Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Back in Vegas week 6!

Hello guys!
I made it through my first transfer back! What a crazy ride life is. Today is transfer day so I don't have a ton of time to write!
I am staying in the southern part of Vegas in the West Oqendo Ward! Im grateful that for at least another six weeks (unless there is another emergency transfer) that I dont have to pack up and move! My current companion goes home tomorrow back to New York! That is so crazy but Im excited for her and grateful that isnt me yet! (still love you guys though!) I will be getting my new companion today! Her name is Sister Berger and I dont really know anything about her. Ive heard good things though so Im sure it will be great!
This week has been an interesting one. I cant really remember all that happened but I know it was interesting. One miracle of this week is that we were able to meet with a couple who is investigating! We hadnt been able to see them in two weeks because  their life has been crazy but we were able to get back in and read the Book of Mormon with them! It was awesome and I was extremely grateful that we were finally able to get in! The investigator who went to church last week also came to stake conference this week! That was also so awesome and we were so happy because she was so happy to be there. The Lord's work really is progressing in this crazy messed up world. Im grateful that I have the gospel and I have things to be grateful for because if I didnt I think I would feel pretty gloomy. God is real and God is good!
We had stake conference this week and that was awesome and very much so needed. I love the Spirit and how it speaks to us personally.
One thing that really stood out to me this week was about having an eternal perspective. Guys there is life after this life and when we look at life that way it make s things easier. Seriously so much easier. We talked a lot about that yesterday with a member who we had dinner with. I know that when I look at things with an eternal perspective that my gratitude is strengthened and I am able to look past the trial or the situation. I promise that this life is not the end. There is life after this and now is the time to prepare to meet God. Keep preparing! I love you all!
Sister Camilleri



Monday, August 21, 2017

Back in Vegas Week 5!

Hello family and friends!
I hope that this week has treated you well! Thankfully this week went by a lot faster than last week and I was incredibly grateful for that. We are going into the last week of the transfer and I cannot believe it. My companion goes home next week so I will for sure be getting a new companion and Im a little nervous for that but I know all will be well and fanstatic!
This week was so good! I need to get a grip on my emails because I just dont have a good way of writing them yet so sorry that this one will be once again different. Bear with me guys...lets talk about the miracles we saw this week and the things I learned!

Monday
We went to go teach the Young Women's President about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she happened to invite a woman who recently moved into the area to the lesson. She is a member of the church who hasnt been to church in 34 years. She recently went through some tough things and felt like it was time to go back to the place where she started her relationship with God. It was awesome. As we were teaching her about the restoration you could just tell that she was soaking in everything that we were saying. We gave her a Book of Mormon at the end of the lesson and told her she could mark it up. She was so excited. We should all feel that excited to read the Book of Mormon including myself and that was a good reminder for me.
Tuesday
Nothing super exciting happened to us on Tuesday. We had a lady yell at us when we were leaving dinner with a member because we were in an apartment complex and we apparently werent supposed to be there. I was like bye girl bye we are coming from dinner. Then she got in her little golf cart and rode off and almost ran into a car. Karma.
Wednesday
We had an amazing lesson with our investigator named Andrea!  Seriously it was so good. We had a member  that she knew come with us and that made the lesson like 110% better. We were talking about the Gift of the Holy Ghost. As we were talking to her you could literally see the light bulbs going off in her head. It was so cool and then we started talking about how we are made in the image of God and about how Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are three separate beings and she loved that. Oh man it was just so good! Miracles!
Thursday
We weekly planned for most of the day and that is always like good and super lame at the same time. We went over to our Relief Society presidents house and as we were leaving her neighbors were outside.One of them asked us if we were preaching the good word and we were like yes its pretty great! He came over to us and told us his life story, asked us to pray for him, and said that he wanted to learn more. It was so awesome. We will meet with him this week so hopefully it goes well. We are a little weary though because he lives with some preachers and we dont want to go over there and get bashed so pray for us lol.
Friday
WE WENT TO THE TEMPLE! It was a blessed day and an amazing experience and I want to go back. So so so so good! It felt good to be back in the Las Vegas temple again too!
Saturday
This day was rough. No one answered. The ultimate struggle. The ray of sunshine came from the one lesson that we had with a recent convert/less active and they offered us chocolate. Miracles.
Sunday
ANDREA CAME TO CHURCH. It was so good. I was so grateful. She loved it and so did her kids! Guys. It was awesome. I dont even know how to explain it! All the messages were perfect for her as well! It was just meant to be!

It was a good week my peeps. Im looking forward to what this one holds. It will be full of a lot of greatness. I can feel it. Plus its my companions last week as a fulltime missionary so it has to be amazing.

I have been reading from the Doctrine and Covenants a lot lately and I have been loving it. There are so many amazing things in there that I had never before realized. My testimony of Joseph Smith and his call to be the first prophet in this last dispensation has grown so much as I have been reading the Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph Smith withstood the test of times with so much faith and endurance. I know that He was a prophet and that because of him we have so many truths restored today. Thank goodness for that! I love you all so much! I hope you have a good week!

Sister Camilleri

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Back in Vegas Week 4!

Hey Guys! This week felt like the longest week of my life but whats new. We had a pretty good week. Let me just give you the quick run down. 
Monday: We had a lesson with an investigator who has been taking the lessons for a couple of months. Our lessons are always long with her because we all talk to much. The lesson started on a rough note and I basically was like if you dont keep your commitments then you will never know if what we are sharing with you is true. This is the point in the lesson where it got a bit shaky but then literally out of nowhere I was so overwhelmed with this feeling of love that God has for her. As we were ending the lesson we shared our love with her and I started crying. I could forsure feel the love. Nothing feels better than feeling the love. lol. 
Tuesday: Every week we go and do service at an old peoples home usually we play bingo. (anyone that knows me know that I cringe at the thought of an old peoples home..no offense) We get there and everybody is playing bingo but this one woman wants me to come and help her paint a rock. I go over to her, talk to her and help her with her rock. Then this older man who volunteers at this place came and sat down to paint his rock. Next thing you know we get talking and he starts telling me about how his wife died 6 months ago and how he was really taking hard but he volunteered because this is what his wife would do. I started talking to him about his religious beliefs and testified that he would in fact be with his wife again. As he was leaving I gave him a plan of salvation pamphlet and told him he should have the missionaries come and talk to him. He just kept saying thank you and was really grateful for our conversation. Hopefully I get to see him again when we go back today to play bingo. 
Wednesday: We were on exchanges on wednesday. I was with my sister training leader Sister Hansen. It was awesome. We talked and she help me just have a better understanding on some things. It was fantastic. I love her. We were able to teach a less active member while I was with her in her area. We talked about Joseph Smith. He brings so much strength to me. I am so grateful for everything he endured in order to restore the church. 

This email has become massively long so sorry about that...Ill just finish telling you super quickly about the rest of our days
Nothing super exciting happened thursday, friday or saturday. Those were the long days. 
Sunday: We got two new investigators! We had a lesson with a former investigtor and his fiancee. It was awesome. They are neighbors with a member so we took her along with us. They are really open minded and want to hear more! We are excited to see where it goes! 

It was a pretty good week! We get to go to the temple this week so I am really looking forward to that. This is church is true there is no doubt about it. We just have to be willing to find the answers to our questions and give the gospel a shot. We seriously have nothing to lose. Being a missionary is good! Im starting to get the hang of it again! 
I love you all!
Sister Camilleri

Monday, August 7, 2017

Back in Vegas week 3 and emergency transfer

This week was a crazy week. When I say crazy I mean CRAZY. Wednesday I got emergency transferred to the West Oquendo Ward in the Spring Mountain Stake. Guys that was hard. I was just getting used to the Charleston ward and the area and then bam out of nowhere we get emergency transferred to Spring Mountain. I'll share you all the details but let's just say that Wednesday and Thursday were insane and I was slightly a mess. Wednesday we were busy. I had about 20 minutes to pack up all my stuff and drive to South Vegas before we had two lessons back to back. We went to those lessons and it was seriously by the blessings of the Lord that we got through those. Thursday was a pretty uneventful day. We weekly planned and had a lesson with an investigator who is the most talkative old guy I have ever known. He is awesome though. On Friday I had interviews with President Walker. I have really come to love and appreciate President Walker. You can tell just by the way that they talk that they care so deeply about us missionaries. I was talking to him and I realized kid conversation what is was that I needed to do in order to help myself. I literally looked at him and said "ya know President I really just need to get over myself" he kinda shrugged and went on to tell me a story about a woman from his ward that basically  told herself that everyday. I realized that I just need to get out of my own way. Seriously that is something we all need to do. I plan on telling myself to get out of my own way for the rest of my life. Choosing to overcome is one of the best things that we can do for ourselves. I'm grateful for that bit of revelation I received.
On Saturday we had another lesson with a investigator. This guy is seriously so knowledge probably almost to much for his own good. We had such an informational lesson with him about "our abrahamic sacrifice" (it sounds deep for an investigator but not this guy I promise)
The moral of the story was basically everyone has to make sacrifices that help them come closer to our savior and to our Heavenly Father. They will be different sacrifices but nonetheless they are sacrifices and they mean something. What will you sacrifice in order to grow closer to God? It was just really awesome to think about the things we sacrifice and why we sacrifice that things that we do. I know that every sacrifice that we make for our Heavenly Father is seen by him and will allow us to grow closer to Him.
Also can we just talk about how blessed I am? Seriously. Sometimes the mission field and the way this transfer has gone feels really lonely and feels really confusing. I am so blessed though because my Heavely Father has shown me that change is good and that the gospel is true no matter where you are. The work of God is progressing. I have good people surrounding and supporting me. Shout out to you all!
Also my new companion Sister Tew goes home in three weeks. Aka I have to learn the area in three weeks. Pray for me y'all. 
Love, 
Sister Camilleri

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Back in Vegas Week 2!

Hello Family and Friends!
This week was so good! It was all about service and miracles. It felt like a long week but in hindsight I can't believe it is time to be writing you guys again! This week I started to feel better about this whole adjusting back to missionary life thing. We were able to have zone conference this week on Tuesday and the theme was all about having a Christ centered mission. It was so good! We watched a video from Elder Holland (an apostle) when he was counseling the new mission presidents that were about to start their missions. Elder Holland was sharing a story about a missionary who served in California and one day he was knocking doors sharing our message about our savior and he met his long lost brother that he had never known but he was always praying for. It was miracle. He told his brother that he was sent to bring him home. Elder Holland related this story to us as missionaries. Our call is to bring people home to their Heavenly Father and that alone makes serving a mission worth it. I'm grateful that I have the opportunity to help his children come home to him. Sunday was probably the best day that I have had back on the mission so far. Honestly I needed Sunday. Sitting in church and hearing the speakers talk about the gospel was what my heart and mind needed. I'm grateful for the Sabbath day and how it can change your heart. We had two amazing girl lessons last night. One of them was with a part member family. Neither of them come to church but we contacted them last week and had the first lesson yesterday. It was so full of the spirit. The biggest thing that I needed out of that was came from us talking about the book of mormon. As we shared the book of Mormon with this family and explained how the Book of Mormon can change our lives. They were a bit skeptical as I'm sure it is to most people when they first hear about the book of Mormon. The minute we started testifying that the Book of Mormon was written for our day the spirit washed over us all. I am tremendously grateful that we have the Book of Mormon to guide us and give us strength. There is nothing better.
After our lesson with the part member family we went to go see a recent convert named Michael. He has been having a hard time. Just because we have the gospel doesn't mean that life is easy for us at all. Sometimes we just really wish that we could always feel the sweet peaceful feelings of the gospel but it doesn't always work out like that. As we were talking tears came to my eyes because I realized just how sweet this gospel can be. You know life is hard. Really hard. Especially when there are things going on in our lives that are outside of our control. We do have control about what we do about it and I realized that again last night. I love love love this gospel with all my heart. It has changed me and the way that I view life. Sometimes we just have to put ourselves to the side and focus on God. That's when we feel the happiest. That is why I feel so happy right now. I've chosen to put myself to the side and focus on God. I'm grateful for the things I'm learning as I do so. This week was amazing and miracles have come to us in this Las Vegas area and I know that God is real.
Love you all,
Sister Camilleri