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!

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!

Anyone want some.. WHITE SALMON?

Hi everyone! This week has been busy and a good one!

Transfers are on Wednesday, and we did not expect what is going to happen! Hermana Aldrich and I are going to be doubled out (we are both leaving the area) and two other Spanish sisters will be doubled into our area. Hermana Aldrich will be serving in the other Spanish branch in Yakima, which is the Moxee Branch. I will be transferred to the partially new area of our mission, the Dalles Oregon specifically White Salmon/Stevenson, and I'll be serving with a sister who came into the field with Hermana Aldrich. I've heard a lot of good things about this area, and it's sparking some flames of work. I had thought about how I could possibly serve there one day on my mission, and apparently it's time for me to head down there!  

We are pretty sad to leave behind the Ochoa Paredes family, but we know the new other sisters will take care of them.  As for their baptism, It did not happen. Things came up in the baptism interview with Delia that will need to be addressed to someone else.. They have good desires, just need to work on the some things together before any kind of baptism planning. We are sad to see them make some choices, and it's a bit heartbreaking. But I know one of the new sisters coming to our area, and I know she will take good care of them. Both Hermana Aldrich and I will be returning for their baptism, when it happens. 

We got a sweet referral this past week for the brother-in-law of a member, who was baptized in another area in the mission which I can't spell to save my life, but they are amazing.  Both her boyfriend and his brother are excited to come to church, and they've come to church multiple times before, just not to our branch.  We have set a date with them for March 19th!  They made sure that we said we could come back so we could see them both get baptized, and they are a super sweet family!

Overall, I've been thinking a lot lately about the things I've been learning since being in the heart area of my mission, and I know I've talked about it a lot lately in my emails, I'm sorry if that's a bit boring... Haha!  But I've truly learned a lot, time has flown by that I've been here in Yakima, that literally I haven't written in my journal since I got here... So, I will be doing a lot of journal writing before I get there, so it's gonna be a busy, tiring week! Haha, I am really excited to start fresh... nothing bad happened in my experience in Yakima, I'm just looking forward to starting in a new area.  I'm going to miss the branch and our investigators so much, but it's time for a new start! 

Buena Suerte con todo, y les quiero muchisimo!

Yakima's warming up, so is my time...

Hi Everyone!

I don't have too much to share today, so forgive me for my short email...

This past week has been busy, and also long. 

This past week, I've grown to love the scriptures more.

This past week, I've learned to lean on my Savior more.

This past week, I've TRULY learned to love despite differences.

This past week, I've learned to be patient.

Missionary work, is not easy.. but it's worth it. 

Learning to live with differences is a task, but if you learn to love, you don't reside on those things.

Missionary work has taught me these things..

Joseph Smith was truly a young boy, and desired EVERYTHING out of his own heart and will and of Heavenly Fathers. We should be doing so as well, as often as possible. Relying on Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father just as much as Joseph Smith did ever since his first vision.

Trusting in the Lord takes our own faith and action. Our future is as bright as our faith!

Loving everyone is the BEST way to show them how Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father love them. If you learn to serve out of love, and of desires to make other happy, you have exactly what you need to be a representative of Jesus Christ.

I have learned much more, but unfortunately I am out of time....

I have yet to learn so much more and I've been out for a year as of this week! 

I love being a missionary!

Miracles, and pure divinity!

Hi everyone!

This past week went super fast, and was super great!

This past Sunday, Francisco and Deliah were at church again, as they have been for the past month, which we are super proud of them for.  But finding the time to teach them together has been hard, and we haven't had much success in that category for quite a while!  We have been given a new second counselor in the Branch, Hermano Esteves, who's a convert of only a year!  He and his wife are AMAZING!  We asked him if they could join us to teach Francisco and Deliah, and without a pause or a thought he said yes!  We sent them the address, and started to go about the rest of our day.  When we arrived, the Esteves weren't there yet.  So we went in anyway, and they showed up not too longer later. 

We were reading in Mosiah 18 about how so many people were baptized, and what was required of them, including gathering together for church every week. We read verse 10, which says...

"...What have you against being baptized?..." 

We've tried to set a date for quite a while with them, and it just hasn't gotten anywhere.  Finally, for this lesson, we included Chessy as much as possible, asking her how she felt about baptism, etc.  She expressed how she has been hopeful that her parents would get baptized, and we were able to testify after, that Heavenly Father wants this for them, and for them to live as a family for time and eternity...  After that, the spirit just hit us all... Hermana Esteves, Hermana A. and I, and Chessy were all in tears, and waiting for Francisco and Deliah to say something, they made some small comments, like "Si Dios quiere!" (If God wants) and we finally pushed out our guts, and invited them to be baptized the 20th of February. They said YES!

I have also seen the blessing of understanding the Book of Mormon even more every day I read it. I just finished it for the second time! I am so excited to start again, I've found so much strength from reading the scriptures, and from consecrating my time in the Lord's Field.

THIS IS OUR WORK,

BUT IT'S HIS FIELD WE ARE HARVESTING.

I have truly learned a lesson lately about letting Heavenly Father take control of the things I cannot control, and of completely and utterly trusting in him, because after the past few weeks I've truly learned to lean on Heavenly Father for EVERYTHING.

Lean on him for every trial you are given, 

every burden you are carrying,

every roadblock you face,

turn to him for all things, for He knows best!

Moroni 7:33

And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me."

Make the choice TODAY to lean on Heavenly Father in your daily encounters and you will feel more of his love at the end of the day when you kneel in prayer to give him your account of the day, you will feel more of His guidance, do not ever doubt it. 

Love you all, have a good week!

Sorry I can't send pictures today, mission office computers aren't working too well today.