Tender Mercies, New transfer!

Hi Everyone!

Wow, This past week seriously flew by! Does anyone else feel that way?

So, it's a new transfer, and these new changes have happened with our area, but something even more exciting happened... We didn't know this until the day before transfers, but we are now doing English work for the English ward!  Our area is now split, so we will do English and Spanish in Toppenish, and then Spanish work in all other parts of our area.  Wednesday we met with the elders and gave them the records for their area, and then we had 4 set appointments, which NEVER happens anymore for our area.  We've been so busy with appointments this week, and at the end of the night on Thursday we had plans to stop by someone we had a doorstep lesson with a few weeks ago, when out of the blue, this guy comes out at 8:30 at night to water his porch plants... weird, right? Well, we started speaking Spanish to him, and he spoke very fluently, but then switched to English. Well it turns out he's Hispanic but he has lived in the states for his entire life and understands more English now as a result of that.  He introduced himself as Jaime, (Hi-may) in Spanish, and then said, "Well, people call me Jamie, but you can call me Jimmy..." Uh, awkward again, but really funny for all three of us.  We jumped right into the Restoration while we talked about the Book of Mormon and about how we receive help and guidance from our Modern Day Prophets.  He LOVED the idea of the Restoration and Prophets, and it all started making sense.  We were able to talk with him about what he's been struggling with this past week, and for about a year of his life. He's started having health problems and has been quite lonely, as he only lives with his dogs and puppies. He really enjoyed talking to us.  Then we said a prayer with him before we left, and I said the prayer.  This prayer was one of the best moments I've had feeling the Spirit with someone new who we taught on our first time meeting them. I have never felt so much love for someone I never knew before.  As I closed the prayer (in which I asked Heavenly Father to help Jimmy have the comforting spirit of the Holy Ghost as he goes through a major surgery soon) we both looked up and we saw some tears in his eyes.  He quickly rubbed his eyes and said, "Sorry, I never really get emotional, but thank you so much for that prayer."  We never visited Eva that night, but I know we were sent there for a specific reason, and it was for Jimmy.

Sabino at his baptism in my prior location.

On the other hand, Eva who we had plans to see, has also been struggling.  We basically taught her the Restoration about two weeks ago and we've been trying to get in to see her since then. We stopped by last week and she expressed her feelings of loneliness while her husband is becoming sick with a brain tumor. She feels remorse and pain that her husband is suffering and not herself. She would rather have the pain than see her husband go through it. Well we roughly talked again about how we will all be a great big family when we return with our Heavenly Father after this life. She took great comfort when we told her we would see Heavenly Father again after our lives on earth. We also prayed with her for comfort and protection upon their family and her husband as he continues with his sickness. 

We met Berta while knocking doors this week, who has three kids and one grandson. Her grandson and her daughter were in a car accident, in which her son-in-law caused her daughter and himself to pass away in the accident.  Her grandson, who was only two at the time, and had his car seat turned towards the back of the car, which had completely saved him. Miguel, the grandson, is now left with a mental disability, but loves smiling and meeting new people. They want to put God more in their life, and Miguel loves being around us. We were invited in the door after teaching them on the doorstep about our loving Heavenly Father, and as soon as we walked in we both felt the Spirit so strong. Again, we've never felt such outpouring of love for these wonderful people we had never met. They showed us pictures of Miguel's father and mother, and his uncle who saved his life in the accident once he arrived to take in Miguel. We said a prayer with them and she graciously thanked us for coming and praying with her. 

We've had a lot of great little miracles in working out our schedules and traveling to and from city to city.  We've felt extremely thankful we are both staying together this transfer, we've sadly passed our investigators to the elders covering our area now due to bordering areas, but we are all on the Lord's Team. Are YOU on the Lord's team? 

I couldn't be more thankful for this Gospel and for the little, small miracles we've been blessed with this past week. I am extremely thankful to be a part of this wonderful church and to be a missionary. As a missionary, you see miracles every day and when we see and experience miracles, you can't get enough of them.  I am so thankful to my Heavenly Father to be serving in this area and we are so grateful to serve together. 

Paz afuera (our version of Peace out)

Have a wonderful week everyone!

A field after the hop harvest.

Slow and Steady we continue...

This week was a bit rocky, but overall we had a blast! Don't be confused if I talk about walking and knocking a lot, we are finding new investigators this week :)

Monday night after P-day we went and found some less actives whose membership papers were in our area book. We had a feeling we should go find them and meet them. Why not, right? Members that were baptized over 5 years ago and they haven't attended since? Of course we are gonna go find them! We met Eloise and Brian who are mother and son, Eloise's husband was working. We recently got a GPS from a member who donated it to our car so we plugged in the address and went a searching! We found Eloise and talked with her a bit. She and her husband and son, Brian were baptized in Hermiston, Oregon, and then moved to Toppenish for work. She is such a sweet lady who doesn't know how to read, but she listens to the Book of Mormon on tape, (YES! Partially active!)  We were extremely happy to meet them and have a return appointment on Friday. Still haven't met her husband, but we will this Friday :)

Tuesday we did service at the food bank again and got a whole bunch of bananas. They are always trying to give us food, not because they can, but because they have extra that will go bad soon, so they gave us some and then gave some to the Scouts, who were finishing service hours with us at the bank. We had some awesome lessons planned, which all ended up falling through, which was so so sad, but in return we did some solid knocking and contacting  of 'formers', which helps us clean out our area book.  We met Ricardo while knocking, who's a solid guy. Super nice and welcoming.  His family wasn't home at the time and he was headed out to Yakima to work, so we took down his name and address, but then he said he wouldn't be able to meet with us for another month because he's working HOPS.... #goshdarnyouharvestseason.  We definitely assured him we would be back in a month at his request. He looks forward to seeing us and getting his family together when we come back. 

Wednesday we had our District meeting and decided we would focus on inviting members every day to come out with us, because we can't find many members to come out with us for lessons or tracting. I also was able to give a training on diligence and how we are responsible to be diligent to our Heavenly father, our companions, but more importantly ourselves... It's so crucial that we are on time, and obedient because it brings miracles!  Exact obedience brings blessings and miracles!  Then we had some less actives we visited, and then had dinner with the Guzman family. They are both converts with 7 kids, and they are partially active where they live currently.  But we were able to talk a lot about the temple and baptism covenants.  Then we had another lesson with Katrina!  This girl though... She has so many questions and seemed to become more confused while we watched the Restoration video.  Luckily we had Brother Ibarra with us during this lesson and we were able to include his testimony and his solutions to her questions.  She's having a hard time accepting that there's a direct correct authority from Heavenly Father.  We will work on that though. There are some missionaries that have been able to teach the Restoration with only the Bible.  Who of my missionary friends knows how to?  Can someone help us out? Email me! :)  Much Appreciated!  We then started our exchanges with our Sister Training Leaders, who are such gems!  I left Toppenish and served in Yakima for the day with Hermana Cain.  She's from Georgia and she's the first missionary of her family and siblings to go.  She's a diamond!  She taught me so much!  The only little down part of exchanges was that they work in a walking area.... Merp.  They have a car for the first half of the week and then they give their car to the elders, who they share it with.  I can now say I have rock hard shins! I really enjoyed taking a break from driving though... I really do love walking! 

The whole next day was full of rides to appointments and walking. I loved working in Yakima that day!  I guess you could say I got a little break from Spanish, because we taught in English all day.  That was because the Sister Training Leaders, who have been called to speak Spanish, are in an English walking area, which sounds silly, but it's as the Lord wants :)  I was able to meet a lot of wonderful English less actives and try to give English lessons... It was so weird to not be speaking Spanish!  We finished out the day with a lesson with some sweet less actives, who drive truck and who are sick once in a while, but they have great faith!  Then Hermana Taua and Johnson drove to us in Yakima and we exchanged back.  They were able to find some awesome potential investigators for us to return and see this week!

Saturday was a lot of knocking as well. We met someone SO SOLID!  Cezar answered the door very shyly but curiously. We talked a little bit about faith and blessings from having Christ in our lives. We invited him to pray with us before we left and he turned out to be VERY hesitant.  He's catholic, so he's only used to the crucifix hand motion thing.  So we taught him how to pray from the Restoration pamphlet and he said a really short, sweet, powerful prayer.  "Dear God, please help my struggling family, please help me find work, Amen".  We told him he did a great job!  We set up a return appointment for Sunday night.  We also received a call from President Lewis... He asked Hermana Taua to sing in a big conference we are having tomorrow with Elder Packer's son, who is a member of the area of 70.  She accepted, and he invited me to join with her as a duet if she'd like.  We said we'd do it!

Sunday was a little hard to pay attention because there weren't that many people at church, a lot of our members are going back to work for harvesting the Hops. #darnyouhops.  Neither of us felt the Spirit much, we didn't know why.  This continued all day and we started to have contention between us without the Spirit.  Before returning to Cezar, who we met the day before, I had to get out of the car and stretch and just try to relax.  I couldn't relax without the Spirit with us then.  The spirit of contention was so harsh we barely spoke outside of lessons and prayers before lessons.  After saying a prayer to bring the Spirit back, the only bad thing was... when we arrived at Cezar's door there was a note... "Somos catolicos aqui".  We are catholics here!  NOOO.... Darn it. We vaguely saw him as we walked away, but he quickly shut the door when he saw we left him a note with our number.  It was really sad to see this in result of not striving enough to have the Spirit with us.  We were able to talk today about what we can do better to keep the Spirit with us as a companionship, and we start our goals TODAY.  

It was a great week, and I wish luck to my friends going back to school and to working at the schools. Have a great week!

A Whole New... Hoppin in Toppenish!

Hey hey everyone! 

This week has been insane!  We had some sweet member present lessons back in East Wenatchee before I left on Wednesday, and let me just say, the land of my mission birth was extremely hard to say goodbye to, as every missionary says.  Holy Cow, I miss it so much!  I will never forget the memories I had in East Wenatchee, and I hope to go back someday.  Who knows, maybe I'll get sent back later during my mission... Just kidding. 

Transfer day was so sad...  I said goodbye to some amazing members before meeting at the transfer site. Then it came time to say goodbye to Hermana Alcocer... I've never had a more difficult goodbye. She greenie-broke me good and hard.  She was amazing.  I can't wait to hear about her adventures as an STL.  She is so wonderful and I can't imagine spending that transfer without her.  I needed her so much, and we grew so much together.

Hermana Taua and I

Transfer day we received bad news of a recent convert in Chelan who passed away.  Hermana Alcocer was so broken, and so was my new companion, Hermana Taua.  Hermana Kennedy and I arrived in Yakima to meet our new companions and we unfortunately had to brake the bad news to Hermana Taua, who helped her get baptized in Chelan.  Kathy was so blessed to be taught by Hermana Taua and Hermana Safesten in Chelan in February. All is well, and All will be well.

Anyway, remember how I covered a HUGE area in East Wenatchee?  Well I've got news... my area in Toppenish is even bigger.  Yahoo!  It's a bit stressful, but also exciting!  There's a lot of Less Actives to round up!  Our branch is pretty small without the less actives, but it surprisingly bigger than the Columbia River Branch I worked with for a short time in Wenatchee.  There are so many amazing members!  When we got to our Farm House (Yes, I just said farm house, because we live in the middle of corn and asparagus fields), Hermana Taua and I grabbed some dinner and then headed out to see the Ibarra family.  Holy Cow, I've never met such amazing members!  I felt so welcome in their home, and they are so missionary oriented.  They help out so much, they feed us every Sunday and bring home made lunch for after church every Sunday for everyone who comes to Daily Dose. 

Planning this week took TOO long.  We have so, so many less actives we need to round up, but Toppenish and our whole area looks very promising for those Hispanic families!  We are so excited to work in this area!  We cover around 6 little towns, that are all about 15 - 20 minutes away from each other.  But luckily with our sweet '14 Corola, we've got it handled. 

Hopper Fields: They grow like a vine, except a lot taller!

We had a chance to visit one of our investigators named Veronica. She's been taught multiple times by the missionaries, and by one of our good missionary friends, who's now home, Elder Hacking. Her two sons were baptized by him, and her daughter just recently turned four years old.  But Veronica hasn't been baptized yet! That's gonna change... :)  We are so excited to get to work here and help Veronica.  Our area has so much potential, and we can't wait to get to work!

Referring to my email title... Yakima Valley is known for the Hopper Fields.. what are those?  Well let's just say it's an important ingredient in beer... Good thing the hopper festivals are over!  I've heard from a lot of other missionaries it STINKS when they harvest it or have the beer and hopper festivals.  Lots and LOTS of asparagus and corn fields, a long with a TON of Hopper fields. It's pretty interesting!

You are all wonderful, Love you all to pieces!