April 7

Happy monday everyone! 

Wow! Was general conference this weekend not the best thing ever?! Holy cow. It was definitely better than Christmas..as a missionary. How lucky are we to be able to hear from living apostles and prophets! I never fully understood how much a blessing it is that we even have a prophet to lead and guide us in this day and age until I came on my mission. It was just the norm. But now my eyes have been opened to so many people who are lost and confused and have no idea where to turn or where there is safety in this evil world. But we do!! We have guidance and direction and know exactly what Heavenly Father wants us to hear!! Its truly amazing. I am so grateful for this gospel in my life. And only 6 more months until we get to hear it again! 

Good news! A and L are getting baptized this Saturday!!!!! We are so excited for them! They are truly incredible boys and are sure headed in the right direction. It has been such a blessing to be able to teach them and see their faith grow. 

This week we went to contact a referral we received. The person we were trying to contact didnt end up being home. We had plans to go somewhere else but the spirit prompted us to stay in the neighborhood. We knocked on a couple doors with no success. Then I had the prompting that someone in this neighborhood needed to go to Gladys Knight. We decided to say a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to lead us to the person that we needed to talk to. After a couple more doors of uninterested people we finally found the one. We knocked on this ladies door and told her who we were. She said she already belonged to a church and wasnt interested.. normal response. Then we asked if she knew who Gladys Knight was. She perked up and said yes. We then did the little spiel we were taught about how Gladys and her Grammy award winning gospel choir were coming to our church in Durham and that she could go. She was so excited. We told her we would come back the next day with a flyer. Well the next day we went back and she said "now, how many tickets am i allowed to get". we told her as many as she wanted. Turns out she had already talked to the pastor of her church and many members and she has a list of about 30 people that want to go. We were so excited and told her we would get her all the tickets they needed.  

We have another investigator T. We have been teaching her for about a month now. She is amazing and is supposed to be baptized at the end of the month. Well she suffers from chronic back pain. She was having a really rough week so we wanted to do something nice for her. She had told us a previous week that her favorite treat was ice cream from coldstone.. We thought bringing her favorite ice cream to her would be just what she needed. We knew she liked the cheesecake ice cream with nuts and graham crackers but there was one topping we could not remember. We thought about it for a good 10 minutes. Nothing came to mind. But we knew that with God all things are possible. We prayed that Heavenly Father would bring to our remembrance what the other topping was. Just like that as soon as we said amen.. Heath! It was heath bar. We were able to bring the ice cream over and brighten her day.

I share these two stories because it taught me a lesson this week. When we have faith, pray, and then act on those promptings miracles can happen!! I have seen it time and time again. Heavenly Father wants to lead and guide us. He wants us to be happy and to follow him. Those are 3 powerful resources in our lives. 

I LOVE THIS GOSPEL! I dont think I can say it enough.. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week!! 

love, 

Sister Judd 

March 31

Hello all!! 

Short letter this week.. Not much exciting has happened. 

Everyday but Tuesday we had a meeting, so that's where the week went. 

Thursday was so fun. We had a meeting to prepare us for the Gladys Knight fireside. All the missionaries in Raleigh, Apex, and Durham zones got go go. I got to catch up with all my friends and hear all the details of whats happening in Wake Forest/Falls Lake now. It was so great to see them all. And we are all counting down for this event! 

Saturday night was the wonderful Women's broadcast. If you didnt get to see it I would highly recommend watching it here. Well we had an extra added excitement to ours. All the women in the ward met at the church building for dinner and to watch the broadcast. It started at 8 pm (thank you eastern time). Well at about 9pm a tornado hit. Everyone's phones started going crazy with tornado warnings. But we all stayed calm and just continued on watching the conference. After the conference ended we were all told we needed to stay in the Chapel with all the doors closed until it was declared safe to leave. We all sat in there until about 10:15 PM. The tornado touched down just a couple blocks away from the church building. Everyone who was watching the radar on their smartphones said they saw it go directly around the church building. We know we were blessed and there wasnt a safer place we could have been! We made it home at about 10:30. Only an hour and a half after curfew. ha. 

A and L are still doing fabulous and we are so excited for them. This week we have been teaching them commandments and how obedience brings blessings. We taught them the Law of tithing and decided to do it with a little visual aide. We gave them both 10 cheerios and asked how much tithing of that would be. They knew 1 cheerio was 10% and paid it. Then we brought out some easter candy and told them they could buy it for 10 cheerios. That would mean they wouldnt be paying their tithing. It was quite the temptation. After thinking long and hard A decided it wasnt worth it and he wanted to pay his tithing. L on the other hand wanted the easter candy so badly that he took back his tithing and bought the candy.  Well we had just taught them and we know that when you keep the commandments and pay tithing the Lord will always bless you more than you could ever imagine. So out of our bag came a bag with a brownie and some easter candy in it. We gave it to A and said it was his reward for paying his tithing. The look on L's face was priceless. He knew he had made the wrong choice. Luckily there is always repentance and L wanted to repent for the wrong choice he had made. He paid his tithing and was granted the blessing of a brownie with easter candy. 

Sometimes in life we have to learn lessons the hard way. It is not always easy to have faith when we cant see what blessings Heavenly Father has in store for us.  May we always remain faithful and know that Heavenly Father will always bless us when we follow him. I know that to be true without a shadow of a doubt. 

Mosiah 2- 22: And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you.

              41: And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it.

Heavenly Promises are always kept. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth today! Nothing brings me more happiness than that! 

Thanks for all the love and support. 

Sister Judd 

March 24

Hello All!! 

It was a wonderful spring filled week. It was so nice to have the sun shining and 70 degree weather! 

Not much too exciting happened this week other than we had a lot of success. We were able to teach the most lessons this week than i have on my mission thus far so that was exciting. 

A and L are progressing so well. We have so much fun with them, they are my best friends. Included are 3 pictures from our week. We were able to take them to a baptismal service in a town about 30 minutes away. They were excited to see how it all was done and a good time was had by all. A also loves tennis but since they moved here they havent been able to find an instructor. Well luckily for me a nice member in the ward donated me her tennis racket so I now am teaching A and L how to play a little tennis. It has been so much fun. They are the cutest boys and have such bright futures ahead of them. They are so excited to be baptized on April 12! 

So my miracle story about B and EJ turned out to be not so good.. ha. We went back on Monday night to teach them and figured out that T, their mom, is an alcoholic. That night she had decided to drink a little too much and was not in the right state of mind. We still went in to teach the lesson but she kept interrupting with false doctrine and inappropriate comments. It turned into a fun game of "how can we take what she just said and turn it back into a gospel conversation". Well the lesson went fine and the kids were excited to learn. We left and just had to laugh the whole experience off. It was a lesson for the books. We had set up with them while we were there to come back on Thursday to teach them again. Well the next day we get a call from T.. We say hello and then she says "are you the girls that brought the books to my kids?" and we say yes and then she just went off.. Yelling at us that she could not believe that we just barged into her house and that she did not want any visitors last night and that she couldnt believe we went behind her back and made an appointment with her daughter to come back and she just didnt feel comfortable when we were at her house and that she never wants us to come back. We did our best to get in apology in before she hung the phone up. We were in a little bit of shock but just knew we couldnt take anything personally. She didnt remember anything from the lesson, including that we asked her when we could come back, and she is just not in the right state of mind. We feel so bad for the children because they were so excited to learn and progress. We are just grateful that they have a Book of Mormon to read and hopefully they can read and learn even without us coming. Other people from the ward are going to try and stop by to see if they can get in. We decided we are going to make her cookies and go to her house and see if she will accept our apology for "offending" her. Wish us luck! 

Transfers are tomorrow and both Sister Langarica and I are staying here in Garner. I was called to be a Sister Training Leader again. I am excited to work with the Sisters here in the Apex district and get to know them better. My good friend, Sister Franks, was also transferred to this zone from Wake Forest so I am excited to be able to go on exchange with her again. 

Other than that things are going well. The work of the Lord is exciting, and it is a real blessing to be a witness of miracles happening every single day. I love this Gospel, and I love the Lord! 

Thanks for all your love and support. 

Sister Judd 

***If you have a chance, send Emily a letter or card in the mail! She would LOVE to get some fun mail!!!***

Hello all! 

Sorry for the short email this week.

It was a slower week but had a wonderful ending! 

We were out last night with our Relief Society President. We went out with our relief society president last night and decided to do some stop by visits of less actives nobody has had contact with in a while. With over 300 less actives in the ward there are lots of these names. After a couple of homes with no luck we were led to the house of a woman named T. We were welcomed right in and began talking with her. 3 children then came out from a back room and sat in on our discussion. It turns out that her 3 kids are not enjoying the church they are going to now and have been wanting something new. Their eyes lit up when we introduced the Book of Mormon and were ecstatic to hear about the Youth programs. T is recovering from some health issues she has had and declared that she was ready to go back to church as well. The 2 children over the age of 8 expressed a desire to be baptized and asked if we could come back today to begin teaching them! They are such a sweet family. They are from Kenya and have so much faith. The 2 older kids names are B and EJ. They have kenyan names but since nobody would be able to understand it that is what they go by. After a hard week I couldn't help but laugh and think that Heavenly Father was yelling at me, "here is a Blessing for you EJ (emily judd)".

A and L are doing so well. Looking forward to their baptism on April 12. We had quite the lesson with them this week. So many miracles are coming from them it just blows me away. A few months ago P, the mom, hired a nanny to help her with the kids when she works. Well this nanny just so happens to also be a member of the church who has gone less active. On Tuesday P told us her fiance, T,  was coming into town this weekend and that we needed to meet him because, in her own words, "he's gonna need to join the church too". Well we went over Friday to teach a lesson. We were excited to meet and teach T. Turns out the nanny, P, deiced to join in because she is ready to come back to church. We brought with us a member and his son to help fellowship. And the neighbor boy was all for sitting in on a bible study. So we had a room full of 9 people and all pressure was on us! We decided to watch the Restoration dvd to catch everybody up and read from the Book of Mormon. It was such a powerful lesson and the spirit was so strong. The neighbor boy at one point said "I feel like God is in the room". And the best part of all was being able to sit next to all six of them.. A, L, S (the 4 yr old), P, P, and T at church yesterday. God knows every detail of our lives! He is truly preparing the hearts of people to hear this wonderful message. The message that God lives, He loves his children, and the true complete church of Jesus Christ has been restored back to the earth! 

I love this Gospel. It truly can bring peace and happiness to anyone in any situation. Jesus Christ atoned for all of us and through Him we can do all things. 

Thanks for all your continued love and support. 

Love, 

Sister Judd 

March 10

Hello and happy Monday!! 

I have been feeling like my letters home have been super boring lately.. no awesome stories or exciting news. So I decided to pray this week that I would have a good story to tell you all. Well of course it took until Sunday to happen but we experienced a true miracle this week!! 

On Sunday a new record was received into the ward. A lady by the name of P. No one knew anything about her so we were asked to go stop by and introduce ourselves and meet her. We decided to head over after church. 

We get to the door and she opens right up and lets us in. We were also greeted by her 3 young kids.. A(10), L(9) and S(4). We got started talking and she told us that she was baptized 2 years ago when she lived in Texas. She moved to Colorado shortly after but never felt apart of the ward there and fell away. She moved to Garner about a year ago but never figured out where the church was. She told us her wonderful conversion story and that she still believes all the doctrine and they read the Book of Mormon as a family very often. Well she went on to say that last week A told her that he wanted to be baptized. She asked him if he wanted to get baptized in the Mormon church or in the Baptist church where his father attends. He said he didnt know but thought that they should pray about it. Well all week long they had been praying about it and on Sunday we knocked on their door.. It was truly amazing to see their faith and for them to see that we were an answer to their prayers. While we got talking L ran to the back and grabbed his Book or Mormon. He expressed that he wanted to be baptized too. He then asked "will the water be cold or hot?". We are sooo excited to work with this cute family! The Lord answers prayers!! 

I truly wish I could bottle up the craziness that goes on here and send it all to you. Everyday I am just blown away by the things I see and things that people do. The south is truly a different world, I dont even know how to explain it. Lets just say, the rule about no participation in Sacrament meeting has not made it to the Garner ward yet. Brain cells are lacking but they make up for it with the love in their hearts! And I love it! 

We drove past a house this week that was full of lawn decorations. I am telling you full. Over 100. I took a picture and will include it. I wish pictures did more justice. But it is this true southern craziness style that I am talking about. Well a couple days later we had like 10 minutes of spare time before our next appointment. I told Sister Langarica that I wanted to go knock on the door of the crazy lawn decoration house. Because thats what missionaries do, we knock on doors. I just had to know what kind of person lived in that house. Well it turns out to be an old lady who was not interested in the gospel but it was a fun experience.

I wish I could video record every time we tell people that Gladys Knight is coming to town. It has become my favorite thing. People are going crazy! One less active lady we were talking to almost had a seizure. I am not kidding, she was shaking uncontrollably as tears rolled down her face and all she could say was "Gladys?!" I know that miracles will happen at this concert. 

We also had quite the experience in the ghetto this week. This week has been extremely cold and rainy but Saturday turned out to be a beautiful 70 degree day. We went to go visit a less active woman. Well the whole neighborhood decided to be out and partying.  All the guys were leaning on their cars blasting rap music and yelling and hollering, everyone was drinking and smoking, the kids were running around, and the woman were all standing around holding the babies. And of course here two white girl missionaries come driving up in their toyota corolla with a bike rack. All eyes turned on us. We walked up and the woman we were visiting was standing outside. We could tell she felt extremely uncomfortable. We kept talking to her and my sweet companion was not leaving there without sharing a spiritual message. So we pull out of Book of Mormon. There is nothing quite like reading a scripture while hearing the F word blasting every 2 seconds from the music beside you. Missionary work is fun I'm telling you!! 

With all the bad happening in the world today I was reassured that there is still hope for the future. A member took us to Chick-Fil-A for lunch after one of our appointments. It was a downpour of rain this day. We we pull up and grab out purses, I go to open my door and see a worker standing outside my door with an umbrella. He says "I am here to walk you in". All of our mouths dropped. That is true service!! I will always support Chick-Fil-A. 

Well thats all for this week. Garner is an adventure every day! 

Helaman 12:1.. "Yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him." 

Trust in God, Trust in his abilities. He has power to do all things! 

I love you all. Thanks for all your support. 

Love, 

Sister Judd 

Mar 3

Hello Again! 

These weeks sure do fly by!

We are keeping very busy here in Garner. Its a wonderful thing!

I was able to go on exchanges this week with my sister leaders. (it is nice to not have that responsibility anymore). I went to the wonderful area of Fuquay-Varina. It was a lot of fun. I am so amazed everytime I go on exchanges. I walk into these peoples houses who I have never met before but immediately I just have so much love for them and want to be able to help them come closer to Christ anyway I can. I truly see and feel the love Christ has for all of his children everyday.  I have to say probably one of my favorites parts about being a missionary is all the great people I am blessed to meet and love and serve.

We had interviews with our wonderful mission president this week. These happen every 3 months. I love them! For this interview we were to come prepared with 1 scripture that has helped us as disciples of Jesus Christ. And then one "Weapon of Rebellion", like found in Alma23:14, that we are going to ‘bury’ to help us be a better Representative of Christ. The scripture I chose was the one I shared with you all last week. Moroni 10:23. It has helped me know that I can do hard things! AKA a mission, the hardest thing i've ever done. ha. But when we have that steady faith in Christ and rely on Him we can do all things, and we can do hard things! And the weapon of war I have chosen to bury is negativity. The power of a positive attitude makes all the difference! I have experienced that first hand. We determine out attitude. We determine our happiness. Yeah, we might not be where we want to be or going through things we would have chosen. But when we choose to look on the bright side and see the blessings all around us we can be happy and find joy, even in the worst of trials. I am learning this first hand, trust in the Lord, have that hope and faith that all things are done in the wisdom of our all wise and all knowing loving Heavenly Father.

Some exciting news... Ever heard of Gladys Knight? Well guess who is coming to my town on April 26 and 27. The one and only Gladys Knight. Gladys is a member of the church and has been set apart as a music missionary. She has a LDS choir and does tours around the US putting on firesides for missionary opportunity's. Every year she does a tour through the bible belt. Well after being on a waiting list for 2 years she finally is coming to Durham. And the Apex, Raleigh, and Durham stake are putting it together. She will do 4 shows here. And they are strictly missionary centered. She wants most of the audience to be non members and less actives. She has rearranged some of our hymns and songs to make them, her own. She performs and shares her testimony and basically gives the first 3 lessons from what I hear. They say that 40% of the non members there will request a Book of Mormon or missionary visit after the concert because that is how moving it is. We are super excited! In order to get a free ticket you have to put in a request and basically qualify for it. So from now until April we are trying to ask everyone we meet if they would like to go to a free Gladys Knight concert at our church. Then we just have to get their information and then we will submit for them to get a ticket. It will be tons of fun and a new exciting way to share the gospel! It is perfect time for her to come because the Book of Mormon musical just left Durham. We know this will be a success!

I hope you all have a wonderful week and God bless!! 

Thanks for all your continued love and support!

Love, 

Sister Judd 

Feb 25

Hello!!

Wow! This place surprises me more and more everyday!!! 

The work here is out of control! You probably wont understand but in case you do let me do some comparisons.. 

In my last area we went over 2 months without a new investigator.. In the 2 weeks I have been here we have gotten 7 new investigators. In my last area by the end of the week we were lucky to have 15 lessons. The week hasn't even begun yet and we have 16 lessons scheduled. 

Let me just say.. It is so nice to not have to stress about finding things to do during the day! 

I am finally really loving Garner and the people here. It was so hard to leave Wake Forest, especially the people, but I am coming to love this place just as much!

One of our new investigators we got this week is M. She was a media referral. Which means she went on to Mormon.org and requested a visit by missionaries. We were pretty excited to go and meet her. We scheduled an appointment and met with her. She is so wonderful! She is going through a really hard time right now. She has 3 kids (the youngest being 4 months old) with her boyfriend of 14 years. Her landlord just told her that they are selling her house so she has to move out. Well she is currently without a job and is going to leave her boyfriend because he has recently spiraled downhill. She is ready to make a change in her life and is looking for a church to start over. She wanted a church that was a big community and second family that would be a great place to raise kids. She told us that she was talking with her Jewish mother and her mom told her that she needed to learn about the mormon church. They have a lot of family who is mormon and they see the good example that they are and M has decided she wants that for herself and her kids. Needless to say she is awesome and is so ready to progress. She has her head and straight and is going in the right direction! We love her so much already!

Nothing else too exciting here happened this week. The weather has been nice, Sister Langarica is so sweet, The Book of Mormon is true, and the work is hastening!

I love the scripture Moroni 10:23
And Christ truly said unto our fathers: If ye have faith ye can do all things which are expedient unto me.

We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us!! I am grateful for the times I have had to rely on Christ to get me through a day or two. I am grateful for trials and for the growth that comes to each of us because of them. I know that we are here for a reason. We go through the things we do for a reason. 

I love the Hymn "Come, Come Ye Saints" A line that stuck out to me is "Though hard to you this journey may appear, Grace shall be as your day." Rely on Christ. Let the wonderful power of the atonement carry you through your journey.

I love you all. Thank you for all your love and support.

Sister Judd

Pics: 

Sorry this is the only picture thus far of Sister Langarica and I. 

More pics from transfer day. This is Sister Fullmer, Sister Wilde(sister Fullmers companion before me), the W family(minus D the dad) and myself. One of my favorite groups of people!