6/24/2013 Group Email

Things really started picking up the last few days for us. Thursday and Friday were filled with appointments with members, less actives, and investigators. We also did some service this week which was nice and we got a ton of referrals from other missionaries.

We were only able to meet with Deborah briefly this week on Saturday, but it was a really good experience. We kept making plans with her and Sandarryo to meet with them and then something would come up and they couldn't meet with us. It was kind of frustrating, but it is okay and this week will be better. Sandarryo wasn't there when we went to talk to Deborah. We bought her a framed picture of Christ holding a little African American girl's hand and it is a really pretty picture and frame. Deborah loved it! She was so excited and kept saying how beautiful is was. We met one of her sons who lives in San Antonio. He was visiting for the weekend and had brought his electric piano keyboard. Sister Garlick had just been saying the day before how she wishes she could play the piano for Deborah and Sandarryo, so they set the keyboard up and Sister Garlick played and sang a couple of songs for them. The Spirit was so strong and the songs were beautiful. Everyone gathered around the piano and listened. We had talked to Deborah earlier about coming to church this Sunday, so we asked her again on Saturday if she would come to church. She said that she would and Sandarryo and her 4 little grandchildren who are always there when we come, would all come, too. She was really excited and we were really excited. Tammy Sue was going to pick her up Sunday morning. But, early Sunday morning, we got a call from Deborah and she couldn't come because she was the only one who had stayed the night at her apartment that night, so nobody was home. It was quite depressing, but we are staying positive and we will get them to church next week. 

We had a day where we got 4 referrals from missionaries in one day and it was awesome! We haven't met with any of them yet, but hopefully will be able to this week. We texted one of the guys, named Jonathan and we ended up calling him and talking for 20 minutes. He is excited to meet with us and we are excited to meet with him, so that will happen this week. Also we visited a referral that we got a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Paula and she is 23 years old and is originally from Argentina. She is really sweet and wants to come closer to God. We taught her the Restoration and invited her to read the Book of Mormon. It went really well. Also, we are taught to invite investigators to be baptized on the first lesson, so we invited her to be baptized. She said no, but that is normal and totally okay. She wants to learn more about the church first and find out for herself if it is true, and that is exactly what we want her to do. So we are excited that we got a new investigator and hopefully we will get more this week as well. 

There is a couple in our ward who have been inactive for a very, very long time who have just recently started coming back to church. Our ward mission leader asked them if we could come practice teach them our lessons, since both Sis. Garlick and I are pretty new, but really we just want to reteach them everything. They agreed and we met with them this week. It went really well and they had lots of questions that we answered. They loved it and we loved it. They really don't know anything about the church or the gospel so we have to teach them everything, but we are excited. We are going to start going to there house for FHE each Monday night to teach them and because they want to start doing FHE, but don't know how so we are going to help them get started. It should be really good and they are awesome. 

I don't know how many of you watched the missionary broadcast last night, but if you didn't you should because it was really good and is something that everybody should hear. It talked a lot about working more with the members and how the members are the best way to do missionary work. That is something that I have really learned since I have been in Houston. Without the members help, we can not do much. My favorite part of the broadcast was how they talked about being motivated by love and how we should do things out of love and not because a handbook told us to. 

So things are starting to pick up and everything is going really well. Hopefully this week will be really good.

Love,

Sister Sylvester

MTC Photos

Official

I'm not sure if this is Sheridan's whole MTC district or her zone.  Regardless, it's a great looking group 

Who probably had too much fun at the MTC

Sheridan with her first companion, Sister Jeppson, in front of the Provo temple

Sister's in Sheridan's district

MTC Companions 

Sister Jeppson and Sister Sylvester

Missionaries

Group Email 6/17/13

This week was really, really good. A ton of stuff happened but I will just talk about the three biggest ones.

First: We had a Zone Conference with Elder Golden of the Seventy on Wednesday. He was touring our mission last week and so we spent most of the day with him. It was so good and exactly what everybody needed to hear. Lots of the things he talked about had been on my mind since arriving in Houston and so I am glad that everything was said and discussed. The Spirit was really strong and Elder Golden is amazing! He is so smart and everything he said was so powerful and insightful. I loved every minute of it. It was also really nice to see my MTC Companion, Sis Jeppson, and we ended up talking for an hour which was really good. We missed each other and we were having similar feelings about things since we have been in Houston and it was good to talk about them with somebody.

Second: The Bishop of our YSA ward gave us a referral for a young guy that he worked with and we met with him on Saturday evening. His name is Ashwini and he is from India. He was really cool and such a nice guy. He is very open to the gospel and was receptive of the things that we discussed with him. The Spirit was so strong and I'm pretty sure he felt it. We talked about Heavenly Father and how much He loves us and how He has a plan for each of us. We also talked about Jesus Christ and the Atonement a lot, and prayer and the Book of Mormon and how they will help you build that relationship with Christ. After we said a prayer at the end, Ashwini was smiling and said that the prayer was beautiful. He really liked how we don't have any specific things that we have to say and we can just say whatever we want to in our prayers. So we are really really excited about Ashwini and teaching him some more. 

Third: We taught Deborah and her grandson, Sandarryo, a couple of times this week. They are awesome. Deborah is the grandma of this big, close knit, black family and she is so loving and selfless. And she is hilarious. Her and Sandarryo are so ready for the gospel, it is ridiculous. Sandarryo is 19 and is really smart and hard working. He is a thinker and doesn't say much, but he talked a lot yesterday when we saw him. Last night we brought Tammy Sue, a member from our ward, with us to there apartment, and Tammy Sue got Sandarryo to talk a lot. Everything he said was exactly what we teach in church and the gospel and the Book of Mormon. Tammy Sue challenged him to read the Book of Mormon in a month and if he did it, she would do it, too. Then Deborah, Sis. Garlick, and I all agreed to do it, as well. So Sandarryo accepted the challenge and we will see what happens. Deborah received a preisthood blessin earlier this week. She was feeling really sick and weak and didn't know if she was going to make it, so she received a blessing. She loved it! She kept saying how she could feel the weight and the burden lifted off of her shoulders and she already felt better. On Sunday, she told us that she has been full of energy ever since her blessing and still feels really good. It was awesome! Sis. Garlick and I are determined to baptize Deborah and Sandarryo and we are pretty dang positive that they are ready to be baptized. We are very excited and love them so much.

A few little details about the mission for those who want to know. We have a car and a huge area so we do a lot of driving. We get fed by members pretty much every night. The members of the ward -- especially the YSA ward -- take very good care of us. We have a very nice apartment -- one of the nicest in the mission and the best part about it is that the air conditioner works very well and very quickly. It is very hot and humid here, but I am handling it well, although I am nervous about the fact that it is going to get WAY hotter and more humid in the coming months, so just pray that I don't die :) We do lots of driving and visiting people and some tracting in between.

Thank you all for your love, your letters, and your emails.

Love,

Sister Sylvester

First Email From Houston

Sister Sylvester (right) and her trainer, Sister Garlick (left)
6/6/2013

Well everybody, I made it to Houston. I will say that I loved every minute of the MTC. I had so much fun and learned a ton. My testimony grew and was strengthened and I made a lot of really great friends that I miss a lot. 

We woke up at 1:30 am on Wednesday morning to do last minute packing and be to the bus at 3 am. Needless to say, after 2 1/1 hours of sleep and lots of traveling, we were all exhausted by the time we actually arrived in Houston. We stopped in Dallas and had a 3 hour layover. When our plane landed in Dallas, a man who was on our plane bought all of us missionaries breakfast at McDonalds. It was really good and so nice of him, especially because there were about 30 of us missionaries. On the 40 minute flight to Houston from Dallas, I sat by a girl named Asia and Elder Joquera sat on the other side of her. I started talking to her and she asked me why I was going to Houston, so I told her and we started talking about our religion and she was really interested. I didn't have a Book of Mormon to give her, so I gave her a pass along card instead, which she was very excited about and said that she would definitely look into the Book of Mormon. But then Elder Perkins, gave her a Book of Mormon and she started reading it right away. Elder Joquera and I taught her and answered some of her questions. We started teaching her the Restoration, but didn't teach her the whole thing because we wanted the Spirit to be there and it was hard on the plane for that to happen. Anyway, I really hope something happens with her. I really enjoyed it and it made me feel like a real missionary. It also got me really excited to be an actual missionary in the field to bring real investigators into the gospel. 

President and Sister Pingree met us at the Houston airport and we went to a church building by the mission home where we had lots of administrative training. It was pretty rough since we were all so tired and I'm pretty sure I ended up sleeping through half of it. We had dinner and a really quick fireside by President Pingree. He wanted to make it quick so that we could all get to bed and catch up on some sleep. He is really nice and I'm excited that he is our mission president. I like him a lot and I think we will get along well. Then all of us went to different places to stay the night. I ended up staying the night at the mission home with five other sisters, two of which were from my MTC district, so we just hung out together. We got to bed as soon as we could, which was still a little past 10:30 because none of us had been interviewed by President Pingree yet and we had to do that first. 

Thursday we woke up and had a delicious breakfast of french toast with buttermilk syrup. Then we went back to the church building, did some more training and met our trainers. My trainer is Sister Garlick and she is from Ogden, Utah. She is 20 and has only been out for 1 transfer (6 weeks), so she is almost as new as I am. She is super nice and outgoing and we get along really well. Of course she is still learning, so we are learning together and it is going pretty well so far. 

Right now what we are trying to do is visit members in the ward and get them to commit to a date to have somebody in there home for us to teach. It has been going well so far, but we will see in a month if anybody has any investigators for us. We also visited this older lady in our ward, Sister Ruhlman. I guess the missionaries have been visiting her regularly for years and they just go over there and talk to her so that she has somebody to talk to. We were over there for about 1 1/2 hours and it was one of the coolest conversations I have ever had. We talked about her family heirlooms she has and the 100-150 year old picture she has hanging over her fireplace; her chidlhood which included music and the debut of Elvis Presley, who she loves; She talked about how after the war (which she was 5 when the war started) really was a great time to live and everything was really nice; her travels to Europe and all of the cool things she saw there; and lots of other things. Everything we talked about was things I loved and so I was completely intrigued the whole time. 

Yesterday we visited a new convert, Marla, and her husband Gabriel. They are awesome and are moving soon, so we just wanted to make sure that everything was going well. We ended up going to a pond and feeding the fish and the turtles. It was so fun and really relaxing. 

My area is really great. We have two wards: the White Oak Ward and the Sam Houston 2nd Ward, which is a singles ward. All of the people are super awesome and take very good care of us. I think the singles ward will be my favorite though because they are my age and there are lots of return missionaries that are excited about what we are doing. 

I'm doing great and I am excited for this transfer and to start growing as a missionary. Thank you for all of your letters and emails and your prayers. 

Sister Sylvester and Sister Garlick at a member's home

Love,

Sister Sylvester