New York State Fair and a Baptism

So not much to say this week it is all kinda a blur, its been a fun week for the most part. I still love my new companion  and we are still having lots of fun everyday! 

Today we went to the New York State Fair which was lots of fun!!! We met lots of people and I made ensure i fulfilled my purpose and talked to at least 5 people about the church. They thought i was crazy but oh well I basically am so i didn't really care. 

We also found a new investigator finally his name is Frank we have only seen him once so i don't know much about him yet other then he is taking care of his grandchildren and wants to find a new church because he doesn't like how his church right now wants him to pay to have his grandchildren baptized. He is very interested and i am so grateful that the Lord has blessed us with someone to teach finally! We also had a baptism on Saturday for a young boy we have been teaching. It wasnt a convert baptism but it was still a wonderful baptism. We are reactivating his family. It was wonderful, he was so happy after words, I could only remember the day i was baptized and how i felt that wonderful day wearing my pretty white baptism dress and having my daddy look at me after i was baptized. It was the best feeling in the world and i am so happy that Dominick was able to feel the feeling. 

Also Sister Hale and I are doing something we are calling a Re-Motivation were we are treating each other like greenys so then we will regain that desire to do the work. It is really hard right now to do the work because our investigator pool for the longest time was a big giant goose egg "0". But sense we have started to do this are investigator pool has went from 0 to 4 so that is a plus. Its amazing what you can do when you rely on the Lord like a brand new missionary does. Our testimonies of relying on the Lord completely has grown so much, I don't want to ever rely on myself ever again it is just so peaceful when you rely on the Lord completely because you know he will take care of everything. 

so yesterday in church we were talking a lot about charity and how it is so important to develop charity in our life. I never really have thought about charity as much as i did yesterday its kinda funny, I know that i have been blessed to be able to have charity but it hit me hard that you cant have something if you don't work for it. I just always expected that i would always naturally have the pure love of Christ for everyone but I learned that you always have to work for the things which that Heavenly Father has in store. It all comes back to the saying i shared a while ago "Faith with out works is dead" we got to act to become like our  savior Jesus Christ so then one day we can dwell in his presence again.

Love you all so much and i am so grateful for all your thoughts and prayers in my behalf. Remember that the Lord should always be your light and he will always be watching over you day in and day out. (sorry if this email sounds like i am rambling its always hard to get all my thoughts together.) 

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Love the Lord with all your Heart <3

-Sister Maraiha Loveland (Potato-Head)

My New Area!!!!! Liverpool Ward

My New companion is awesome!!!! Sister Hale has  been out for almost a Year and has been in the Liverpool area for 4 transfers. she has trained 2 temple square sisters while they were on the out bound part of there mission, and had one other sister besides me in this area.

Liverpool is pretty cool it way different from Fonda because the people are normal and a lot of them are really rich. The Liverpool ward is pretty cool so far i haven't gotten to know the members much quite yet but i am excited!!! We have dinners almost every night!!!! So that means, I am going to be a happy fat kid eating a lot of Chocolate cake!!!!! The work though in Liverpool i pretty slow, not a lot going on we don't have any investigators and only 2 Less actives want to meet with us. But that isn't stopping us from doing the Lords work, we just knock on a lot of doors!!! and i mean a lot like over 500 in the last 2 days!!! But it is still fun give us plenty of time to get to know each other. We share the area with Elders and they are pretty cool. We are all like total Nerds and that's what makes it lots of fun. The District is pretty cool too, i can honestly say i am having more fun then what i did in Fonda. I am not sure about the Zone yet we haven't had any meetings. But i met most of the Zone when we played Basketball this morning. (we play basketball every monday morning) So that was fun. 

So recently with this transfer I was asking Heavenly Father what he desired me to learn form this area, and surprisingly it was something i thought i already had learned with my trainer. That is Humility and Faith. Sense the work is very Slow we have a lot of time to think as we go tracting. And that can be dangerous for me, but as we thinking about all the different attributes Christ had and what i can do to develop them. And it him me, Christ was so freaking Humble and had so much Faith. It got me thinking how you cant have Humility if you don't have faith. and how all the attributes Christ and how you cant have one without the other. I invite you all to pray to know what attribute of Christ you can work on and then study it and pray to know how you can develop it. I promise that as you do this you will be able to feel closer to Christ and be able to become one with him as you become like him. I know that we are loved so much by our Heavenly Father and as we strive to become like his son we will also become like him become our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ are one in Purpose (D&C 31:21)

I love you all and I am so grateful for this blessed opportunity to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thank you so much for all your thoughts and prayers!!! :)

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Love the Lord with all your Heart <3

-Sister Maraiha Loveland (Potato-Head)

Transfers I am going to Liverpool NY !!!!!

So we got transfer calls this weekend, I was all excited thinking i was going to stay in Fonda and I was going to take over the area. But nope, the Lord needs Elders back in Fonda so i am off to Liverpool New York. Haha so to be completely honest when I was told I was going to Liverpool my first thought was Gross i am going to a Nasty sounding soup!!! HAHA my new comps name is Sister Hale. Everyone in my district here in Fonda tell me i will love her because we basically are the same human haha! I am scared but excited at the same time.

So the sad part is 2 of our investigators are getting baptized right after i leave so sadly i will not be there to see their baptism, but they both are going to mail me pictures. It is amazing to see how much people grow over such a short amount of time.

I want you all to know that Keeping all the Lords commandments is so important! We must strive to always be Obedient at all times. There is something I have heard multiple times as i have been on a  mission and that is "Obedience brings Blessings" That is so true we will be blessed so much as we strive to be as completely obedient as possible. I promise you all as a representative of our savior Jesus Christ that as you strive to be obedient and turn to him in pray and ask him for help, i promise he will bless you and help make all your burdens light.

Also another thing is to always remember the sacrifice our savior has made for us. He paid the price for us all not just a few cents but he paid everything for us, imperfect people to be able to be forgiven and to return to our Heavenly Father and so our burdens can become light as we take upon his Yoke. I invite you all to always remember our Savior as it is one of the many promises we made as we entered the waters of Baptism.

Sorry my thoughts are all jummbled up right now but i hope this all makes sense haha

Thank you all for all your love and support :) you are all amazing!!!! I know god loves you all so much!!!!! God be with you till we meet again!

Beautiful Upstate New York

So this week has been a pretty crazy week. Not much to report other then we have 2 new investigators and we have 2 with a baptism just around the corner. Transfers our coming up we have transfer calls the 15th.

I was think on what to share this week and the thought kept coming to me was faith. Faith is one of the first steps in becoming fully converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. " Faith without works is dead" that is one of the many saying we have here in the NYUM. We have so many less actives it is quite said they all have powerful testimonies of the restored gospel but as i have been talking with president rogers he has told me that "we must act upon our faith to show our savior that we do love him and know he did in fact die for us" Faith is one of the first steps we make to return to our Heavenly Father. To be truly converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ we must first have Faith, then we must Repent and apply the Atonement in our lives, Be baptized by someone holding the Priesthood Authority of God, Receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and Endure to the end. The definition of Faith is " to not have a perfect knowledge of things... if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." (Alma 32:21)

I invite you all to exercise you faith in our savior Jesus Christ. Take some extra time out of your see all the blessing our Heavenly Father has given you. Because Faith with out works is dead, you can say you have all the faith in the world but if you do not act on that faith you faith will slowly go away. The Prophet Joseph Smith acted on his faith when he read out of the book of James, He had faith that Heavenly Father would answer his prayer of knowing which church he should join. If a 14 year old boy with out a education have the faith that his prayer would be answered and acted upon that faith why can we?

haha sorry i totally just noticed i went a tangent  on faith. But i know faith is so import to the Lords Gospel. That is why it is one of the first principles. Hope you all have a wonderful day and do not forget to always exercise you faith!! Love you all and thank you for all your support and prayers!

Week of Aug 3 2015

So this week has been going pretty good. All my days are all smushed together! I can never tell any day apart anymore! but that is a good thing from what all the missionaries are telling me... hahah i am not to sure about that. hahah

So any ways! I have basically been working hard and never being able to have time to take a minute and breath. HAHA its so fun to never be able to take time and breath you get to see so many miracles!!!!! My big highlight of the week is a 13 year old girl that we are teaching is going to be getting Baptized on Aug 22nd and right after we gave her a date she ran outside to go tell her grandpa and then also this sunday she borrow her testimony and tell the whole branch about it. You can just see the Light of Christ shine in her eye! she is the Best!!!! It is amazing!!! She is almost done with the Book of Mormon too. I am so excited for her!!!!!

Also this sunday I got to do what i know how to do, a young boy with autism that is in the branch dad was out of town and someone picked him up so he could still come to church. Well right before church started he had a melt down and no one knew what to do to calm him down. So I pulled out my bag of tricks and got him talking to me about Walt Disney ( that is his favorite person) It was so nice to be able to do something without wondering if i know how to do it. I felt so blessed!  

Also the branch is finally working like a ward or branch should so the work is going a lot smoother! so thats a big plus!!!!!!

So today during study time i was studying the light of Christ. It is amazing to increase my knowledge about that particular subject. I really think it is so cool how we all have the light of Christ before we receive the gift of the holy ghost but once we receive that gift the light of Christ is so much stronger!!! there is a song my mom sung to me all the time back home its, " Do you have him image in your countenances? Does the Light of Christ shine in your eyes? Will he know you when he comes again because you shall be like him?" Studying the Light of Christ got me thinking about that song..... do we have the Light of Christ in our eye because we strive to become like him? Then i was thinking about the scripture I shared last week .... " you can't serve two masters..... you cannot serve god and mammon" We must strive to serve our Heavenly Father and follow the example of our Savior Jesus Christ, if we have the desire to return to our Heavenly Father again and be in his presents we must gain that light of christ. I invite you all to take the time to study the restored gospel of Jesus christ and gain that testimony of it for yourself so then you can gain that light of christ. 

I love you all and i am so grateful for all your love and support! you all are amazing!!!! :)