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!

White Salmon, here we go!

Hi everyone! 

Wow, this past week was a roller coaster. FOR SURE!

Hermana Aldrich and I sadly said goodbye to the members, Presidente Moreno and his cute little family, and the Ochoa Parades family. It was a hard separation, but we will go back to their baptism soon.  They are prepared, VERY prepared, they just need a little help with some things right now. 

Wednesday morning, Transfer day comes around, I jumped out of the shower with wet hair and decided to keep packing my second suitcase.  I was no where NEAR ready to leave that morning.  Then we got a call from our Assistants to the President, and they asked me If I knew I had to be at the transfer sight right then and there at 8:00... WHAT?  My zone leaders forgot to tell me about this when I was leaving, or SOMETHING.  Either way, I was in no way shape or form ready to leave.  Frantically, I packed the rest of my things within 15 minutes, along with the other sister's help packing my stuff and taking my things out to the van, which the AP's drove to our apartment (5 minutes away from the transfer site) and picked me up. I was not ready to leave Yakima... Ha, I was about in tears saying goodbye to Hermana Aldrich and the other sisters, but I know my area will be in good hands. 

The drive to The Dalles is so beautiful, like, SOOOOO beautiful!  My area borders the state of Oregon, and of course we have the Columbia River splitting the two states. We cover a LARGE, spread out ward. We only have about 30% attendance because everyone else is less active. We also are covering English and Spanish work, and this will be my second time doing both! It's really exciting!

As soon as we got home, I unpacked a bit, we ate lunch, and then we had an appointment with our investigator, Trevor.  He's a senior in high school, and he was a referral from a member, who is super good friends with him. He is really progressing, and he loves coming to mutual!  Unfortunately, we heard a couple days later, that after Mutual, Trevor was in a car accident on his way home.  He is doing well, but his truck is totaled.  We have a date set with him, but we may set it back a week or so, so that we can have enough time with him to teach him everything.  He's doing well though, we should be seeing him this week with our bishop and one of his counselors to give him a blessing.

I can't remember everything off the top of my head I wanted to share, but here's some sweet pictures from our hike this morning. This hike is right on the border of our mission, it's so beautiful!  We also went to a local fish hatchery where they have tons and TONS of fish! First P-day in White Salmon, totally successful!