June 5

Dear all, 

This week flew by! I can't believe it's Monday again. We had zone Conference this week, which is always AMAZING. The topic we were asked to prepare was on the importance of prayer. My favorite talk that I read was called, "Improving Your Personal Prayers" by Elder Kevin W. Pearson. The first question he starts with is, "What would listening to your personal prayers reveal about you and your relationship with Heavenly Father?". That really made me stop and think about what my prayers are like. Elder Pearson then says, "Prayer is an essential and enabling spiritual link between God and man. Without prayer, there is no possible return to the Father. Without prayer, sufficient faith to understand and keep the commandments is impossible. Without prayer, the necessary spiritual power to avoid temptation and overcome trials and adversity would be unavailable. Without prayer, repentance, forgiveness and the cleansing power of the Atonement are unattainable. With the power of personal prayer, all things are possible." I had never thought about prayer that way. I knew it was important, but I didn't realize that without it, there would be no way possible to return back to Heavenly Father. The part of his quote that really made me think was this, "Prayer is not a negotiation process. It is an alignment process. We don’t move God to our point of view. Prayer is less about changing our circumstances and more about changing us". Yesterday we had a really cool experience with prayer, even though it didn't get answered immediately. So sister Rees and I were driving down the road. On one side was a huge field, and on the other side were trees and bushes and grass. While we were driving to an appointment I saw a couple looking around in the weeds off to the side. I had the thought to pull over but we were on our way to an appointment that we didn't want to be late for. The appointment didn't end up being home, so we made our way back to tract a neighborhood near there. We drove by and the couple was still looking for something. I pulled over and asked what they were looking for. She said it was her wedding ring. I asked her how she lost it and she said that she had been twirling it around on her finger, then she and her husband got in an argument and she got mad and threw it out. She was really embarrassed and was about to cry. So we started looking and they kept thanking us over and over. We had been looking for about 20 minutes and I told them about an experience that I had when I lost something, said a prayer and was able to find it. So we all said a prayer together and started looking. It was literally finding a needle in a haystack...except worse because there were ticks and HUGE spiders and ants everywhere. They asked us where we went to church and said how they wanted to have more friends like us (they were younger). We invited them to church and they said that they would come. We didn't end up finding her ring that night, but we exchanged numbers and want us to come by this week. The whole time I was praying that we could find it, almost to just show her that Heavenly Father does answer prayers, but that quote kept coming to my head about how prayer isn't a negotiation process and how it is in His timing. Then when they walked off sister Rees and I were walking the opposite direction and I didn't see that I had stepped in a huge ant pile....so my whole foot was covered in ants and were crawling up my leg. Luckily the people had gotten in their car and had driven away because I started screaming and hitting them off as fast as I could. I got them off before they could bite me very much. Sister Rees and I were laughing about it for the rest of the night. Today we finally moved to the island!!!! We have been living in Pasadena about 40 minutes away but we are finally here. It feels so great to live in our area. Usually when you move to a different apartment, you just pack all of your things in your suitcase and leave...but since they were closing this apartment down and opening up a new one, we had to bring every piece of furniture with us and deep clean the old apartment. So today was a long day! Our new apartment is just down the street from the chapel which is nice. While we were moving in a man in our ward, Brother Stamps came over unexpectedly to help move. He is older, and had a stroke a couple of years ago and so his left side of his body doesn't really function. He couldn't really do much, but he helped open the doors for us and the senior couple that was helping us. It was so sweet of him. We both could tell he felt so bad that he couldn't help out very much, but it was so thoughtful of him to come over without us even telling him or his wife. 

We are continuing to work with Zach who is 11 years old and visiting with his mom. She has been to church every week now which is so great! We met a lady named Pam while we were tracting yesterday. She has a couple of nieces who are members of the church and let us in to talk to her. She has a HUGE cat named magic and lives alone. She talked to us for about a half an hour and told us that we could come back. We aren't so sure about how interested she is, but we had a great discussion with her. We have also been working with multiple families who haven't been active for a long time. One of them came to church this week which was exciting! There is so much to do here in this branch and it is amazing to see all of the members working so hard together. Sorry I don't have much time to write this week! I love you all! 

Love, Sister Haertling