Hermana Knight & I!

Good morning everyone!

Wow, this past week has been a work in progress.  Monday and Tuesday we let Hermana Buss say goodbye to a lot of members, and we had some sweet time together before she left. Wednesday morning, we woke up and Hermana Buss STILL wasn't packed. I was scared for her, on the other hand, Hermana Juarex who stayed the two nights with us (her senior comp went home) was not so happy. I, on the other hand, told Hermana Buss to get in the shower while I packed her stuff. Within 15 minutes, Herman Juarez and I packed her last few things and got out the door with Herman Buss's stuff... and when I say stuff, there was A LOT.

We got to the Hood River Church when we realized how much stuff each missionary had that had to fit into a Dodge Van... I was on the verge of sweating, I couldn't believe how much stuff we had to fit into this van, and the member was completely chill as a cucumber while I looked at the van as soon as we pulled up, and I silently said to myself... 'This ain't gonna work, people!!'  But luckily, the sweet member and I packed the van with our good packing skills (Thanks to my sweet, awesome Dad who taught me how to properly pack a car for a trip!) And we headed off to the transfer site, we smushed the two elders in the back while we hermanas fit into the upper seats... (Poor elders, sorry!) We came back with even MORE things from our new companions, so we ended up having to take some of our new companions' things and have other missionaries take them to another church building, and which our member was more than willing to pick up the other missionaries' things. 

Hermana Knight is from Rockwall, Texas (Across a lake and 30 minutes from Dallas) and she ROCKS! She was born in Logan, and she's been back and forth from Cedar Hills, Utah and Dallas ever since.  She's only been 6 months out on her mission, and she's on fire! I love it!  We have lots of great plans for our area; Trevor is slowly but surely progressing, and he's growing so much in the Gospel! We've met some part member families that we will be teaching this week, and it will be amazing. I just can't wait. 

I also just FINALLY got pictures of Wendy, the teenager with down syndrome that I taught in my first area, and her baptism pictures! She just glows! (sniff sniff)  She's all grown up!

Anyway, It's been an awesome week, Change is my favorite, but this week has been great!

General Conference, Lesson learned...

Hi everyone! 

Wow, I haven't had a week like this in a long time... probably not since Toppenish.  So, this week, in a gist, I've learned so much about companionship responsibility.  A LOT.  I've really enjoyed helping Hermana Buss with the things she's working on, and it should be getting better... anytime soon, but I have really learned that I truly can't carry on the work by myself.  And when things happen, you roll and go with the flow.  That's all you can do folks, just get down on your knees, and say an out loud personal prayer and He will listen to you. He IS There, and I know without a doubt that He is listening, and that He knows me!

I have LOVED listening to conference, we watched one session completely in Spanish.  I couldn't understand a lot of it, but I hope to understand it more soon!  I loved it all, especially the announcement of the new temples. We will have 175 temples once all the temples in the world are built. WOW!  What progress!

I invite you all to ponder the things you've learned in conference, and to apply it TODAY! 

They all talked about good habits we MUST build right now, so find one and work on it. 

Love you all!

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!

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!