i am changing my focus a little bit and hopfully will continue to see personal growth. I love being a missionary! The video is called "The Will of God" and it is on Mormon Messages!

 

Have a great week!

Love,

Crazy Elders!

 

Hermana Cattich

 

COME WHAT MAY AND LOVE IT

 

Oh the places you'll go!

This week has been a hard one but that is okay, "Come what may and love it right?!" This past week I hit my year mark in the mission. I cannot believe that I have already been out here for a year and I only have 6 months left. Realizing this made me reflect on what has happened in the past year and all that I have learned. The person I was a year ago is not the same and I am so thankful for the growth I have had since I have been out here. One thing that I know for sure is that I am a child of God and this is his work. This is the most important work that we could do while we are living here on the earth. Life honestly can't get better than right now. This may now be the best 18 months of my life, but it is for sure the best 18 months for my life.

 

We are teaching 2 really solid men. They both love the Book of Mormon and we text them everyday to remember to read and to pray. They are progressing really well, the only thing they won't do is come to church. I have always wondered why coming to church is the biggest obstacle for people and why as missionaries we can't force people to come to church. I guess one of the hardest and most frustrating lessons that I have learned is that everyone has their agency and we can't do anything about it. They could know that everything is true and have a testimony of prayer, Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and still not decide to come to church. This has been really frustrating for me, but I have learned that it is all in the Lord's time.

An example of the Lord's timing is about 4 months ago, I was knocking in an apartment complex with Hermana Enriquez. We knocked on this door and the lady that answered told us that she already knew 2 of the elders that used to stop by about 8 months ago. She went on to tell us that she didn't have time at the moment, but we could come by again in a few weeks. I wrote down in my planner so I wouldnt forget, but of course what did I do?? I forgot. Anyways fast forward to about a month ago. It was the first day with my trainne and we were knocking in apartment complex. We knocked on a door and the lady that answered said that her daughter used to take the discussions and lives just a few doors down. The thought suddenly came to my mind that this was the lady that I had met. I started running and told Hermana Walton just to follow me because we needed to talk to her. We found her home that day, her name is Lily. She made it very clear that she would listen to us but would never convert. After a week or 2 of working with her, we got discouraged and started saying that the gospel would never change her life. So we decided to give her as a referral to the english elders because she also speaks english and they decided to try and work with her. Well low and behold, this Lily has been reading the Book of Mormon, praying, coming to church and has a baptismal date. Sometimes it is not the right timing or the right people but if we pray about it and if we do the will of our Heavenly Father, everybody wins. The gospel changes lives.

 

I read a talk this week called "The Atonement and Missionary Work" by Elder Holland, and it is amazing. Espcecially the last part, it made me start to cry. I have also been studying in Alma 26, and have been able to relate it to my life and missionary work, it is actually quite funny. I love the scriptures, and I have grown to love them even more on my mission. This week we had a combined meeting for the missionaries and once again we sang "God Be With You till We Meet Again," that song seriously gets me everytime. I said goodbye to an old companion, Hermana Munyer, and some other old friends. Life is good and I am happy! Have a great week everyone!

 

Hermana Cattich

 

"COME WHAT MAY AND LOVE IT"

 

The Show Must Go On...

Well family, life is crazy. It always is, but this week I had some unexpected events happen to me and it has been a very humbling week. Concepcion was baptized and the week you have a baptism you want to hit mission "standards" which are just like high goals you can hit the week you have a baptism. Hermana Walton and I were super excited and confident because we knew we would be able to reach them. The week started off great, but then it began to crash and burn....oh how I love being a missionary.

On Wednesday we had exchanges, so Hermana Hadlock came here for the day. On Thursday morning, I woke up in the middle of the night with a dream that bugs were crawling on me, it didn't really phase me but when I woke up in the morning, I went to the bathroom and then the thought crossed my mind....BEDBUGS. I decided I would go check and if they were there I would need to stay completely calm. Of course, to my unpleasnt suprise, when I lifted up my sheets, all I saw were little bugs crawling all over the place. OH GOODNESS! This is the second time on my mission that I have had bed bugs. We quickly lifted and took my bed outside, and started to tear apart everything. The members that we live with weren't too excited either. Elder Midgley, who is in charge of the housing for the mission, came and heated up our room to about 150 degrees because heat kills the bed bugs. We had to remove everything, and we had to wash every single article of clothing and bedding and we went and used to elders laundry and did laundry practically all day long. It was a nightmare. Our room was destroyed and now we don't know where anything is. Hermana Walton was so calm, it has been great, but Thursday was a rough day.

On Friday we went back to our missionary duties and were trying so hard to reach the Zone Standards goals, and we were right on tract. We had planned everything and everything was going through. We were so excited because not even bed bugs could stop us. B,ut Saturday night, as we stopped by some investigators to invite them to church our car was towed. AWFUL! We had been gone for about 10 minutes and when we went back to our car, it was gone. Some teenagers came up to us and told us that they had just taken the car away about 3 minutes earlier. GOODNESS. We ended up calling some people and they came and picked us up but this morning we had to go to the mission office to drive with Elder Larsen and his wife to pick up our car in Dallas.

My my my what a week it has been, but I just don't think I can say enough that IT IS ALL WORTH IT. We didn't end up meeting standards which was hard but, I know that these little trials have all taught Hermana Walton and I something. She is so positive and I am so grateful for her because without her this week I probably would have just given up. I love being a missionary. I have never been more tired in my entire life, but everyday is just amazing! I love this work, and I love being a missionary, I love Jesus Christ. I hope everyone had a wonderful week!

Hermana Cattich

COME WHAT MAY AND LOVE IT