5/18/15

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN INCREDIBLE!!! I can't believe just how many miracles are happening here. It makes me want to bawl my eyes out in gratitude. SO! At MLC(the 2 day leadership meeting we had Monday and Tuesday) we received some BIG news. As of July 1st, the Oklahoma Tulsa Mission will cease to exist. Yes this is AFTER I leave so I'll always be an OTMer which makes me VERY happy :) BUT the mission is none the less changing. At first we were all super sad and shocked! We did NOT see this one coming but apparently President Shumway has been trying to change it since he got here because our mission is HUGE and Bentonville is way more central than Tulsa SO! Although it was hard to hear at first, now we're super excited and glad this is happening. Our boundaries will be staying the same. We'll just be moving our mission home and changing the mission name. Something that Sister Shumway pointed out to Sister Petersen and I was that this is truly a test of loyalty to the Lord. Some of our sisters were having a hard time dealing with this new change and we've had to point out to them that we're not Oklahoma Tulsa missionaries, we're the LORD'S missionaries. A name is a name is a name but when it comes down to it, we are the LORD'S and this is HIS mission and this is HIS work. :) SO! We're pressing forward and when the Lord says jump, we'll jump! And when he says stop we'll stop. As the final signature of The Shumways,mine, and The Oklahoma Tulsa Mission's last few weeks in service we are raising the bar. We're breaking records and we're going out with a bang! We've set goals to make us stretch and we're hitting them! As a mission, our goal this past week was to have 1 active member lesson a day and to receive 2 referrals a day...by the end of the day yesterday, Sister Petersen and I had had 8 active member lessons AND..........WE RECEIVED TWENTY EIGHT REFERRALS!!!! TWENTY-EIGHT! :D It was INCREDIBLE!! Each from a member! We were blown away. In fact, yesterday at church we had a line of Members waiting with referrals to give us after sacrament meeting. A LINE....Who are these people?! :D It has been the best week ever and I know that the Lord has been blessing us because of our efforts both Member and Missionary to find and bring people into the gospel. And this week our mission's goal is to get 3 new investigators, well, Sister Petersen and I have a goal for 6 new investigators this week. :) The thing is, I  KNOW that the Lord can and WILL bless us in our righteous desires.  Never underestimate the power of goal setting and prayer. Heavenly Father is SO aware of each one of us and he will bless us if we do ALL we can to do his will. I love love LOVE this work and I'm so grateful for the power of the Atonement in my life. Have a great week! Let's go make some miracles happen! :)

Love

Sister Moreno

P.S. Family, today marks my 17th month, which means I have ONE month left in the field. SO! Something I've set as a goal and something I want us to do as a family is...Everyday, starting today, I'm writing my testimony in a Book of Mormon and giving it to someone with an invitation to learn more. Each one of you guys individually can either do it everyday with me or I was thinking one of you a day gives one away or each one of you give one away a week...so! You decide, but will you please join in with me on this? You can use me as an excuse to give it away if you want! Go for it! It'll open the door to more questions! But I was thinking option number three would be best, each one of you give out one Book of Mormon a week with your testimony in it and an invitation to read it or learn more. I KNOW that Heavenly Father will bless each one of us individually in addition to us as a whole family and most importantly, we'll be able to be apart of helping people come unto Christ. PLUS! What a great example to our ward my dear missionary parents! You can let them in on it to or use it to motivate them! What do you think? FHE tonight can be the kick off to placing at least one or you could get all three done in one shot :) I really feel like this was inspiration and that God has something in store for us as we do this so PLEASE accept the invitation and pray for the Lord's direction as you go out each day with a Book of Mormon. I LOVE YOU!!!! Also my new address is :

426 Shawnee

Bartlesville, OK 74003

all my companions that were at zone conference

the bretts

Gabe Jones who is in the YSA that served in JEROME 7TH WARD ON HIS MISSION!!! WHAT?? YA, like 3 years ago :)

me adn Kristina Hughes

me and sister booms as she meets her trainee

me and chris

5/4/15

I've heard it said that there's no growth in the comfort zone....but I'd sure like to find that out for myself......DAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. MY VERY LAST TRANSFER CALL CAME THIS PAST SATURDAY AND BROUGHT ME THE WORST NEWS OF MY LIFE!!!!! Just kidding. I'm grateful that President Shumway receives revelation and that I know that he is sending me where God needs me. HOWEVER! I LOVE BRANSON SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!! I seriously have come to love this place faster than any other area and that's probably a large reason of why I'm being transferred because it would be ridiculously hard to come home from here. I'm going to miss the YSA SOOOOOOOOOOO much! :( They're really all like my best friends and I want to move down here. I know I've said that about almost all of my areas but this one is for real. I already have job and schooling options. BUT! I did promise you a year at BYU mom so that's still gonna happen but I honestly think I might come back here for the summer next year and love life!:) I'm so excited to take you all on a tour of my mission so you can see what I'm talking about! It's the best! I LOVE BRANSON!!! Anyway, I'm going to be transferred this Thursday morning to Bartlesville 1st and 3rd wards. I will be staying in a two area assignment..yay! I like being busy! That'll help me work extra hard my last transfer...PLUS I was also called to be a Sister Training Leader...which they've (my past sister training leaders) have told me is like being a girl zone leader. A.k.a someone to provide emotional support haha. Oh goodness. Anyway, my companion is going to be SIster Peterson. I'm really nervous. SO ya... I just am really scared but also very grateful because I've always known that my last month on the mission is going to be one of the most defining and rewarding times of my life. I wish that would come easily but I'm sure it won't. :) HOWEVER! I'm trying my best to be positive and to CHOOSE to be happy. Ok love you all!!

Sister Moreno

Yes, the car is in the ditch....it was a hard night!

FHE with the YSA group

Today with me and sis crier at the top is at our zone outing

WEEK 5 ALREADY!!!

Well I cannot believe it's already week 5 of this transfer!!! We have transfer calls this Saturday and I'm praying really REALLY hard that I'll get to stay here in Branson with Sister Cryer!!! I love them both! However, I have known since before I came out that my last transfer was going to be a really special one. I know in particular my 18th month will be something to look out for. I just have been thinking about all the things I've experienced out here and I'm blown away. I'm SO scared to leave this place and to not be a missionary anymore but I know that Heavenly Father won't abandon me once I lose my nametag. Anyway, this week was GREAT! We had a bunch of fun stuff happen. First of all we had a mini zone conference where we got some council from President Shumway and we have a bunch of weekly goals that are going to stretch us for the next 10 weeks...the rest of their time here...I'll participate in 8 of those...eek! Also Sister Cryer and I had our musical devotional fireside this week with the YSA. We've been planning it since our first day here and it went SOOOOOOO good! We had 2 non-members and an inactive come and we showed "Because He Lives” after it, it was SO powerful! I LOVE MUSIC!!!!! We really had a great time. I'll try to send pictures next week. We ran outta time today cause we just vegged and wrote letters haha I LOVE days like that :)....please pray that well never mind just pray that I'll enjoy my last transfer :) I LOVE YOU SOOOOOO MUCH!

SISTER MORENO

4/13/15

Well it's been quite the week! I'm still LOVING Branson and we're making progress with both our wards so that's good. :) We actually almost have a progressing investigator!! She just needs to come to church and then we'll be good haha. We went on exchanges with our sister training leaders this week and I went with a sister I came out with...Sister Ma'alona!! :) CRAZY!! We really haven't seen each other since like 3 months into our missions...mostly because I haven't really seen ANYONE my whole mission cause I've been in the boonies haha BUT it was really good to see her. We were reminiscing about the good ol' days in the MTC haha I remember being SO scared to go to the MTC and then I ended up LOVING it and making like a trillion lifelong friends so anyone who's worried, Sue?? ;) DON'T BE! I was also able to go on another exchange this week with...SISTER SHUMWAY!!! :) Sister Cryer had a baptism to go back to in her last area and Sister Shumway asked me if she could come on exchanges with me and so it worked out perfectly! We had a good time. We were focusing all week on having active member lessons because as a mission we struggle with 'finding' statistically that is. WHICH! That role happens to be the member's role... SO we've been working as a whole mission to improve our work with members. It's so simple really. When we were baptized actually LONG before that! Before we came to earth when we found out that we were going to have the gospel, we PROMISED our Heavenly Father and our friends and our families that we would share the gospel. ALL God's asked us, YOU to do is INVITE. THAT'S IT! Our job is to open up our eyeballs and see those people around us who don't have the gospel and say "hey! We’re having a dinner at my church this Wednesday. Would you like to come?" or "You look like you might be interested in indexing. I've had a great experience with it. Can I show you how to get started?" or "Ya know we've been friends for a long time and I don't know that I've ever really shared with you what my church believes but I'd like to have some of the missionaries from my church explain the basics to you. Would that be ok?" THAT'S IT! You have SO much to give and all you have to do is invite people. You're not called to teach, you're not called to entertain, none of that, JUST INVITE! I can testify that the work will NOT be stopped by any of our lack of effort but our progression and our opportunity to be trusted by the Lord will be directly influenced by the seriousness we have toward our covenant to share the gospel. I want to share an experience that Sister Shumway had the other day. She was at Sam's club and she was running late for her son's concert and she was literally running out the door and a man came to help her load her groceries in. She felt the spirit tell her that she needed to talk to this man but she had seconds before she had to leave. As she's chucking groceries in her car with the help of this man she asks" SO area you a religious man?" "Yes I am." "Do you have a church you go to?" "Yes I do" "Well hey! You should come to ours!" "I might just do that." "If you give me your name and number I'll send some missionaries your way to tell you more about it." "Ok.".....That man met up with the missionaries that night. He's getting baptized in 3 weeks. We do not have to worry about sounding eloquent or offending people or ANYTHING! The Lord can and will do his own work. You just open your mouth and invite and watch the miracles happen. There’s a family here in our mission who has helped with 100 baptisms...because they invited that's all they do. They have people over for dinner! It's simple and it's what the Lord expects from us. Please don't miss out on the miracles that the Lord wants you to be a part of. Remember who you are and what you promised and remember who those around you REALLY are. The prepared are IN YOUR LIFE. Maybe they're not your best friends! Maybe they're a guy at the grocery store but we can ALL do this work. Try carrying some "I'm a Mormon” cards with you or make it a goal to invite someone you know to dinner and allow the gospel to come up in your conversations. You just invite and the Lord will take care of it all. I love you! I want to be like this too! We can work together and as members and missionaries combine efforts, the hastening will happen in more than just our hometowns but they'll happen in our hearts. I challenge you all to pray for an easy missionary opportunity this week and then to open your mouth and invite! :)

 

Love you forever,

Sister Moreno

Hey There!

Ok SO I'm so sorry it's been a while since I've sent out a big email. Life has been crazy!! So I'm now in Branson Missouri aka the "garden of Eden" haha EVERYONE in the mission calls it that. There are SO many awesome things going on here! We actually shot gunned elders outta here and they left us nothing but 6 jars of peanut butter but after this past week we have 40 new potential investigators! So now we're just going to focus this next week on weeding out those who are actually potentials and those who aren't as prepared. Plus we have this competition going between the elders and sisters in our zone to see how many people can get the most active member lessons this week and then the most referrals next week and then like the most investigators and there's only 4 sisters in our zone...including me and my companion haha BUT we're still gonna cream them! :) Sister Cryer and I have led the zone in our goals for the past few weeks and now we're just gonna keep going. I love sister Cryer! She's such a hard worker and we get along really well. :) Also we've had dinner with ALL of the Mormon famous people here except the Duttons cause they're just coming home from Arizona but! They've called us and we're coming over soon. It's just crazy! All these people are so awesome! I just want them to adopt me! :) We can go to the shows with a progressing investigator SO in addition to having progressing investigators we'll get to have a concert haha. I don't know. I'm just really loving it here. It's SO fun to serve in the YSA too because they have SO many activities and they're PERFECT for finding! Missionary work has never been easier! :) We're also focusing a lot on the new video "Because He Lives". EVERYONE SHARE IT AND GET ON THE WEBSITE!! Heavenly Father truly is making sharing the gospel SO easy. WE just need to hop on board and get busy. I also LOVED conference SO much! One of my favorite talks was by one of the guys from the 70, the one about living the gospel being like a dance. We can all fake dancing for a while but until we FEEL AND HEAR the music we're never truly performers. Take the time "every day, every day, every day" as one of the 70 said to study the Book of Mormon and apply its teachings. "Do good things to do good things not to be recognized" and stand up for and strengthen your own marriage and family. Those are some of the things that stood out to me this weekend. We ALL have a responsibility and a privilege of standing up for and sharing the gospel. SHARE IT! LIVE IT! Reach out and accept the hand God offers to us at all times. I'm so thankful to have the gospel in my life. I love and sustain the prophet and apostles and I KNOW that their words come from a loving Heavenly Father who is trying to reach out to us. There is nowhere else in the world more fulfilling and more comforting than in the arms of the Savior's atonement. We access this by living his gospel to the fullest. I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week! Let the message of Easter stay in your heart and mind everyday #because he lives! :)

Love you forever

Sister Moreno

Here's the first time me and sister Ratto saw each other in 9 months! We met at the exact same place as when I picked her up her first day :) Aww sentimental haha I love her!

And there's SUPER beautiful scenery here too

That's me taking a picture by the Hughes brothers car cause I didn't want to go fan girl over them and ask for a picture after dinner haha J

And THAT is a delicious chicken place we ate for dinner our first night :)

That’s me in my new Easter Dress by the beautiful red buds! I LOVE THEM!

Here's the first time me and sister Ratto saw each other in 9 months! We met at the exact same place as when I picked her up her first day :) Aww sentimental haha I love her!

Talihina week 1000 ;)

 

WHAT A GREAT WEEK!!! I am just SO SO SO SOOOOOOOO HAPPY!! Things are going SO well!! On Tuesday we had our zone conference and I swear President Shumway is the most inspired man I've ever met. He gave the BEST talk on how to use the Atonement I've ever hear and it was EXACTLY what I needed to hear. Plus! My zone leaders picked me and another elder to be the competitors for our scripture bee....thanks to Sister Barrett haha. When they asked who was good at memorizing scriptures she's like "Ooh! Sister Moreno is!" Well we get up there and my teammate got out in the first round! Ya, haha I ended up making it to the final 3 and it was hilarious because I had to sing some of my scriptures cause that's how I memorized a lot of them and even though I got out on D&C 135:3 I still won a prize cause I rapped it and President said I won the best actress award haha it was a blast :) I got a super cute red leather journal! And the rest of the week was just awesome. We've done SO much service and it's really paying off. First of all you just feel SO much better when you serve and second of all we're meeting a TON of new people through it. Friday we started at the recycling center....let me just say. I have SO much respect for the man who's worked there for 3 YEARS....PLEASE everyone. Separate you're recycling into their proper place. On the bottom of the item you're going to recycle you'll see a little recycling symbol with a number in it. Sort based on number if plastic. :) Thank you. Gross work my friends lemme tell you. HOWEVER! We do have 4 new potential priesthood holders in our midst who know how to work hard! :) Also, we had a GREAT lesson with one of our investigators and his mom. He's 14 and friends with the Greens, that's how we met him but apparently his mom took the lessons 40 years ago...ya. She sat in on our lesson with him and she's agreed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it too!! :) AND! Dallin (my old ward mission leader) had given me this referral way back in November to go and see a couple of his friends that had just gotten married and we finally went to go see them Monday and oh. My. Goodness. I LOVE THEM! They're SO awesome! They're like 22 and we shared the temple video and taught the restoration and they're reading the book of Mormon now! WHAT?! Ya. Plus Dallin is down from School for spring break and he's gonna come with us to teach them the plan of salvation! I'm SO EXCITED!! Things are just going really well and I have truly come to love Talihina, no matter how many ulcers it has given me. I've learned SO much from serving here and I don't know how much longer I'll be here because we have transfer calls this Saturday but I know that I am a better person because of my experiences here and I love it. I love it a lot. :) Have a great week! Also, the joys of a small branch, I was called up in sacrament meeting to speak on Scripture study cause the speaker didn’t' show up haha...ya. It was fun though :) I realize I love LOVE LOVE the scriptures SOOOOO much! I love the Bible so much and the Book of Mormon and modern revelation!!! It's just SO good! :) One more thing. In branch council this week I shared a little message by talking about Alma 49-52. I talked about how important it is fortify our cities and how Satan wants nothing more for us than all of us on the same team to turn against each other and how we may have weak spots but we can work together to make our city strong. Also in there it mentions how things started as "warm contentions" and "warm dissentions" and I thought that was such an interesting word to use, but really the little feelings of irritations and annoyance start off small and seemingly harmless but they later grow into big problems. SO! Hopefully we can all remember who the real enemy is and pull together as Christians and stand up for Christ. There’s a great talk in this month’s ensign by Dallin H. Oaks that talks about ALL believers standing strong in the faith against the real enemy. Have a great week!

Love you forever,

Sister Moreno

 

Talihina...I can't remember how long I've been here anymore.... haha

SO! I'm just gonna make this briefish but I have had a great week! :) SO! Actually it started off yucky. The weather here has been INSANE. It was like 30 degrees and snowing one day and it actually snowed like 4 inches which is UNHEARD of around here. Then the next day it rained and ice stormed...let me tell you ice chunks blowing at your face are kinda painful. Then yesterday it was back to like 65 degrees! It was beautiful...I don't understand Oklahoma sometimes haha. But other than that we just had to adjust our traveling and most of our appointments got canceled but we made do! :) I finally broke down and called President Shumway and told him about the hard time I’ve been having in Talihina and how I felt and can I just say....I KNOW I came to this mission to learn and serve with President Shumway. He is the BEST mission president ever and I love him a lot. I asked him if he had a minute and he said "For you, Sister Moreno, I've got more than a few" :) aww haha then I just poured out my soul to that guy and he just totally validated how I was feeling and at one point he shared with me this story He said that it reminded him of me. 

         God called a man over and asked him to push this HUGE boulder at the base of a mountain. The man said ok sure! So he pushed and he pushed and he pushed day after day and the boulder wasn't budging it was hundreds and hundreds of pounds. Well one day the man threw his hands up and said "I'm done! I'm not pushing this boulder anymore! It's not going anywhere and there's no point in trying to move it cause I just can't do it." And then God came over to him and said "You've done a great job! Look at how hard you've pushed! You've done everything I've asked you too. I only asked you to push the boulder not to move it and now look at the muscles you've gained"....:)

          SO! Moral of the story is, sometimes we misunderstand God's plans or expectations of us and we don't realize we're doing everything he asked. I've really wanted to make some BIG changes here in Talihina, and I have been able to do a lot of good here but perhaps the BIG changes are meant to happen to me. I honestly have changes so much since being here. I can't say exactly how but I've felt like I've been being molded my whole time here and I'm just grateful for the realization and reminder that President gave me of the power of endurance. Plus! He also gave me some ideas on what we can do here in Talihina and that it was all about service! We've tried to do service ever since I got here but it was winter and there wasn't really anything in the community to do...we asked...everyone haha but now there are! We, in one day, were able to get set up at the library to help with the upcoming Easter egg hunt, the visitor's center's open house, the Wilburton Recycling center and another thrift store in Wilburton. We talked to the chamber of commerce, the city hall, the catholic churches in both Wilburton and Talihina and it just feels good. I know that good things ARE happening here and that just because the work is slow, doesn't mean it's not going forward. There have been GREAT things happen here including getting some less actives to return, getting different members to go on exchanges with us...actually just the fact that we got members to go on exchanges with us is HUGE, getting welcomed into the Veteran's colony after them shunning us at first and even having an investigator out there! Not to mention our 3 baptisms with the greens and them getting the priesthood and me being able to stay from the beginning till now with them especially through Bella's cancer treatments. I don't know. It's just been good and my time in Talihina so far has truly shaped me into someone else, but someone I hope the lord can be proud of. Thank you for all of your prayers, letters, and support! They are GREATLY appreciated!

Love you forever

Sister Moreno

PS....I've been here about 4 months :) Math was never my strong suit