2014 - Best Year Ever!

Scripture of the week: Moroni 10:32

Yea, ^acome unto Christ, and be ^bperfected in him, and ^cdeny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and ^dlove God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be ^eperfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

That's the whole reason I'm out here. To teach people that they can leave the bad behind and be perfected in him. I'm so grateful for repentance. It's real. And it's amazing. Anyone can choose to change because of what He did for us. I love Him. I'm so blessed to wear his name on my tag everyday.

Happy New Year! 

Guess what I realized the other day?....okay I'll just tell you :) 2014 is going to be the best year of my life.

Why? It is the only year that I will be a missionary for the entire year!!! Pretty legit, yeah? 
I'm still working on New Years Resolutions. I'm really trying to be the best missionary I can be, I just need to put those desires into measurable goals and make a plan to accomplish them. We've been challenging the people we meet with to make at least one new goal for the year to increase their faith in Christ this year. So I'll challenge ya'll to do the same. One of mine is to read the Book of Mormon in 85 days (that's how long it took Joseph Smith to translate it) and focus on the word faith and examples of faith and then apply those principles in my life.

News flash! I'm using my FB now.

New Years was definitely one to remember. We had to be in by 6pm. But we went to the LPs for dinner and played with their kids and had sparkling grape juice and just had a good time. I seriously love that family so much! 

THEN I went on my first exchanges! I said bye to Sis Allen and hello to Sister Nitta for the next 20hours. I was super nervous because me and Sister Nitta stayed here in Loomis. Well she's never been here. I don't drive so I don't know where anything is, and y'all know how great my sense of direction is....and we don't have a GPS just a map.... So needless to say, we got lost the next day, but only twice! And it actually wasn't that bad. We probably wasted 40 minutes driving around looking for stuff though. Oh well... It was an adventure!
We are really focusing on trying to get members excited about the work, cuz we need some serious help in this area. So we go and teach members and play the referral game with them and that seems to be working. I think members want to share the gospel they just don't know how, so we role play with them and try to help focus them on who they can talk to and how. 

Also we went to YW on Sunday and role played with them. I feel like if anything, it's helping us gain their trust cuz from what it seems like they haven't had super diligent missionaries here for awhile.
Our investigator, D, keeps canceling appointments with us and it ruins our day. BUT this elderly lady named Patsy has been coming to Church with us!!

She's a sweetheart. And I think that she'll keep progressing just slowly. But she loves the members and some are going over to help her with family history this week!

Also, we tried something new this week. We hate tracting and it's the least effective thing in the world. So we went to local parks instead and creepily walked up to people and started talking to them. It was awkward, bUT a million times more effective. People weren't busy. They were generally happy. And they didn't have doors to slam in our face!

And we're now friends with a couple of them on FB! Yahoo! The most funny thing that happened was we were going on these trails and we would follow voices we heard and run into them and talk to them about the Church, but we tried that with this one family, we did our whole approachable and everything, and they were Mormon hahaha. Then they gave us candy. 

We also went to this museum and gave a Book of Mormon to the museum lady. So that was cool. Thanks for the package by the way!! You have no idea how happy it makes me to get mail. I have this huge candy stash now. And I love that hair stuff! My hair is much less frizzy now and feels so much better. You da best!!

Also, can y'all look up the story called "The Room" by Joshua Harris and Mail it to me? Or email. No news on the visa huh? I got an email from Darci Hallmark and she said she's leaving in Feb. I don't know how she knows that, but that's exciting. I try my best not to worry about it. I feel like I haven't lost any of my Portuguese yet, though! The gift of tongues is real! And I always to talk to Heavenly Father in it, so I practice :)

Well I love y'all! I'm glad all is well in Texas. Thanks for supporting me and helping me keep working hard out here. I miss you.

Talk to you soon.
Love,
Sister Byrne

P.S I love it here. It's really pretty and naturey. But I would never live in California and not be by the beach. What are these people thinking?