Sister McKenzie Tate

Hola amigos!!  This week we got transfer news and found out I'm leaving Chino tomorrow! So so sad to leave this area and my companion because it has been amazing :( but all good things must come to an end, right? I have loved all the members, investigators and missionaries in Chino and am so grateful for the opportunity I've had to meet and learn from each one of them. I'm also so sad to be done training Hermana Rawlings, but I know she is going to keep killing it here in Chino! I feel so lucky to have been her companion and know she is one of the reasons I was reassigned to this mission. My new area is in Arcadia close to the mission offices and is called El Monte Arcadia! I have also been called as a Sister Training Leader!! I'm super pumped to get to meet and work with more missionaries and experience a different part of the mission!   It was a pretty good week to finish up my time in Chino! We had more member visits and actually got to eat with some of them in perso...

  Hey y'all!!  This week was crazy!! A ton happened so no worries if you want to just skip to the pics at the bottom haha :)  We had a 2 day zoom mission conference this week that was altogether about 8 hours. Haha kinda long to sit through, but it was actually really really motivating and helped me learn and see a lot of ways that I can improve and be a better disciple of Jesus Christ! We hosted a "virtual mission tour" for our area president Kevin Pearson so he gave the majority of the trainings! It was really cool because he said a lot of things that I needed to hear and I received a lot of ideas and inspiration for our investigators and how we can help them progress!! Then after 20 missionaries were chosen to be interviewed by him one on one over zoom and I was chosen! Even though I was nervous at first to be interviewed by a General Authority, he was very nice and encouraging! Turns out he knows my Grandpa in Samoa very well as he had many church assignments to Samoa...

  Hey hey hey!! Como estan todos? This week was pretty lit! We're actually on FIRE here in Cali!! Literally. Some might say even smoky. And ashy. Jk the fires aren't too bad, but definitely not something I'm used to. There is a big one near the mission office about 30 minutes away and we woke up on Wednesday and the sky was brown and and we couldn't see the sun. Crazy times!  We actually got to do real service this week!! Our stake decided to put on a food drive collection so we were in charge of going to all the member's houses to pick up the food. We got to meet more members in person, which is always fun and exciting. Our area is pretty big so we literally drove around for probably 3 hours getting food! Altogether our stake collected enough food to make 200 care packages for seniors!! It was pretty fun and nice to do something to help the community here  :) We also got to have more lessons with members in their homes this week!! Video and phone calls are great bu...

  Hola hola a todos!  This week was a little interesting to say the least. My companion got her wisdom teeth out last week and now I see why it is generally encouraged to have them out BEFORE the mission. Haha while she's been in recovery I have been flying solo working with the members, following up with our investigators, and teaching all the lessons over the phone. Haha I thought I would be used to it by now because that's basically what I had to do the first couple of weeks as a trainer while Hna Rawlings was still trying to learn Spanish, but this week was just a lot. I think companions are truly inspired for missionary work and just life in general because it lightens whatever load you are carrying to share it with another person :) Thankfully Hna Rawlings is feeling much better now so hopefully things will go back to normal this week!  But while I was kinda feeling overwhelmed and lonely in the work I read this talk by Elder Holland that really deepened my apprecia...

  What's up y'all!!  Another week down here in Southern California :) Our week was actually pretty awesome and I couldn't be happier or more grateful to be a missionary! We actually had some small miracles and random things happen this week so it went by pretty fast! First off we finally decided to stop teaching a lot of our people that weren't progressing in our teaching pool. Dropping people on my mission has always been a struggle for me because some people have SO MUCH potential and we develop really strong friendships with them. And obviously with COVID we can't go out and find new investigators just as easily as we did before to replace them. But when we stop teaching people who aren't ready, it can also be an act of faith. Faith that the Lord will provide us with new people to teach who ARE ready to change. And that's exactly what happened this week!  We received a self referral!! A couple of months ago when our mission first started putting ads out o...