I can do ALL things through Christ!

Fun News, I'm a grandma!  Hermana Perry, who I half trained in Toppenish, is now training in Sunnyside, so we have this cute three generation picture to show. 

So this past week was amazing, frustrating, and a whole roller coaster at the same time, for one of the many times so far. 

We had some sweet lessons with Trevor, who has officially chosen a date to work towards. April 23rd, everyone! We are so excited, he still feels nervous, but he knows it's what he's wanted for awhile, and it's what is going to help him step into eternity with his Heavenly Father.  We also had an awesome lesson with Satika, who is the best friend of another one of the youth in the ward. She lives in Hood River, so the Elders across the river will start teaching her. The Elders have another young girl who wants to get baptized who technically lives in our area, and we are so excited to teach her!  Adriana has had it rough.  She lives with her Mom most of the week and goes to church with her Dad in the Elders' ward, so we are basically having a swap of investigators with the Elders.  It should be exciting this week!  We have plans to teach Trevor in some members' homes and we can't wait.  We are patiently preparing for those lessons. 

I've had my moments this week, but every time I've gotten down on my knees, I've entered my own world for a while. I testify to each of you that the Atonement is real, and that Jesus Christ truly did die for each of us, and I know, and testify, that even though none of us were on earth to witness his sacrifice and death, that we each watched him suffer from our kingdom up above before we were sent to earth with our glorious gifts - our bodies. 

I am so thankful for Him and his sacrifice, and for the Zone Conference we had this past week in Yakima.  It was so good to see everyone, and to spend our time talking about Jesus Christ and the last week of his life. 

Another piece of Joy for Ya'll!

 

We had to drive our own car to Yakima this past week, 2 1/2 hour drive, but it was decent, as you can tell by this picture... It was a blast.  Loved having the road trip and being able to clunk out after we got home... 

I KNOW I CAN.

Hi Everyone! 

This past week it rained, like a lot, but it was also sunny a bit as well.

I went on exchanges with Hermana Juarez, who has been out in the field for just over two months. Our Sister Leader came to my area with Hermana Buss, and then I went to the other sisters' area. It was awesome! We taught an amazing lesson where I really learned to discover one of my spiritual gifts as a missionary... Being BOLD!  

Now, being bold as a missionary, is sometimes difficult, because it shows that you love the people, members, and investigators, but it's also a bit scary to see what people's reactions are.. so I learned how truly bold I've been, and I didn't realize until she had pointed it out, and asked if I would do a "DTR" with their investigator while we were on exchanges. (Determine The Relationship)  Maria is very sweet, and very nice, but she has some things to straighten out before she gets baptized. She is struggling to want to read in the BOM, and throughout the whole lesson we were able to find a balance and a level with her. She wants to be baptized, but can't until she starts reading.  I'm glad I had Hermana Juarez right there with me, because It's sometimes hard being bold all alone... She's awesome, and it was awesome. That lesson went AWESOME!

Over all, this past week didn't go as what we planned. 

I'm learning even though we both struggle with different things, we CAN work well together.  It IS possible to work effectively together. I KNOW it will happen. In the mean time, It's just still a bit hard. It WILL get better. I can't wait to start again this week. 

On a happy note, I was asked at the last minute to give a talk in Sacrament meeting and it was a total uplift this week. I was asked to talk about home teaching and visiting teaching, there's so much I want to share, but so little time... next time! :) 

Love you all, have a great week!

Stepping into my Mom's Shoes

Hi everyone! 

This past week was a blast! We had a lot happen, a lot of good stuff happen.  We had a lesson with Debby at the Family History Center here in Hood River, across the river and border of WA. (This is also where we email every week) She LOVED the family history center, she loved the fact she found her grandparents, and she's currently working on finding more names and birth dates and birthplaces. She is GLOWING!  I love being around her, she's so full of energy and always looking for something more to do on family history work. She said she's going to try to come to church next week! 

Trevor is doing AWESOME! He's fully recovered, found a new truck, and is currently also swamped with homework and scholarships up to his neck.. He is doing well, and he's still reading in the Book of Mormon.  We are not currently talking about a date with him, but we will in the near future.  His first priority right now is school, so he can finish strong.  Which is understandable... kind of.  We had plans to meet his parents on Saturday night before a meeting we had in Hood River.  He lives about 45 minutes away from our house, and we canceled our plans with him, until he called us from his house phone.. "Can you guys still come? My parents want to meet you still."  He got a speeding ticket a while ago, and he hasn't been on the same page as his parents, but he said it would still be okay!  We got ready in 5 minutes and left... This felt so weird, because Trevor is like a little brother to us, and we were running around crazy trying to look nice as if we were meeting our new parents... Haha, it was an adventure, but it also was raining...  As we met Trevor's parents, I fell into my Mom's shoes... My Mom is a convert, as most of you know from my high talk of my sweet amazing Mom. Meeting Trevor's parents made me remember of the stories my Mom has of taking the missionary discussions. Trevor's parents LOVE him, they are very set in their religious ways, and aren't interested in changing their own perspectives of the Gospel, but they are very happy to see him make this decision.  His baptism probably won't be until after his high school graduation, but he WILL be baptized!

We went up to Klicitat, which is about 45 minutes away from our house, and we did some visits to a lot of less actives and in-actives who live there, and they are all amazing. They are super sweet, and strong in the gospel, but aren't willing to drive the 45 minutes to an hour to go to church every week.  They all look forward to our visits this week again!  We're going to have a lot more opportunities to do service, and share the gospel with a part member family who need some help around their Bed & Breakfast. We are super excited. I don't have super exciting pictures, except for one...

I played with a tame wolf a few weeks ago and never sent this picture home, it's pretty sweet. Loki is a pure bread wolf, just extremely tame, he's pretty cute. :)

Hola todos dondequiera!

Hi everyone!

So this past week was to say the least... interesting. So I haven't quite explained what exactly the work is I'm doing here, so I might as well tell you now, a week after arriving!  I am serving in the White Salmon ward, and we are the only missionaries to our ward. (which also feels very weird coming from our Spanish branch in Yakima, which had 5 sets of missionaries to cover all of Yakima. Here in White Salmon, we cover the English work for our ward, but we also cover the Spanish work of the area of 2 wards. So we have our hands full! We cover a very large area, not including the other ward. Some of our investigators live 45 minutes to an hour away. Our usual weekly and monthly missionary meetings are typically from 30 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes away. Because our area has a lot of terrain, we have been assigned to drive a Jeep Compass, which I must say.. is a fun car to drive as a missionary. We are very blessed to be serving in a great area with Juanito our Jeepo. This is my 4th area, and we cover an area that is about 1 hour and 15 minutes top to bottom and about 2 and a half hours from West to East. We don't have much work in the boundaries of the other ward, so we mainly work in our ward and the Spanish work within our area. 

So this past week was decent!  We didn't get to meet with Trevor this week because he didn't have a car due to his accident, and his recovery from his accident. We WERE however able to have him at church yesterday! He loved it! He wasn't super lost with the whole 3 hours.  He said he usually spends 3 hours playing video games on Sundays, so that was a great substitute!

We did service this week at a thrift store where we were sorting baby clothes and boxes of kids clothes, it was a lot of good work, it kept us super busy!  Although we had 2 appointments fall through later that same day.

We visited our recent convert Shelley, who is working on reading the whole Book of Mormon. She has a hard time understanding some things, especially the Isaiah chapters in Second Nephi, but she has managed to push through them! She is now in Jacob, and she loves it!

We had a lesson with Zon Sprinkle, who is 99... Yes, you read that right, 99. He is hard of hearing, and he is incredibly healthy for his age.. No joke!  We taught him the Restoration with Sister Lemmon, who is a member of the ward and is from Venezuela originally. She is super awesome!  We had a good lesson, but he is quite firm in his beliefs. We asked to come back and read in the Bible and Book of Mormon to him since he can't read too well, and he agreed! 

We had a super sweet lesson with Debby, who is an amazing investigator!  She is carefully studying the biblical history along with the history in the Book of Mormon. She wants to start doing family history!  We have an appointment with her to check out the Family History Center tomorrow and to start her family tree!

We had a Zone Meeting this week as well, which was amazing!  We woke up early, picked up the other sisters across the river in Oregon, and drove to a members house 30 minutes away, who drove us to The Dalles where our meeting was held. It was a loooong day!  Our members who drove us there, took us through a drive thru Zoo early on Saturday morning, it was so cool!  We saw Zebra, Giraffes, Yes mom. Giraffes in WA!

Sunday was... interesting, like I said. 

Hermana Buss was searching for a glass early on Sunday morning, which I was very confused about. This past Sunday was Fast Sunday, So I almost thought she was skipping her fast... (of course she wasn't).  We caught a very gross looking bug in our bathroom with a jar in our cupboard... don't ask me about it.. Haha!

BTW here's a photo of Hermana Buss and I finally!  She and I are doing good, could be better, but it's a work in progress. 

 

Love you all, Have a wonderful week!