Another Email from Hermana Cazier

Hey all! This is uncharacteristic of me, I know, but I actually don't have much to say this week. It was a pretty slow week. Lots of cancellations. Facebook work is slow and somewhat discouraging.

We did have a lesson with our friend Tom who kind of goes back and forth between sounding pretty interested and not responding to our texts for days. He agreed to read the Book of Mormon though. Maybe he will.

We also had an awesome lesson with our one investigator who is actually excited about learning more. We answered her questions about the 116 pages and we're planning on teaching her the Plan of Salvation this week!

I spoke in Sacrament meeting yesterday. That was fun. I actually enjoy speaking in Sacrament meeting as long as I come prepared, and I came mostly prepared. We got asked to speak on Friday night and the bishopric member asking us apologized that it was so late notice. But that's not even bad cuz no one prepares until the night before anyway, right? And who should be more prepared to teach on short notice than the missionaries, right? My mom texted me after I finished and said she was gonna use something I said in my talk in her lesson, so I must have said something right. :)

We got to teach mission prep and that was fun as it always is. And we had lots of member lessons this week. We have such an awesome ward and I love our members so much. Even on days when one of them cancels coming to a lesson with us last minute and we have to text 20 people... someone always pulls through for us. The Sister who came with us to our lesson with Tom has a ton of kids, works full time, just got back from vacation, and was the other speaker in Sacrament as well as the Relief Society teacher. But she made time to come to a lesson with us. Wow. That's the kind of dedicated member I want to be when I'm grown up!

Here's something that stood out to me in my study this week. I read President Nelson's spiritual momentum talk again. It is filled with words of wisdom, but this was a specific line I liked: "When Satan came tempting Moses, he detected the deception because he had just had a face-to-face interaction with God." In our lives, we're better able to recognize and withstand temptation and evil when we are having interactions with God. When we fill our lives, hearts, spirits, and minds with spiritual nourishment, we'll never have to look at something from Satan twice. When you're in a position of spiritual strength, the devil may send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, but it shall have no power over you to drag you down because of the Rock upon which ye are built. (Helaman 5:12)

Have an awesome week! Read the Book of Mormon every day! If you do that second suggestion the first one will happen automatically! I love you all!

Hermana Cazier

1-2 some selfies

3. I got to play an electric violin!

4. we usually take pictures with members after lessons. This one makes me laugh. Grandma Anderson is in the picture, you just have to look closely :)

5. and this picture

Senior Trip Day 6 - Homeward Bound

Today was all about the car. We got up by 8 and Joanna took all the food out and you could eat anything you wanted. Then we packed and cleaned. It took us a while, but not as long as it could have. The kids did a great job. There was sweeping and garbages out. Oscar seemed to have the most stuff scattered around, but we got everyone in the car before 10. Goodbye amazing beach house. It has been so fun. What a great vacation.

Oh! The skittles. The girls had been leaving skittles all over the place, mainly in the boys area. The guys would find them on their pillows, in their shoes, and balanced in strange places. I think Hannah picked up a whole bunch and offered them to the boys. Weirdly, they declined. Who doesn't like a warm skittle?

Tyler decided to drive. Sort of to be away from everyone. But also because he’s good at it. I sat in front and honestly was pretty bored. I can’t hear what is going on back there or comment. I listened to a lot of my audio book and made sure Tyler was going the right way. I took a detour that saved us 2 hours supposedly. Nice. I don’t need extra hours in the car.  

Tyler drove a long way. We stopped briefly but the kids didn’t want to eat out for lunch. They decided to snack in the car and then eat a bigger meal later. So we trekked along some more.

We stopped for dinner in St. George. The kids chose Chuck-a-Rama. Everyone was happy to eat and maybe to sit. We had been sitting a lot. Katie even ran into someone she knew...what are the chances? She had a friend show up named Ranse. Random that he would be there, but super cool that they ran into each other.

The last leg of the trip, Joanna drove. And we finally arrived back where we started. Funny how that works. We arrived back in town at 10:30 pm. Robyn picked us up and although all the kids were in bed, we gave kisses all around and called it the Best Senior Trip Ever. (It's actually the only Senior Trip I've been on, and that makes it the best!)

The Work is Full of Miracles

Another awesome week!! Happy Easter everyone! Christ the Lord is risen!!

Definitely the coolest thing this week was when we fasted that the people we were teaching would come to church. And three inactive families and two nonmembers came! It was so awesome! Sitting in Sacrament meeting and watching them walk in one after another was so awesome! Fasting is powerful. One of the nonmembers who came was Tabitha, who we put on date to get baptized last week. She hasn't been to church in months. But when she came yesterday, about 15 minutes late, another girl in the ward about her age ran to the door to greet her! It was so heartwarming to see members reaching out to visitors to make them feel like they can come and see and come and stay! 

Another miracle story happened with Betty. About a month ago Betty referred herself, and even though we keep trying, we had never met her. She lives in this sketchy trailer park, and apparently the landlord freaks out if anyone has "church people" over. The first two times we tried, the timing just ended up being really weird and other people were near her door when we walked up, so both times they told Betty we were here and she told them to tell us she didn't want visitors. So we hadn't actually seen her, but we had been texting her. Her texts go back and forth between bring very depressing and suicidal and talking about how much she wants to meet with us because she knows Jesus is the only person who can pull her out of it. So we didn't want to give up on her.

Saturday night we were near Betty's house and there were two options of people we could visit. Betty or a different inactive family. We didn't have a ton of time so we talked about which one we should go to. And all of us were kinda thinking, do we really want to go back to that sketchy trailer park in the dark? And I opened my mouth but what came out was, "I really think we should go visit Betty." I gave like three reasons too, that were not in my head until I opened my mouth. So we went and visited Betty, and we actually got to meet her! We prayed with her and set up a time to meet with her again at the diner across the street so that she won't get in trouble when we teach her.

Also we were teaching this one lady named Sarah and we told her about the Book of Mormon and she was like, "I don't know about this book." Then Sister Adams (who's been out in the field for a week and a half) bore probably the most powerful testimony I have ever heard about the truth of the Book of Mormon! The Spirit was so strong. When she finished, she invited Sarah to read the Book of Mormon and she said yes. It was such a cool moment! She's going out of town for a week and a half but hopefully we'll be able to continue teaching her when she gets back.

As for fun things that happened this week, we played Settlers of Catan, put out a fire outside our apartment, and had a Crack Off. My family does a Crack Off every year. It's a big competition where we roll hardboiled eggs together. Only one cracks each time, so we have this whole double elimination bracket and we do it every year. I convinced the Sisters in my zone to do it and we had a great time cracking eggs. I happened to win (clearly because I've been practicing my egg rolling skills my whole life 😉). We took a video and I haven't watched it yet but it's probably terrible quality. I'll attach it though. We'll see if it works cuz it's like 6 minutes long. (Don't get excited...I didn't include it.)

Have a great week everyone! Don't forget how true the gospel is and how much I love all of you!

Hermana Cazier

pics

I sucked at taking pictures this week so I just have a few with members and a selfie we took with some dinosaurs. There are a bunch of random metal sculptures of dinosaurs and bigfoots out in this one part of our area and I want to get more pictures with them eventually.

Make Your Doorjams Shake

The work is moving forward here! Our schedule continues to be impossibly full. There are not enough hours in the day to do everything!

We have a whiteboard that we plan for the week on and on it we always put "our big people", the people we are teaching or are close to teaching. When I got here, there were four. Now there are twelve! It's so awesome to see how the work is moving forward and how I am a part of it!

We had a miracle lesson the other day! My comps met Britney in the park while I was on exchanges with another Sister. Then we went back to the park to talk with her. We didn't even have a lesson plan—the plan was just to teach her something about the gospel. But as soon as we brought up religion, she had a ton of questions! We taught her the Word of Wisdom, the Plan of Salvation, and the Restoration. In that order. It was an awesome conversation. We gave her a Book of Mormon and we're gonna meet with her again tomorrow!

We also put Tabitha on date!! She has decided to follow Christ's footsteps and be baptized on July 30th!! She's gonna get married to her fiance Michael on the 4th (my favorite holiday), then get baptized a couple Saturdays later!

This week Sister Brower and I have been training! We got our new missionary. Her name is Sister Adams. She's awesome. She's really tall and really ready to do the work. We are having a blast as a companionship and doing the work together!

When we were doing service for this lady named Dee the other day, we found a little lizard with a bright blue tail that Dee told us is called a skink. I think my mom had a skink when she was a kid... I totally didn't know what it was though. Apparently a lizard. Naturally I caught it... what else do you do with a lizard? We took some pictures, then like a half hour later, Sister Adams ended up with one in her pants somehow. 😂 She was like, "I think I have a bug in my pants," then pulled out a skink! It was like three times as big as the one we had caught earlier. Great story for her third day in the field.

Something cool I found in my study this week. I've been chugging along through the Libro de Mormon and I was actually getting to the point where I could read it relatively quickly and understand what I was reading. THEN I got to the Isaiah chapters and that went out the window. I'm going so slow now. But I am learning a lot. I'm understanding Isaiah WAY better than I ever have before in my life because I have the opportunity to read it in two languages and compare what it says. So here is something I found the other day.

2 Nephi 16:4 talks about how once you recognize the glory of God, the posts of your door will move. In Spanish it says that your doorjambs will shake. I think both of those have such a cool meaning! Once you realize that God is real, the posts of your door move. Literally the whole direction of your life changes. Your life may have been facing one direction, but when you realize the magnitude of Christ's sacrifice, your life can't be the same after that.

And your doorjambs shake! The things that are blocking you from progressing just crumble. A solid testimony of Christ helps you move past difficult roadblocks, no matter how big they seem. It was also cool to read this scripture the day after Tabitha agreed to get baptized. She wants to, but at the same time she is not completely sure it's what is right for her yet. And then I read this scripture saying that once you have a testimony of Christ's power, your doorjambs, the things stopping you from entering in through the door—in other words the strait gate (3 Nephi 13:14)—just lose their ability to hinder you!

You are guys all awesome. Keep building your testimonies on the Rock, our Savior who loves us and went through unimaginable agony for us. Read the Book of Mormon—it's the truest book in existence.

Con amor! 

Hermana Cazier

(There are no descriptions of the pictures this time around, but I think you can figure them out.)

Senior Trip Day 5 - The Boardwalk

This was an awesome day. We didn’t have anything planned so to speak. There were some ideas circulating. We knew we needed to take Eve and Izzy to the airport. Both of them had to return just a little early. AJ mentioned wanting to go down to the boardwalk, but we didn’t have anything set in stone. Breakfast was a little late because everyone was slow moving. Actually, some people got up ridiculously early to see the sunrise at the beach. Then those people went back to bed, which I don’t blame them. I was just happy to enjoy their pictures later.

Tyler was now very sick. He hardly slept and was up and down all night. He checked the local pharmacy and they opened at nine, so that was when he planned to go. I went with him. It was nice to walk over to the shops. The weather is always so nice and mild. Just lovely. It would have been a lovely walk with Tyler except that he was miserable. We found the pharmacy easily enough and got what he was looking for. Zyrtec-D which is a little stronger. You have to get it from the pharmacist and luckily, she had one more. Phew. And Tyler said it did help, but he spent most of the day in bed and away from everyone else. :( Later in the morning, the kids talked about walking to the shops. I had already gone, so I wanted to stay and play games. Christina had a hurt ankle, so she wasn’t going to go, so naturally Aaron stayed. :) And so did Izzy because she doesn’t love to walk around. The kids took off and June brought Isaac on the walk. (On the phone of course) I think by now all the guys have figured out that they are a thing. The girls all knew before the trip, but the boys are on board now too.

All the kids came back and something was niggling at my brain. We needed to take both Izzy and Eve to the airport in the afternoon. Joanna said the airport was really close, but I always thought the airport in LA was huge. They told me that the Long Beach airport is tiny and then it clicked in my brain. Eve’s mom probably doesn’t know about the Long Beach airport any more than I do. I texted her and asked and sure enough, Eve was leaving from the LAX airport. We dropped everything and went to the car since the drive there was much longer and now we had to drive BACK to drop Izzy off. The drive was 40 minutes through some crazy traffic and the LAX airport is ginormous. Jetblue was in terminal 5. (Salt Lake only has 2 terminals) I went inside with Eve so she could get a boarding pass. She broke her phone the first day, so she didn’t have anything to help her. I got her checked in and I walked Eve to security and then there was nothing left to do but pray she made it to her destination. I ran back to car and we took off for the other airport. The drive back was an hour because of traffic. We got a little confused and took a minor detour, but we got Izzy there in time. We dropped her at the curb since she was all checked in and the Long Beach airport is so tiny. There are only 11 gates total. Such a difference. All the kids had gone with us. I’m not sure they realized they would be in the car for over two hours, but it was nice that they came to say goodbye. We unloaded and made dinner. We wanted to eat early so we could go and do what we wanted in the evening, which turned out to be the boardwalk after all. Great suggestion, AJ. The girls were doing this strange hairdo where they rolled it up and it was super fluffy. But we struggled to get everyone looking good at the same time.

We decided to drive since it was at least four miles away. Not a great walking distance. Joanna drove us (thank you) and we found parking near the docks. There was a lot of beach to the left, but we headed right. We walked by all the boats docked. It was fun to read all the boat names. We stopped at one point and we saw mini rays in the water and a few fish.

At the end of the docks, we found the boardwalk. The sun was sinking and we walked out on a dock and took a lot of pictures. It was super fun. There was a lighthouse in the background that was really cool.

June leaned over the dock and caught a crab in the seaweed attached to the dock. So brave. Katie was the only one willing to hold it too!

It was honestly so fun to be with these kids. Sure, there aren't a lot of photos of the grown ups, since this was their trip, but we did get a couple mom photos on the dock.

Then we walked around and Hannah found this cute hat shop. We tried on hats for ages. Then we got some free flower crowns and we took even more pictures. It was dark by the time we were done. (Lots of photos were taken on this trip. In the hat shop alone, we took dozens. I finally found them on June's phone (not in shared photos—shame June.)

We saw a lock bridge and then found some cool lamps. Then this guy took us to Lamp heaven. It was a really cool turkish shop. The girls got matching anklets there. Super cute. They were quite the salesmen. They gave the girls free tiny eye charms and turkish delight. Most of them had never tried it.

From there, we walked around the boardwalk. All the lights looked so cool. It was such a lovely evening. I’m really sad that Tyler couldn’t be there.

We saw this guy playing crystal bowls. I missed some of his speech because I went up above to take a picture but I think he was talking about chakras or such. The sounds were really cool and he seemed pretty talented.

We saw a boat with Long Beach Institute on the side, so the kids took pictures there and made a little video plug for institute. Nice.

While there, I thought I heard a pop-it, but Aaron said he didn’t hear it. But when we got back off that dock, I heard it again. It took me a while to find the source, but it was totally Jackson. They bought some while we were getting anklets. Funny boys. They had a good time with those.

By that time, it was getting late and Hannah had some family coming to get her at 10. So we walked back. We had gone pretty far. We took a different way back and made good time. They are a great group to hang out with. The moon came up and it was huge! And orange because of the lights. It looked so cool. Almost a bit fake.

We got home just in time for Hannah. While she was gone, we did Come Follow Me. Seriously, what group of teenagers stops what they are doing for a spiritual moment. I am so inspired by these kids. We played 6Nimmt right before bed. It was crazy with 10 people. We used every card. We only got to play 3 rounds, but that’s all it took for someone to reach 66. I think Katie lost. I came in third right behind Christina and AJ was the big winner. Lucky I’d say. You never knew what you’d get stuck with. Then off to bed. It’s a long drive tomorrow. Tyler was still snoozing. Poor guy. I feel bad that he’s stuck in a car tomorrow.