Vestel, Lauren P

Hey! So I decided to log my week day by day so that I can see what my email looks like without me trying to remember the whole week.  I went to English class and I was able to apologize to them. They told me that they told me that because they had confidence in me and knew that I had a heart open enough to hear it. "Each of us has the choice to speak words of life or death" Francisco said. I've been pondering a lot about that sentence.  We ran into a lady that gave us the reference to a house that spoke Spanish. She found out that the husband came out and said he was not interested and so she felt embarrassed and kind of sad she couldn't be of help. But I shared a Scripture in Hebrews 6:10 "For God is not unrighteous, therefore he will not forget your work and labor of love, which ye have showed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister". And I testified that her effort has not gone unnoticed and that she was planting a good ...

Hey y'all, not going to lie it's just been a bad week. It's taken a toll on my mental health but thanks to the Lord, I am still here on the mission.  And just letting you know, I have been still trying to figure out how to process this week mentally, so much so that I rewrote this email. I said things I didn't mean to offend people by, I accidentally said something else to make people uncomfortable, and I just about decided to be that person that stopped talking for 4 years. And then later down the week my grandma passed away, and the guilt and stress just took me out a couple of times. The adversary has been taking me down from all sides, but "I'm still standing" Later I found out that my habits that I used to have of (hiding behind my companion) have come back and it's going to be a difficult time gaining trust with our friends and the ward if I keep doing the same thing. That's my next goal once I get back to normal again.  I've had trouble ...

Hello! 100 days left! That's so fast, time should slow down a little bit.  Zone conference was a really good experience. They chose to do a specific chapter in the new Preach my Gospel about "Seek and Rely on the Spirit" and my favorite part was a message that Sister Holley gave about name calling and it reminded me of a Scripture in Matthew 13:55 where Jesus's hometown just sees him as the "Carpenter's son". Because of that label, they couldn't really see him as the Savior. And it made me realize how important it is not to judge someone by a small moment of your life, including yourself. We have to see others by their potential because if not, we are rejecting their opportunity to progress, to repent, or to become one with Jesus Christ.  At the beginning of the Zone Conference there was this man from Africa who shared his conversion story  and immediately I was grinning and so excited. At the end of his story President Holley asked us missionaries i...

I have an opinion that this area is the Celestial kingdom when it comes to missionary work. I LOVE it here!!  We were at this lesson with a family that we are trying to gain her trust so that she would be more open to hearing the gospel again (because she had a really bad experience with elders before) and her kid is named Oliver and he totally made me excited to have a family one day. This 3 year old is so cute and was playing cars on my shoulder.  It's kind of funny, a lot of our friends come to church, but they are busy to meet us after church! But It looked like there are a couple that are ready to be baptized, but we have a couple of things to do before then.  We has 5 stake meetings and saw a lot of English companionships. It is awesome! One was planning a baseball team and said we can bring our Venesuelan friends (they LOVE baseball/softball).  I can see that I need to get myself out there and remember names because I am most likely going to lead this area nex...