Sister Burton Takes on Anaheim!: Week 22: Burnin in an oven🔥

Well, here we are. The end of my 3rd transfer, I'm now officially 1/4 of the way through my mission.....where has the time gone?! More often than not, the time flies by!

The weather here was SMOKING this week! Holy moley! It was in the 100's at the beginning of the week, but has since "cooled down" to the 90's! But this week looks promising (low 70's)

We have some changes happening this transfer. Sister Green was called as a Sister Training Leader (STL) (and so was my other Sister Greene!!) Sister Evali and I will stay here, but will only be covering the Yorba Linda 4th ward. Elders are coming to take over the Anaheim 10th ward! I'll miss that ward! We'll still see them from time to time in the building. It will be nice to just be able to focus our efforts on a specific ward!

Now, onto this week's happenings:

--We accidentally tracted into 2 members this week....#embarassing. Their addresses in our area book said that some potential investigators lived there, but apparently not! And we didn't recognize the members at all, so that makes the situation even more embarassing....But we laughed it off, so it was fine!

-- We had a pass off lesson with Tyler this week. The YSA elders came and the lesson went really well! We invited him to be baptized, but he doesn't feel he's ready yet. He has some questions about things, but we're confident that the Elders will be able to help him! Tyler is such a truth seeker!

--WOW, on Wednesday we had a miracle hour. The day was a little rough. We were all in a little bit of a funk. We last minute scheduled a member with a lesson that evening. We planned to visit a less active member on the way over to the lesson, but we felt prompted to visit a potential who lived in the same complex as the member. Side note, walking around apartment complexes between the hours of 7-8 PM is primetime to talk with people, because everyone is getting home from work at that hour!! We parked at one end of the complex and started walking towards the other end, talking with people along the way. One woman was just getting out of her car as we introduced ourselves. We started talking about Christ and she said she believes in Him. She then asked if we wanted to come inside.....um YES. The woman (Swati) took us inside, where we met her daughter and we began to teach the first few principles of the Restoration. We have a return appointment with them Wednesday and she told us not to eat because she wants to feed us authentic Indian food! We are SO excited to go back and talk with her again! Very rarely does anyone just let you into their house like that. What a tender mercy!

Oh, but that's not all. As we were leaving Swati's house, we saw a young mom loading her kids into the car. We stopped her and briefly introduced the Restoration and she said she would love for us to come back, so we got another return appointment! We were on cloud 9!

When we got to the member's house and told her about the miracles we experienced, she was so, so happy! She said that she had met Swati's husband a few weeks ago and felt prompted to introduce us to their family. WHAT! All of us were in awe. The Holy Ghost is real! If we wouldn't have listened to that still, small voice, we wouldn't have met those people!!

--We had TWO Halloween Parties this weekend (perks of serving in two wards!) Friday night was the Yorba Linda 4th ward party and we saw MIRACLES there! A few weeks ago we went and visited a Part Member family, the Olsens. The wife, who isn't a member, thanked us for coming by, but said they weren't going to be coming back to church or anything. We felt a little discouraged, BUT we invited them to the Halloween party anyway and THEY CAME! Apparently, a member of the ward takes the wife's fitness classes at the gym and this member also invited them to the party! The ward was so welcoming to them. Another part member family, the Morris', came too! The members of this ward are SO good at mingling with everyone and helping them to feel welcome!

Spiritual Thought:

This week at District Meeting, our Zone Leader/District Leader, who is going home, bore his testimony and he shared a story that really resonated with me. I've been pondering it ever since. The story went a little something like this:

God told a man to go push this rock everyday. It wasn't just any rock. The rock was as big as a house! The man pushed the rock day after day but it didn't move anywhere. The man questioned God, but God simply told him, "Push the rock." The man did this for many months, but still, the rock never moved.

Afterwards, the man looked in the mirror. He had scars and scratches, but he was much stronger than he was before he started pushing the rock. God said, "I told you to push the rock. I didn't tell you to move it. You are stronger now and I can use you for a wise purpose."

This relates so well to us in life! Often, Heavenly Father asks us to do something that we either think is impossible or we aren't able to see how it's benefiting us at all. It's often AFTER the fact that we notice what changed. Heavenly Father is refining us everyday. He has a plan for each one of us, not only in this life, but it continues into the next life! Every challenge, every trial, every situation we're given is to shape us into the person He needs us to be. Don't ever forget that! When things seem to be out of our control, when we want to give up, we need to turn it over to the Lord and trust in Him. He sees the big picture! He sees our entire potential! How amazing is that?! YOU ARE LOVED!

FULLERTON NEWS: Jacob and Joey are getting baptized Saturday and they've asked me to speak on the Holy Ghost! I'm so excited to see them make this next step together! Stay tuned for more baptism pictures ;)

I hope you all have the best week ever! Sending my love and good thoughts your way!

~Sister Burton