What a week!

Hi everyone!

This week started out awesome with playing ultimate Frisbee for about 2 hours solid on P-day, so later that evening I was pretty tired and I had a hard time staying awake during our evening while out working. 

Tuesday we took a less active member with us to Trout Lake to visit a friend of hers who she referred us to!  The only problem was... when we got there, there were some Kirby Vaccum salesmen in her living room showing her their fancy vacuums.  So that was a bit of a  distraction, but luckily we introduced ourselves to the workers, and left them with some proselyting cards.  They came from Portland so we won't ever see them again sadly. Later that night we ate dinner at a member's house where their daughter Megan is starting her mission papers! Woohoo!  Megan is also one of our ward missionaries, so she got to come knocking with us later during the week!  

Later that night we visited Jose, our Hispanic less active, who is not doing good after his open heart surgery, so we decided to keep him and his Mom company while she told us about her conversion story, which took place right outside of Portland. She is AMAZING!  When she and her husband were baptized into a small Spanish group that linked off a big ward, the members embraced them, even with the language barrier.  They are so sweet and are taking care of Jose along with his family until he has recovered better. For the time being, he's not doing well. We were doing a lot of less active work this week, and that was good to keep getting to know different members of the ward.  We've also been doing a lot of service lately, and we've been given a bunch of fun things from the members like homemade strawberry jam, cherries, REALLY good cherries, and some other fun things. 

We had a youth from the young men come knocking with us, who is 13 years old. He's the cutest little missionary you've ever seen!  He even knocked a few doors while we were out!  We've been trying something new this week, due to some things that happened in our district meeting.  Usually we don't mind role plays, but when we started to role play I got so distracted, so we went out in the foyer and started role playing again. Hermana Knight and I have decided to start role playing with distractions, which has been helping me so much!

We visited a member this week who was in an accident with a horse and isn't doing well, so we got to spend some time with her keeping her company and helping her. We had plans to visit an Hispanic less active member, when he called us asking for help on his Sunday school lesson.  It turned out he's been lying to us for quite sometime. It's really disappointing, and so we won't be able to visit him anymore due to some problems that have come up. 

We stopped by the Derek family this week because we haven't seen them in quite some time, and we got to talk to the Dad, who's been reading in the Book of Mormon. He's making some great connections with Joseph Smith, because like him, Matt has had a lot of questions about religion, and has been asking to know the truth. They've told us for quite some time that they would come to church, well, lately they haven't.... until yesterday!  They came to church finally!  Right before the Sacrament was being blessed, to be exact.  His kids LOVED primary, and his son made some really cute comments in primary, talking about how they weren't going to be visitors soon anymore, because they wanted to be members.  I miss primary, I hope secretly I can have a calling in the nursery or primary when I get home because the spirit is literally so strong in the primary room. We got to go watch the primary for the 3rd hour on Sunday and help keep the kids under control. 

Well, that's been our week. Luckily my emails are getting more interesting week by week, right? :) 

Well, have a great week everyone! Good luck with everything and preparing for 4th of July!!

Spiritual Fire Hose!

Hello everyone! How are Ya'll doing? 

So this past week was amazing! 

First, We went back to an investigators house... the same investigator where we got stuck in traffic trying to get back home.. We went to her house, and sat down while having a pre-chat before we started our lesson. Pretty soon her dog starts freaking out about something in the corner of the room under a pile of boxes. She told the dog to "Knock it off" and explained that sometimes he's a wuss about silly cobwebs or spiders. We continue to talk, but pretty soon the dog started to growl and Sister Knight heard a "hiss" come from where the dog was. Ellen jumped out of her chair, screamed a few words I won't ever repeat, and told us to get out of the house.. "IT'S A RATTLESNAKE!" We literally sprinted out of the house while she quickly picked up her dog and ran out with us.. 

We ran next door to her neighbors who are members, and the father wasn't home because he was with his family working 20 minutes away at their business office. As we walked back to where she was on the side of the road, we told her what happened and she said, "I give up, I'm getting the Mexicans!" She ran next door to her Hispanic neighbor, who followed her over with a Machete in his hand and his wife followed behind with a few random things. We looked at each other with bizarre looks on our faces. "Don't worry ladies, I've dealt with them rattlesnakes before."  

*GULP* okay mister! We then held the dog down outside while they took care of the snake. 45 minutes later we were sitting down again in her house, all calmed down after it all happened. 

As for our exciting conferences, It was amazing! Holy cow, it was just a fire hose all day, for two days. We heard from Daniel L Johnson, and we got so much out of it!  He made a lot of progress with teaching us the basics. Something he taught us was that we can compare our investigators to tomatoes; If we pick a green one, and yell at it to ripen it won't do us any good. But if we set it aside, and keep looking for the RED tomatoes (the investigators who are prepared and ready to keep commitments and are serious about taking the time to learn about the church) then it will be an easier time waiting for the green tomato, and it saves a lot more time as well. 

So, after our two days of conferences, we learned about teaching Hispanics and the role we must fulfill as THEIR missionaries.  We also learned about preaching and teaching repentance and baptizing converts... Now at first that sounds strange.. correct? Baptizing converts basically means that we should be baptizing and teaching those people who we know are prepared and who are ready to come to church, THIS Sunday, who are ready to read the Book of Mormon, EVERY DAY, and who are ready to pray for answers, EVERY DAY. I have loved these conferences, especially seeing and spending time with the other amazing missionaries I love. 

Rainbow and rain while I went on exchanges in Yakima after conferences 

Hna Harston and I

I got to see Sister Reynolds from my second area at the Yakima church building between traveling for conferences, bittersweet moment!!

Expect the UN-expected.

So these past few weeks have seemed pretty boring, right? Well... Do I have a story for you guys!

So for those of you who have been following the weather for my area (Mom and Dad) We have already hit the 3 digit degree mark! Yesterday got up to 105!  Luckily we just got our A/C installed in our apartment so that was perfect timing! 

As for our investigators, nothing really has changed much. Still out knocking, visiting our less actives and asking everyone for referrals... EVERYONE.  Plus no body in town has been in a happy mood with the heat, so we've gotten some doors slammed in our faces this past week. Oh well!

​Us in our nightgowns at the members house sleeping over :) 

So this past week, across the river in Mosier, we had a train that derailed and blew up (11 train cars to be exact) which turned into a oil fire on the train tracks.. Due to this accident, the State patrol shut down the 84 on the Oregon side and made everyone re-route to the highway 14 which is on the Washington side... This traffic was sooooooo busy!  We had an appointment with someone in Lyle about 20 minutes away, and it wasn't so bad when we first drove out there, but coming back was much worse. After only going about a mile within 45 minutes, we called our leaders to tell them why we would be coming home late... and once we talked with them, we told them our options of what to do... We felt a lot more comfortable staying at a members house overnight rather than staying up until midnight trying to get home to White Salmon. So, we got permission within 15 minutes from President (which never happens since he's always on a time crunch) for us to stay with a member that night until the next day until we could drive home after all the traffic cleared. So, we had a totally unexpected sleepover with some members, and they took us to breakfast the next morning, so that was a blast!  We also had a fun festival/ fair happen in White Salmon that one of our few investigators at the moment had her own booth set up for her boutique, so we went by to see how the day had been going, and it was awesome!  She had a lot of business happen during the festival. 

This week has gone well, I've been learning a lot of really awesome things, especially turning outward when I would feel the need to worry about myself and turn inward. I LOVE being a missionary, I hope you all have  a fantastic and hopefully a cool week!

Haircut in hot weather - Love it!