Tuesday, April 19, 2016

LA Temple Again!!!

LA Temple: this week we went to the temple, we had MLC at the visitor’s center with our mission president and his wife. It was awesome! Oh and we drove by Beverly Hills, you know I probably showed up in one of the episodes of the housewives of Beverly Hills Jk. While we were driving it was 3 Latinas and my comp and 3 gringos, and someone said "one day I'll live here” and I jokingly said” algun dia me gustaría LIMPIAR aquí” = “one day I'll clean here" lol. But overall the temple was amazing!  We have been working so hard with my comp and it's like getting really hard to find new peeps. But we actually have 2 people that are awesome. 1. Erica: we knocked on her door and she told us that she's been looking for a church where she can feel the spirit, so we saw her this week and taught her the restoration and she liked it, and we invited her to get baptized and she said maybe, if she learns more. But she said her husband is okay with her learning because he is Catholic but doesn't go to church so he said if she likes it he will try to learn too. So yay! 2. Carlos he has been taught before and wants to keep learning, he’s kind of mad with God because a lot of special people have died in his life and he feels like God is punishing him. He is awesome though we invited him to get baptized and he said yes!!!! So let's see what happens. Have a great week everyone. 


Hermana Escalante

                                                                             




This week we did a lot of service, but it was worth it!


Hello Everyone!

This week we did a lot of service, but it was worth it! 1. This Hermana from our ward needed help cleaning her home, so we went and helped her clean but ended up cleaning her bathroom that
had a lot of junk and it was fun. She's the sweetest and fed us "caldo de Pollo" cause it was raining, it's a Latino thing. #2 we went to moose lodge and we pretty much are waitresses there, its fun!! We go every Friday and volunteer, they pretty much love us. It's fun to serve food to them and just talk about what we do as missionaries, and they give us “free food". It's so good. My comp really likes to eat there Lol. #3 MORMON HELPING HANDS!!! We went around members homes to pick up donations for the D.I and it was fun, it was a rainy day but so worth it. We had so much fun together and we ate "tortas" afterwards. This week we were pretty much very busy but we are also trying to find new people. It was raining and it was Freaking HOT, so a lot of people didn't want to talk to us. Lame!!  We are still finding new people and we actually found this lady while knocking doors who said she's looking for a church where she could feel the spirit, and we told her that she should try ours, she said yes. So we will see what happens, her name is Erika and she has a family so vamos a ver qué pasa con ellos. Well tomorrow we're going to the TEMPLE!!!!!!! I've never been more excited........ You have no idea how much I love the temple. Have a great week, take care.

Hermana Escalante

                                                                                      


Sunday, April 10, 2016

We had 21 lessons this week!!


HELLO EVERYONE!!

This week was de locos, Pero todo bien.
General Conference was amazing, we had 3 investigators who came! Whoohoo. The talks from the apostles and our beloved prophet just helped me see that heavenly father still wants us to improve and hears and answers our prayers. I'm not going to talk about all the ones I liked because that's going to take the whole day, but all I want to say is that I felt the spirit so strong, and I can't wait to read them again. We had 21 lessons this week, and it's been hard finding new people but my companion and I have set the goal to find more and I know we will, but oh gosh we have the best investigators so far. We have 2 people on PAROLE, but we asked our leaders and they said that they can get baptized!!! But they just need to get interviewed by someone who has higher authority.  So we are so excited for that, we love them. Well I will be short this week but I'm so grateful to be serving my Heavenly Father, one of my goals this week is to understand more of the gospel and really apply the things I learned in conference. Funny story this week, I'm being so lazy at writing right now so I just asked my comp to send me her side of the story of what happened to us last night here it goes: So last night we were looking for a potential but saw a guy on the street so we contacted him and he wasn't interested but as we said goodbye he said, "but hey if you ever twist your ankle or anything like that, let me know, because I know all about that stuff" and so hermana escalante said, actually I twisted my ankle two weeks ago exercising so he said, come in come in, and so we went into his house (don't worry, we made sure a woman was there) and he had hermana escalante lay on this bed and he put some cream on her ankle and started massaging it and then just cracking it and popping it into place! Hahaha then he pretty much cracked her whole body! Then he asked me if I needed anything and so I said, "Well my back has been hurting a little bit" and so he had me lay on the bed and literally cracked my whole body and then started swinging my arms around in circles and totally popped my left arm into the socket and it felt so weird! (Ok keep in mind this is an old Mexican man with a beer belly and a farmers tan wearing a California bro tank tucked in) so yeah that was our little experience at the "chiropractor." I'm sorry, if you are appalled by this story, but this is just a typical day in good old El Monte!

Goodbye everyone!! 


Love,


Hermana Crystel Escalante





                                                                         

Monday, March 28, 2016

Happy Easter 2016!



Hello Everyone!! HAPPY EASTER!!!!!! Well this week may have been short, but first let me tell ya about our little experience this week with prayer. So as we were biking home we see this man shouting at someone In his car and it happened to be his daughter who was like 2 years old and somehow he had forgotten his key inside and when he was about to get the baby out, the car was locked, and all of the doors along with the baby girl inside. So here we are trying to help this man trying to figure out how to open the doors and he was so worried, and his wife comes and is yelling at him and asking him how everything happened and she was telling the baby girl to pull the door handle from inside and the baby of course didn't know what they were saying so I told the lady have faith, God will help. My comp and I decided to say a prayer and we told them we would say a prayer and they were like " yeah, sure" and as soon as we said amen the baby touched some button that unlocked all of the doors. We were all shocked and happy and the mother stated “all we needed was faith" and they just THANKED us  and they were crying of joy and we hugged the lady and told her that the lord hears and answers our prayers when we have faith, It really works y'all haha. What a great experience! Now with our investigators: Ricardo #1 (the old man) we were teaching about Tithing and he tells us that he doesn't agree with it and that he doesn't have enough money to pay😒 so he may not get baptized this Saturday "Nooooo". But hopefully everything works out this week and he does. Pray he changes his mind about tithing and pays it, that way he can get baptized!!!! Ricardo #2 He’s amazing. So we gave him a date and he told us he is on parole :( so it may take a while until he gets baptized like in May or so but he is so prepared and he just wants to change and be better. He came to church and he likes it and he just said that he wants to surround himself with positive people and good people that will help him be happy, because that's all he wants, just to be happy yay he’s the best! My comp and I just love him and want to help him. We are finding more people and we want to improve in finding more who are wanting to take that step of baptism. And I know Heavenly Father is blessing us little by little. Well this Saturday is transfer calls, so we'll see who leaves or stays. I hope my comp and I stay because I have so much to learn from her. She's da best. She always shows me how to be charitable and that's a Christ like attribute I want to improve on. Okay, take care y'all and have a great week. 🌿Don't forget to pray and read your scriptures every day!!!

Mucho Amor,


Hermana Crystel Escalante
🕊








Monday, March 21, 2016

Another investigator named Ricardo!


HELLO EVERYONE!!! Como estan!??
This week was a busy week as well. Man I never thought we would have so many meetings as a sister training leader. I can honestly say I'm exhausted, but I like staying busy it makes me forget that I go home
in 6 months. That's a good thing right!? Also I got to go on exchanges with my (mission daughter) Hermana Scott. Oh man how much I love that girl and miss her. We pretty much went to their area and helped them and we bused and walked, and it was freaking HOT. It reminded us of the summer days of 109 degrees of sweat and thirst back in Azusa. It was fun though and we talked about the good old days in Azusa. Oh how I miss my first area and the peeps. I'm not sure if I already said this but our investigator (RICARDO) that Hermana Murdock and I found is getting baptized on APRIL 3rd. We are so excited, he is so ready. A really cool miracle happened this week, one of our potential investigator (Jessica) that we visited when I first came, but was not progressing at all called us one night and asked us why we had stopped visiting her and we explained, that she wasn't progressing or keeping her commitments, so she asked us to go to her home, cause she needed us. So we went to her home and she was so happy and she said that she could feel the bad things going away from her home when we went in, lol but she actually introduced us to her brother (Ricardo) lol another Ricardo. And he had tattoos everywhere and looked like he needed help. He talked to us how he went to the Catholic Church and everyone was talking crap about him and stuff and how they just want their money. Lol and he said "I'm looking for a better church" and wants to repent and start over. So we talked about repentance and our purpose as missionaries. He wanted to check our church, so we had a church tour, but when he came he didn't bring another girl with him, and we couldn't proceed with the tour if there wasn't another girl, so he was like "hold up" I'll go bring someone. So he went back home, brought his niece and a baby haha and he came back to church. hahaha he said satisfied!?? Lol oh man he’s a especial one. But we invited him to get baptized and he said yes!!!! And he also came to church on Sunday and I'm not sure if he liked it because some Chinese person from the stake came and spoke really broken English and he was falling asleep so, we will see what happens this week. Haha but his baptismal date is for April 17th and he said that he does want to become a better person. Yay!! This week I know that it will be a better one, little by little we are finding more people who are ready to get baptized. One of the things I want to do better as a missionary is to apply everything I learn in my studies, I feel like every day we study as missionaries but we forget during the day of the things that we studied. So I want to improve on that. This week I want to remember more what Jesus Christ did for me and all of us, he is a special person in my life and I can testify that he lives, and that he stands at the head of this church guiding us. I know that the atonement can help us in our hard times, Jesus Christ is the only one who understands us and can heal us from everything we've done. I invite you all to ponder on the things that the savior has done for you. Have a great week everyone..

CHAO,
Hermana Crystel Escalante
🕊

                                                                 


Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Oh my goodness so many things happened this week!


Hello everyone!

Oh my goodness so many things happened this week. On Tuesday we had exchanges with sister Hobbs and Olsen and they were the cutest. Sister Hobbs is from New Zealand and she has the cutest accent. It was fun doing exchanges with them we found 5 new investigators.
On Wednesday: we had MLC and they broke our legs, so our mission president gave us new rules and we were very surprised and not too happy. The next day we would have to present the new rules to the whole mission in zone meeting. But it was my first MLC and it was amazing!!! Sister Villanueva told us that in order to help the sisters we need to help ourselves first, and that’s something I want to do better in order to help our sisters. On Thursday we had zone meeting, we had to teach in 3 zone meetings and tell them the new rules, and first two took it well we talked about obedience and faith and how we need to be obedient and follow the mission rules. The third meeting our mission president showed up and we taught again, but by the time we said the new rules everyone got really upset and started asking a lot of questions to our president and he got a little mad and was very bold and stated that they need to remember why they are here. Idk but a lot of changes are starting to happen in our mission, we are doing so good that we need to change in order to see miracles. On Friday: we had exchanges with Sister Shaw and Argueta (my old comp) and it was really good. We went to their area and helped them find people, but it was kind of hard to find because it started to RAIN. It was hard to work because we were soaking wet, but I'm happy that I got to spend some time with my old comp she's the best and a really good missionary. On Saturday: Elder Hamula came and we had another MLC!!!!! He talked to us the leaders and he pretty much broke our Legs too, he told us how we need to be converted to the gospel and stop being prideful and to change and repent. He's awesome!! Sunday: CHURCH, our investigator came (Ricardo) he is progressing and has a baptism date for April 3rd he is so excited! Sister Murdock and I found him. We had 20 lessons! It was a really busy week and I'm soooooo tired, my body hurts but I'm so happy to feel this way because I want to work hard. Something I read this week that my father asked me to read was the talk "bearing our burdens with ease" it says how we need to have loads in our life in order to be happy" I love that, because the lord gives me trials but I always learn from them because I know he already went through them, and in him I can find strength. Have a great week everyone!!!!


CHAO.
                                                                   


The dog wanted to meet her.
           

Sunday, March 13, 2016

ISAAC GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!


Hello everyone!!!

This week was awesome, first of all ISAAC GOT BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!! A lot of things happened this week, we've been so busy with exchanges, lessons, meetings etc… Life as a sister training leader can be hard but I'm so happy to be working in this area, and with the sisters. We are working so hard and we have someone on a date and progressing. But a lot of cool things happened this week first one on Tuesday we received a call that we needed to exchange our car, so as we park at the mission office we see this beautiful silver 2016 Corolla and our faces light up
😳 so as we go in, they tell us how would you like to exchange your car to a 2016 Corolla!? Um, YES PLEASE. We got a brand new car with only 22 miles on it, we were so excited. We rolled the windows down, singing as loud as we could "I'm a child of God" haha showing off our brand new car. Lol fun times! Wednesday my old comp (Her. Ferguson) calls me saying that I can go to Isaacs’s baptism, that our mission president gave me permission to go. Isaac was a referral from the arroyo area sisters, Hermana Ferguson and I taught him until I left and Isaac was so ready for baptism, and the date was for March 4th but I left the area and I was so sad but Hermana Ferguson told me that Isaac went up to our mission president during stake conference and told him that he wanted me to go to the baptism on Friday. So president Villanueva gave me special permission and I went on Friday to Glendale to his baptism and I got to see him and I also got to give a talk about the Holy Ghost and it was a very spiritual  moment, Isaac was so happy to see me and I was so happy he finally got baptized. This is baptism #2 for me. I'm so happy that heavenly father blessed me with a baptism. Another funny thing that happened Friday was that I made my year mark!!!!!!! It was very cool to have hit my year mark and have my investigator get baptized on that same day.  Best gift ever!! I have 6 MONTHS LEFT, that's scary. I'm so thankful for this gospel and how much the lord is blessing me every day. My faith is growing little by little and the love I have for my savior. Also, we got to go on exchanges with the Arcadia sisters (Dunn, and Barney) I was with sister Barney and she's such a great missionary, I learned how to always have charity, and just love everyone no matter what. My goal this week is to study more of "humility" I feel like little by little I've become more humble and it's pretty much a Christ like attribute I want to achieve. Also on Saturday all of the missionaries in our mission got together because "Gladys knight" is coming to our mission and they said it's probably going to be one of the best firesides presentations ever. Gladys knight is the one who leads the choir and she will bear her testimony of why she become a Mormon, even though she grew up Baptist. We are so excited for that and to be able to take our investigators. It was so good seeing all of the other missionaries that I know, we hardly ever get together as a mission so Saturday was a good day. This week is going to be soo busy we have MLC twice and zone meeting and exchanges. I hope everyone has a great week, GO VISIT PEOPLE WITH THE MISSIONARIES.

Love,
🌬Hermana Crystel Escalante

                                                                                


Isaac got baptized.

They got a new car.

Monday, February 22, 2016

I love El Monte!!


HELLO EVERYONE!!!!!

This week was a really good week. We had 19 lessons
(hands clapping) for my first week in El Monte!!! We also found 5 new investigators, and we had 2 investigators that we started teaching when I first got here and they came to church, Yay.  Sooo being a sister training leader is not as bad as I thought, wait tomorrow we have exchanges ahhhhh I'm scared but ready. Well the different thing about exchanges now is that both of the sisters come to our area so tomorrow we'll have so many lessons. And hopefully we find more people. I love El Monte, the ward is the best!!!!!!!! Finally a really good ward. We had a baptism in this area already so our goal is two more baptisms, and we actually found a family of 4: Filberta (mom), Juan (son), Fabian (son), Vanessa (daughter) they're the best and we invited them to get baptized and they all said yes. The problem is the husband he is Catholic but doesn't really practice it so we'll see what happens. I'm so excited to be in this area, there are sooooo many Latinos here. I love it. Something I've been trying to do different is to be more positive, and my comp is good at that. I love her. We get along Sooo well, and we've been working so hard this week. I Love it! So everyone thinks I'm from the Middle East here, it's so funny to me and I'm writing down every country they guess I'm from, Haha one person said India and another Pakistan, Egypt It's so funny and they think my comp is from Argentina. Haha well this week I've been thinking how faith is so important in everything we do. This week my key got stuck to my bike lock and we literally had to bike to a lesson and it wasn't working!!! It was stuck and we tried to move the key around for the key to come out but it wasn't coming out and it was so annoying and it was raining😩  ugh I was getting frustrated and finally I told my comp I want to say a prayer for God to help us and I said it, as soon as I said please let us have faith that this key will come out of the lock to continue with the work. As soon as I said amen my comp turned the key and it UNLOCKED, holy cow we were soooo happy and I said " thank you soooo much Heavenly Father". We need to always have faith, we can increase our faith by doing the small and simple things. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Have a great week everyone. Work hard

Con Amor,


Hermana Escalante

I've been out for 11 months now!


Hello everyone!!!!! I've been out for 11 months now 😱😱. This week went by really fast, and now I feel like my mission is going by soooo fast.  But I love being a missionary, one of the things I learned from zone meeting this week is in order to see changes in our areas we need to start repenting everyday and be more obedient. Our goal as a mission is to baptize monthly and it's so hard but if we have that goal and trust in the lord he for sure will help us. Well I hope everyone is doing well. Work hard y'all. A talk I literally recommend everyone to read is by D. Todd Cristofferson it's called: "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten" good talk.
Have a great week everyone!!!
Hermana Escalante

Los Angeles, CA

Monday, January 25, 2016

Baptism


Hello everyone, 😁

the lord is blessing us with a baptism on
February 7th, his name is Manuel Chavez and he is Sooo ready for baptism. We are so excited, he has been taught in the past but literally couldn't get
baptized in the past 2 times because something terrible would always happen. The last two times when he was taught by old missionaries, his 2 brothers died and he got really discouraged and didn't get baptized and the missionaries dropped him for like 8 months. Nobody contacted him UNTILLLL we found him on December and he told us to come back January, he stated that he loves Mormons Sooo much, said good things about us and he just wants to scream and tell everyone  on the street " HE IS MORMON" after he gets baptized Haha I love him. He is the best and is ready to get baptized. We told him he needs to come 3 times again to church and he was like " I'll do it" and he literally did it, he came yesterday to church and my comp and I were so happy to see him there and he said I will never miss church. Our leaders have been telling us that "We Teach repentance and baptize converts" meaning that we don't baptize just to baptize, we teach repentance so that the person may really convert to the gospel, there are a lot of missionaries that baptized a lot but their investigators don't stay in church and our leaders don’t want us to do that. They want the investigators to understand the atonement and really have that change of heart. I want to work on that. I know as I keep being obedient the lord will bless me with more baptisms and is already doing it. We have to be obedient In order to see the blessings. :) we are working as hard as possible. I love being a missionary especially when you see people change. I know God lives, I know that Jesus is the Christ, our savior and redeemer. I know that only through repentance we can feel Gods love more and we can be cleansed.  I read a talk this week it was by President Russell M. Nelson, it's Sooo good it's called " becoming true millennials" I recommend y'all to read it. Well good luck this week and work hard folks. More blessings are In Store for us from our Heavenly Father if we are obedient.

Love, Hermana Escalante

Monday, January 18, 2016

Sick with a cold!!

So this week I got really sick with a cold my voice changed and now I sound like a MAN. It was hard to work as much but we had to anyway (more blessings right!?). The elders gave me a blessing and hours later I felt kind of better and I told my comp. "man those pills work" she was like " you mean the blessing!?" I was like "yeah that too"  haha it did work though. Anyway, we saw some small miracles this week: our investigator Glenda has a BOYFRIEND, great!! She never told us about him, so now they are living together so that's going to be hard for her to get baptized. We love her so much but she said that they'll get married soon. Hopefully. Also, Yoselin our other investigator is progressing a lot, she told us that she has been reading her scriptures and praying that little by little she's understanding and feeling the SPIRIT, yay. At first she couldn't feel like she was getting an answer, but she happily told us that she is understanding those feelings of the spirit. We love her so much and it's hard now to see her because she's back at school but we’re going to leave her some homework to do during the week that way she doesn't escape from us. :) Well not a ton happened this week so hopefully this new week is better. Have a great one everyone.
Love,

Hermana Escalante (Escy)



Sunday, January 17, 2016

We should all be like Nephi!


Hello everyone!!!

So this week has been crazy we had 16 lessons and that's way good because it has been raining here so I'm happy for that. Not a lot of cool things this week but we had a zone meeting and our mission President wants us to be more obedient. So actually I was reading a talk about obedience, and one of the things it said is “that as missionaries we tend to change our behavior not our nature” and our behavior way of thinking is that you do it because YOU HAVE to wake up at 6:30 am every day or we do it because it's a rule. If we don’t change our behavior we will go home the same person we were before the mission, but when we change our nature we will want to do it because we love the lord. And it becomes part of who we are. Pretty much giving you're all to the lord. I was thinking about that throughout this week and how it's important to do the small and simple things like obey the rules, it's so simple and like he says if we do it the lord blesses us more. I want more blessings. To me is as simple as this "keeping the commandments "the lord tells us simply to keep them. President Monson said God’s commandments or (MISSION RULES) are not given to frustrate us or to become obstacles to our happiness. Just the opposite is true. He who created us and who loves us perfectly knows just how we need to live our lives in order to obtain the greatest happiness possible. He has provided us with guidelines which, if we follow them, will see us safely through this often treacherous mortal journey. And He understands that when we keep the commandments (MISSION RULES) our lives will be happier, more fulfilling, and less complicated. Our challenges and problems will be easier to bear, and we will receive His promised blessings. But while He gives us laws and commandments, He also allows us to choose whether to accept them or to reject them. Our decisions in this regard will determine our destiny. In order to see the baptisms we need to obey the rules and another key that he gives us is faith, without faith we cannot see the help of the lord. We cannot expect the lord to bless us if we don't have faith and act I know as we keep the commandments, the Lords promise is that we will have eternal life and our lives will be better and happier.  We should all be like Nephi when he said. "I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them. I know as we do obey the small and simple rules and commandments we will feel Gods love and we will become more like his son Jesus Christ. Have
a great week y'all.

Love,
Sister Escalante
During Christmas

They got their nails done.



Monday, January 4, 2016

Holy cow today is my 10 month mark!


Holy cow so today is my 10 month mark, and is going by so fast but I’m so grateful to be here! So this week we made 4 baptismal dates and we are so excited, 3 baptisms for January and 1 for February. The lord has been blessing us so much and I’m thankful for that. We had transfer calls on Saturday and I stayed one more time here in Fletcher with my companion Hermana Ferguson (same amazing companion) I’m so excited to work even harder this transfer with her. The lord has been blessing us so much and every day we have a miracle, it’s great. One of my goals for these few last months is to be more obedient, I am a pretty obedient missionary now (Not to brag) but I know the lord blesses us when we are more obedient and we forget ourselves and get to work. I know obedience brings blessings and I know heavenly father will bless me even more if I give all that I have to him. I’m so grateful for this gospel, it has blessed me so much and I love being a missionary. I love smiling and bearing my testimony that this is the only true church on earth today and that Joseph Smith restored this gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ back on earth. I love the scriptures, they are my guide and they always help me to be in a good mood and to do better. I know that as we read them we will feel closer to our Father in Heaven and we will know how to prepare to go back to him. In one of our lessons with our investigator Yoselinne, we talked about the plan of salvation (man you could feel the spirit so strong with her) the Lord had been preparing her and she is ready to get baptized she loves to learn and every time I testify of the gospel to her I just want to cry because I know that heavenly father wants us to go back to him and we have to do everything we can to go back to him because we promised him we would. I hope everyone has a great week, and work hard y’all. Read your scriptures, say your prayers, y’all know the rest. Love you all!