I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY

I love my Hermana Bos:)

Hey y'all! Another great week in the TSAM! I seriously love it here so much :) on transfer day I was able to see Hermana Call!! (my CCM compañera) so that was super fun! She got transferred to the San Antonio area so I'll be able to see her at Zone Conference! And my new companion is Hermana Motock! She is super cute, straight from the Mexico CCM and she is a CNA too! 

We've been able to talk to a lot of new people, but not a lot of them have responded for a 2nd visit or have been fully committal. That's been kind of hard when we're wanting to find more people to teach, but I'm grateful for the chance to even just share one little message with them of how much God loves them! Also, we dropped Daniel this week :( seriously the saddest thing!! But we know that things will work out for him in the future, it's all a part of God's timing! 

We also got to teach Luis this week! He is a referral from his missionary friend serving in Utah, and so his friend was able to skype in to the lesson! It was super cool! Luis doesn't have much of a religious background, but he understood and accepted everything we taught. And he promised his friend that he would read the Book of Mormon every day, so yay!

So district meeting was on Wednesday right before transfers, and it was SO AMAZING! We talked about the temple (my favorite!) and also our purpose as missionaries, and the Spirit was just so strong. Hermana Bos and I got home to do companionship study afterwards, and we could not hold it together haha! It was such a special spirit that we were able to carry with us the rest of the day. Ever since then I have been able to focus more on my calling as a missionary, and I am so so grateful for the opportunity to serve Heavenly Father for 18 months! This is the greatest work to be a part of. 

I love y'all with all my heart! Hope y'all have a great week :)

Hermana Motock!

The District!

TRANSFERS!

You can't tell but it is raining outside!

Yep! I am staying in the YSA area for another transfer! AND I am training again! Totally was not expecting that, but nevertheless I am thrilled to be training a new sister! She will be coming from the MTC. I have no clue who she is yet, but I will find out this Thursday! And Hermana Bos is going to be companions with my MTC companion, Hermana Call! I'm super sad I only got to be with Hermana Bos for one transfer, but I know she will have so much fun with Hermana Call :)

This week we had a few lessons with some new investigators. Teaching has been so much fun! Especially teaching kids my age who are going through a lot of decision making at this point in their life, it is amazing to see their receptiveness to the gospel. One thing that stuck out to me this week in our new lessons was when we introduced the Book of Mormon to Chinonso. He had never heard of the Book of Mormon before, but when we gave him a copy and testified about it, he just kept flipping through the pages and was looking at the pictures and everything. So neat! At the same time though there are other investigators we have who are really hesitant to read the Book of Mormon. Which is a big bummer! They are missing out! Haha but we will keep praying that their hearts will be softened to read the most amazing book here on earth! :)

Sister Duke

On Friday, I went on exchanges with Sister Duke, and we got to be a part of a wonderful service opportunity in the Zone Leader's area! Our ZL's invited us and another set of Elders to help some non-members with their yards. Sam and Liz are next door neighbors, and we helped them spread dirt on their grass (It's suppost to help the grass grow haha) and Liz was so nice and made lunch for us afterwards. We all sat down gathered around a small table, and the first thing Sam says is "Alright, you kids just have something different about y'all. I am so impressed with how you are all here to share the gospel when many other young adults don't want anything to do with religion" And so he then asked us to all share our experiences of when we made our decision to "walk with Christ". Wow, it was such an amazing experience, let me tell you! Hearing these missionaries tell their stories and seeing Sam and Liz's reactions was so neat. Sam kept commenting about how we have this special light about us, and Liz was so amazed at how we are just happy all the time. Sister Duke and I couldn't stop thinking about that experience all day! 

Don't ever forget about the light that you have! This gospel truly brings happiness and we shouldn't be afraid to share that joy with others who simply don't know where to find it. My recent convert Mae just gave her first talk in church yesterday, and it was beautiful! She shared her conversion story and how she was a lost sheep who was found. She ended with this question, "Are you a lost sheep, or a found sheep?" And I want to extend this question to all of y'all. We all have our own conversion, our own path of "walking with Christ". Work for that, and hold on to it! Through Christ, I have found my purpose. Turn to Him, and you will find your purpose too and become one of His found sheep. 

P-day Sports with the West Zone Best Zone!

We love our Blue Bell ice cream!

Matching Fiesta T-shirts!

"We're out of water. Do y'all want some tequila?"

Hey y'all! 

What an exciting week, we found 5 new investigators! This next week is going to be pretty busy and I'm so excited :) It's been so neat to meet so many new people and to hear everyone's story. One guy that we met with a few weeks ago was kind of hesitant at first to keep a commitment to meet with us, but we stopped by his place again this past week and he opened up to us a lot more! He asked us how we pray, and so we explained it to him, and then Hermana Bos asked him if we could say a prayer with him. It was so neat just standing right there, saying a prayer with him. And he agreed to let us come back! 

We had zone conference this past week which, as always, is amazing! Except for the one part where I was the very first person called up randomly to share my testimony in front of about 90 missionaries! Haha it was all good though, we've been told every zone conference to prepare a short testimony based off of a certain topic in the Book of Mormon, but still very nerve-wracking to be the first one called up! :) 

We found a big field so we had to take a selfie:)

One of our new investigators is Luis, he's a referral from his missionary friend serving in Utah! We were able to catch him at his apartment, super cool guy! He hasn't really grown up believing in God or anything, so that will be kind of different for us to teach. But he was so nice, he asked us if we wanted some water and then immediately he realized they were out. His roommates said "Yeah we're out of water. Do y'all want some tequila though?" Hahah we were like "Ahh no thanks!" It was funny :) 

Exchanges with Sister Broadbent!
Fun Fact:  She plays the bagpipes!

Since it was fast sunday yesterday, our ward had Break the Fast after church (which is one of my favorite things serving here in the YSA ward cause they have SO MUCH food haha!) And I had the MOST AWKWARD EXPERIENCE. haha :) Hermana Bos and I had finished eating at a table with a member and 2 of our recent converts, Mae and Tiffany. Another one of our members named Jared came up behind Hermana Bos and I and said "Hey Sisters I'm going to take off now" and he had his hand out to shake our hands, but I thought he said "I can take those for you." Referring to our plates. So I totally just picked up my plate and was trying to hand it to him, and he and Hermana Bos just looked at me. I was like "Oh you are going for a handshake ok!" They all laughed about it and he headed out, and then I turned to Mae and Tiffany and they were just dying of laughter for 10 minutes! Hahaha so yeah that happened :) 

Also, I just want to express how much I love our recent converts!! I probably have already said this a million times, but I just love talking about them because they are the greatest people :) Indira is so so close to going to the temple! She was getting ready to go this past weekend but the temple is closed for maintenance :( the language barrier has made it a little difficult to fully help her with her family history, but she has a lot of green temples!! Yay! So we are hoping to meet with her again before she leaves the states to renew her visa, so we can help her reserve names. We told her that the temple was closed this past Saturday, the day she wanted to go. And she said "Can I still go walk on the outside of the temple?" We were like "Por supuesto!" She is the cutest :)  And Elizabeth is getting close to her year mark! She cannot wait to go through the temple to receive her endowments, and for our lesson with her this week we reviewed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We asked her about her baptism day, and by the end we were all in tears! It was so beautiful to hear her testimony of how much she loved her baptism day, how she will never forget it and that she even feels that her sealing day won't be as special as her baptism day!! I just love her so much. I love seeing how much this gospel can change people :) 

I love y'all so much! Thanks for your continued support and all of your prayers. I love the great TSAM with all of my heart, so grateful for this opportunity to be among the greatest people here in Texas! 

WHAT A PROPHET!!!

WOW! You guys, that was an amazing conference!! I'll talk about it some more in a bit but I'll first share about some things that happened during the week. 

We didn't meet with Daniel at all this week :( We kept trying to set up a time and he kept saying that he was sick. We had members try to invite him to Conference and he just didn't respond. We're going to stop by in person this week, but if we can't get in contact with him again we might have to drop him. Sad day! He had such great potential! But even with the few lessons we taught him I'm grateful that we at least had the chance to share with him some of our beliefs and to hear his story. Planting the seeds is what this work is all about! 

We did some service this week! We helped Sister Taylor with her garden, and we went back to the Nursing home! I saw some familiar faces from the last time we came when we sang to the residents for Christmas. One of them was like "Are y'all going to sing for us today?" So cute! We're definitely going to see if we can go back more often.

 

Helping Sister Taylor with her garden
Sister Dittman was with us for the day for exchanges

With this Easter weekend, Hermana Bos and I decided to show the Because of Him video as part of our contacting. And it was SO COOL!  Several people were really touched by the video, and with one contact we had after we testified about eternal families, this one guy was like "Y'all just have glowing smiles!" It was so neat. Made me realize that people really do notice everything we do as we wear Christ's name on our chest. And sharing the gospel should be a joyful thing! How wonderful it is to know that Christ's church is restored today! We can be with our families forever! We have a living prophet on the earth today! :)))

Ok so Conference. SO SO GOOD! Wow, it was such an amazing experience to be able to sustain the prophet as a missionary. I just love his smile and his faith & determination to lead and guide our church. This weekend was definitely a great time of revelation with the change of "ministering" and also all the new temples that will be built! One in Russia?! That is amazing. Sister Bos is the sweetest and made a comment that has stuck with me. We were looking at lds.org at the background of all the different cities that will be receiving a new temple, and when we read that there are 23,000 members in Russia, she said "23,000 people will be able to be sealed to their families!" Growing up in Utah with many temples in close proximity, I didn't pay attention much to the fact that there are many members around the world who don't live as close to a temple. But at the close of the conference I received the most amazing and peaceful confirmation that this is the time Heavenly Father is hastening His work. What an amazing weekend we had to listen to Heavenly Father and receive further guidance on how we can become more like Him and find peace in this wicked world. I hope y'all will go back and study these talks often, but especially that y'all will take advantage of the wonderful opportunity to go to the temple often if there is one near you. There is always more work to be done! And it is what God has called us to do, to "gather His sheep" on both sides of the veil. 

Mi Companera!